Shirley, I'm parched, another DP for me, and another round for the few
left still listening, thanks.
Day 9 we wake up around 9AM, grab breakfast and head over to Clarkston
to meet up with a buddy of mine who just moved from Atlanta area up
there. He's staying in this motel that's backed up to a lake, and he
takes us back to the lake to show where he goes and feeds the ducks. We
meet Bag Lady Sue, a comedian who frequents Sturgis, and Tony has to
have a picture taken with her. It's now lunch time, so we grab a bite
to eat at the coffee shop next door before we hit the road again. We
hop on I-75 heading north. Tony is leading and apparently, we're both
zoning out a bit as we almost ran into those water barrels they use to
keep people from running into the concrete barriers where the interstate
splits at Flint. We're now fully awake. We get to Zilwaukee and they
have this detour (apparently, they're redoing the bridge heading north)
and we have to turn off the interstate. Tony gets this idea that we go
check out the bridge, and we run past the blockades on the entrance ramp
and back up on the interstate. Hmm, no one around, no construction
workers, up on the bridge. Looks complete to us, and we continue on
over the bridge and the detoured traffic is merging back onto I-75. We
get to Bay City and decide we're gonna take Hwy 23 along Lake Huron all
the way to the Mackinaw Bridge. Somewhere along the way, we see this
Paul Bunyan statue sitting in the back of a truck so we go get our
pictures taken beside it. In Alcona, we see all these classic cars and
decide to follow them. They're having a parade of classic cars and they
invite us to be in their parade. We decline the parade, but check out
all the cars before heading on our merry way again. We get to Mackinaw
just after sunset, grab a bite to eat, do a little site-seeing, and
across the bridge we go. Tony in the left lane and I in the right.
Tony picked the wrong lane. The center two lanes are cheese graters,
and it's dark. We slow down to about 30 MPH as we go over the bridge,
thank goodness there is no one behind us. We get to the other side to
pay the toll and ask for a good cheap motel. The lady at the booth
says, you can have one, but not the other, you either get good, or you
get cheep, but there's one that's pretty good, and not too expensive in
Brevort, so off we go. Holy crap batman, what are all these bugs. It's
like a friggin snow storm at night, only it's bugs. We hunker down
behind the windshields and open the throttle. We get to Brevort, we're
almost out of gas, and the only gas station we find is closed. Luckily,
the motel is almost directly across the street. We get checked in for
the night with about 400 miles for the day.
Day 10 we awaken to the sound of accordian music. We look out our
window and there's this older guy standing outside playing an accordian,
so we have to go investigate. He tells us the bugs we ran through were
fish flys, or May flys (although it was July), and they only live for 1
day, long enough to mate and lay eggs. The guy repairs and sells
squeeze boxes and he shows us a few items he has. He and his wife are
going to a Polka Festival in Engadine. We finally get moving, grab
breakfast, and on the road at 11. While eating breakfast, we look at
the map to see where in hell Engadine is. We find it, and another town
called Curtis. We decide we have to go see both places. Easy enough to
get to Engadine, then there's the little backwoods roads between
Engadine and Curtis that are gonna be fun to navigate, but no problem.
We get to Engadine and they definitely have some big festival going on,
but we didn't stop, and turn down Linck Rd (which is supposed to take us
to just south of Curtis). Nice wide road at first, then the asphalt
goes away and it's a nice wide gravel road. No biggie, we've done
gravel roads before. It can't be too bad. Hmm, the road is getting
narrower. Shit, this is is just barely a road with some huge mud
puddles. We're several miles down the road and we come to this almost
pond in the middle of the road. Hmmm, don't think we're gonna cross
that. Shit, how do we turn around our geezerglides, the road's barely
6ft wide. Well, we manage after a lot of maneuvering. Damn we made the
road muddy and I hit one of the areas wrong and slid the bike into a
pretty deep mud puddle and laid it over into about 6 inches of mud.
It's laying on my right foot, and I can't move. Tony's yelling "Hold
still, I gotta get a picture of this". I'm telling him, "I can't move,
you idiot. The damn bike is on my foot". He finally gets a few pics and
comes to help me get the bike back up (Yes Tom, it is even dirtier now).
We finally get out of the mess and back towards Engadine. The map
shows the shortest other route to Curtis is to take Hiawatha Trail
(which looks like it's a fairly good size road) back down to Hwy 2 then
head north on Manistique Lake Rd. Well, Hiawatha Trail is a fairly good
size road, it's just gravel, no asphalt. We finally get to Curtis and
find out from a local, that the "road" we were on is a "snowmobile
trail". It's now 1PM and we're supposed to meet up with a friend in
Ironwood, so we decide we better get rolling again. At 4PM, we reach
Norway. We've GOT to stop and check this town out. They have a little
outdoor theater with a painting of a Norse ship and Asgaard. Nice
little town. We finally make it to Ironwood at 7:30PM and 320 miles for
the day.
Days 11 and 12. I get a call early from work telling me they had a
power outage over the weekend and they were having trouble getting some
of the servers back online, so I have to log in to work, fix a few
things, tell them they'll have to try to fix the rest, and I'll check in
later as I'm going site-seeing. Spent these 3 days with friends showing
us the sites around Ironwood like the ski jump at Copper Peak, the beach
on Lake Superior, the 50 ft. Hiawatha statue. I'm afraid of heights,
but I couldn't resist taking the ski lift up to the top of Copper Peak
(as I hung on for dear life), then the elevator up the jump. From the
top of the elevator, it's still a ways to go up to the top. The first
set of steps is a 45 degree incline with a boarded siding going up 15 or
so feet. At the top of the steps, it's damn steel grates that you can
see straight down. Crap, I'm getting vertigo. I get a couple of
pictures while laying on the top of the stairs and have to back down
those stairs. Oh crap, now I have to take the ski lift back down.
Takes me another 30 min to get up the courage to jump on, and have to
hang on for dear life again as we go down. This was MUCH worse than
going up. During the evenings, I get logged into work and fix the
things they can't figure out how to fix. One of these days, I'll get a
vacation when something DOESN'T go wrong at work.
Day 13 we leave out bright and early (9:30ish) heading west. We plan to
first go to Brainerd, Minn, then to Akeley, then Bemidji and see all 3
of the Paul Bunyan statues, but we missed a turn in Duluth and only made
it to Akeley. We hit Fargo around 8 PM (or is it 7, can't remember what
time zone we're in any more), grab a bite to eat and continue west.
About 10 PM, we start looking for a place to sleep. Seems everything is
full. Finally find a motel in Valley City at about 11:30 with about 420
miles for the day.
Day 14, we're on the road by 10 AM. We stop for a quick break around
1:30 in Steel, and continue west. Just before Bismark, we get off the
interstate and head to a little town called Lincoln to meet up with a
friend out there. Nice lunch and we're back on the road. Next stop is
the Enchanted Highway starting at Gladstone. We meet the creator of
these monster metal sculptures at the grasshopper one just south of
Lefor, ND. We get our pictures taken with him, and on our merry way
again, stopping at each of these sculptors to get pictures. The
Enchanted Highway ends at Regent, ND. We stop there for supper about
7PM and back on the road after a little site-seeing in the town. The
goal is to make it to Medicine Rock State Park, Montana to camp out for
the night. The only way there is about 20-30 miles of gravel road
before we get back on the asphalt again. Somewhere along this stretch,
we see this HUGE buck off in one of the fields to our right. He sees us
and snorts a few times and starts charging us. Luckily, we out ran him.
We finally make it to MRSP sometime after 1AM, maybe 2AM. To dark to
set up our tents, and we're too tired. There's these HUGE sandstone
rocks (20-30 ft tall) and we find one with an area underneath it, kind
of a small cave with just enough room for 2 people to lay down. Didn't
sleep too well, it was cold, the ground was hard, and kept hearing these
damn buffalo snorting and making a ruckus over in the valley. Total
mileage for the day, about 420 miles.
Day 15, and we are on the road by 8AM. We make it to Sturgis about 1PM
and spend a couple hours before heading to Tony's house in Piedmont, the
off to Rapid City for some night life and then out and about visiting
friends who live out there. End the day at 1:30AM with about 235 miles
for the day. What a birthday.
Days 16, 17, 18 and 19 spent with friends in and around Sturgis/Rapid
City with a memorial run for a friend who had passed earlier that year.
About 600 miles during these 4 days.
(To be continued, the journey home)
--
Odinn
RCOS #7 SENS BS #154
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