Cptnrydr - Road Trip 2009 - part 2

[captainryder]

July 6th
Grand Isle, NE
Sunny, 74 degrees, calm winds

• Start time 8am, humidity low, no clouds in the sky, as we started up Hwy 2.
• Saw first of many, many, many trains along this highway almost immediately. The BNSF railroad runs continuous rail traffic almost exclusively “coal trains” with over 120+ cars and 3 engines. I gave a “pull down motion with my arm” and most of the engineers tooted their horn. Many probably have not seen a Spyder before!
• Hwy 2 is fantastic to ride, we saw less than a dozen semi-trailers the whole 300 mile day and hardly any traffic, so we sometimes rode side-by-side on the two lane road chatting and taking each other’s pictures.
• Lunch was a quick detour to the Nebraska National Forest! 322,000 acres of hand planted / sowed pines surrounded by the Sandhills of Nebraska.
• Sandhills are vast, vast rolling dunes of sand mostly covered with grasses now, consolidated into large ranches. Ted Turner owns a lot of this land. Water table must be pretty close to the ground, as there are hundreds of windmills on the grassy landscape. Saw a few solar powered.
• Met Ira McCulup and Tyson Donovan, on one of our rest breaks. “What do people do around here?” was the question. These two are on the rodeo circuit, 22 stops in July alone. “It’s $100/day as a ranch hand or make triple that for 8 seconds”, says Ira.
• By the way, if you’re thirsty, just go out to one of those windmills turning and get as much water as you want, Ira says “ranchers don’t care, as people have to help each other out here.”
• Trains still coming by (about every 20 minutes) says Tyson. That’s a lot of coal.
• Ice cream at Alliance, NE before we headed to Crawford, NE and Ft Robinson, NE our next stop.
• As we moved northwest on the road we see thunderheads building on the Wyoming / Nebraska line…. We could get wet before we make our stop. Scenery is changing to some bluffs and pines now and the vistas are awesome.
• Arrival at Ft. Robinson, NE at 4:48 mountain time, (gained an hour). Thunderstorms about to dump rain on us but we are safely here. Temperature has dropped back to 70’s as downdraft winds start blowing.
• We ate dinner at officers mess hall and then watched it rain from the large wooden porch of the old Officers Barracks where we’ll spend the night.

Travelled 353 miles in 6.2 engine hours.
Nebraska National Forest.....



Officer's Barracks at Ft. Robinson, From the porch we watched it rain into the night, just barely making it safely there before it thunderstormed.

[captainryder]

July 7th,
Ft. Robinson, NE
Sunny, (thunderstorms overnight left about 2am), calm winds again, and 75 degrees

• Quick tour of Ft. Robinson…. (Crazy Horse was prisoner here and shot in an attempted escape) There’s a nice canyon drive – Smiley Canyon where you can see where the last of Crazy Horse’s band of Indians escaped fleeing northward hid out. The fort also has its own herd of bison.

• Travelled back east 18 miles and then north on US 385 to Hot Springs, SD and into Custer State Park this morning.
• Took the scenic wildlife road in Custer State Park and encountered lots of bison / buffalo. Mostly bulls, huge bulls. The cows and calves were not to be seen.
• Our route into the Black Hills was via the Peter Norbeck Highway… a fantastic and picturesque roadway that winds through forest and mountain with unique “pig-tail” bridges and tunnels through mountains. ( See video and pictures )
• Arrival at Keystone, SD (center of all tourist activity at the base of Mt Rushmore) We rode the “alpine slide” and then off to Sturgis, SD via Deadwood.
• Sturgis without the rally going on is not much to talk about. But we stocked up on t-shirts as my travelling in-laws are H.D. fans to the max!
• Custer State Park of South Dakota and the Black Hills region has 4 great lodges to stay at. We chose Sylvan Lake Lodge, high in the black hills 8500 ft above sea level.
• The windy road ride up to the lodge from Sturgis saw the temperature drop from a already cool 75 degrees ( its 8:30pm already) to 61 degrees at the 8500 foot level.
• A fantastic day of sights and activities….Some storm cells came and went in various parts of the black hills, but we never actually ran into one…. I’m beginning to think Spyders can ward off rain!

Travelled 285 miles in 8 hours of engine time….. you can tell we were just cruising 35mpg to 45mph around viewing the sites, etc.

Just a note, but Spyder and Trailer handled all the switchbacks and rises the roads in the Black Hills could put at it. Third Gear is extremely powerful to pull us up the inclines while I hardly ever used my brakes, just 4th gear for downhill…..








Spyder Visits the H.D. store at Surgis.



Sylvan Lake from back deck of Sylvan Lodge... This is the lake that "National Treasure Part II" filmed the city of gold scenes...... Lamonster also has a picture sitting on his Spyder from Sturgis '08 here.

[dragonheart]

This sounds like a great trip - something my husband and I would like to do next summer. We SO loved the trip to L.A. on our bikes.

Thanks for posting!