Written by my loving Husband for his Motorcyle group.
The pics are just a random smattering of pics taken, I took well over 1500.
16 days, 20 states, 5600 miles, Laura and I started on the 6th of July with our first stop at the Flight 93 memorial
Next we went on our way to Mansfield OH, where we intended to do a Shawshank Redemption tour, Made sure to watch the movie the day before we left.
then a visit of the Ohio Caverns ( great place to cool off) with an overnight stop in Terre Haute Indiana, (needed the cool place to stop it was over 100 degrees out and with the heat of the bike a nice even 53 degrees in the caverns was the trick!) As a side note, the Ohio Caverns has two sets of caverns the historical caverns and the new caverns. we chose to see the historical for two reasons, We love history and these are the caverns that people in the 1800’s paid a dime and were given a kerosene lantern and sent on their way, we had a private tour just us and the guide and it was quicker to take into the cool underground than waiting for the new cavern. LOL =)
Third day, we went to St Louis Arch
and stayed overnight in Hannibal MO, where Mark Twain wrote some of his books based on real characters living in this town.
We then stopped in Lincoln and Valentine NE
on our way to Keystone SD, we rode the Needles Highway, Iron Mountain road, stopped at Mount Rushmore, Custer, crazy Horse and any other little places in this area.
So there are so many pics to show I think I will do a slidshow for the rest at the end of the blog. Enjoy the little bit of America we have been able to forward to you!
Nice rides, nice people too. On our way to Colorado we stopped at Carhenge, a reproduction of Stonehenge but with car, in the middle of nowhere, some of the vehicles have been buried with Time capsules, our stop for the night was Fort Collins, CO. we took 285 to 50, to 550 and stayed in Ouray, the Switzerland of America, very nice little town in the middle of mountains. Our next stop was Santa Fé, great ride thru Colorado, Durango to Pagosa Springs, then New Mexico ( Taos, Espaniola) . The next day our destination was Canyon TX, we had to see Palo Duro Canyon, ( the second largest Canyon in the US). The next day was hot and windy, we rode thru Oklahoma City and stopped in Fort Smith AR for the night, along the way we rode on old 66 highway and stopped at a museum along the way. Our next stop was Memphis, sad news Elvis is still dead, we visited Graceland and spent some time on Beale Street. Thank you for the members on the motorcyle forum and Bluenose ( sorry I am not good with names) who called me in the morning to give me some roads and tips on the Tennessee police for our day trip from Memphis to Nashville. Our last stop was Pigeon Forge, with of course a detour on 129, a visit to the Titanic Museum and a dinner at the McCoy – Hatfield Theater. The last day of our trip we rode from Pigeon Forge to Manassas, VA and made it home by 7pm. This was our first long trip on the Goldwing with the sidecar, we enjoyed every moment of it, it was mostly hot and sticky, got rained on 3 times and once with hail on needles Highway, our lowest temperature was 54 in Colorado. 5600 miles, 169 gallons so an average of 33MPG, We only had one minor problem; I lost my tail lights and therefore dashboard instruments (blown fuse) , it happened in Lincoln NE, we went to Star City, the largest dealership in the area, well let me tell you if you need help, don’t go there, after explaining my problem they gave me access to the electrical schematic for the Gl1800 and that was it. I was able to trace it to the sidecar (with the help of my wife) and unplug the head light which was creating the short. Should you want a map of the trip for a trip of your own please let me know and I will forward it to you!
LauraLovingLife 