Hannibal, Missouri to Loveland, Colorado

After a pleasant Tuesday night in Hannibal, MO, we left at sunrise, 5:40am, because we saw that the weather forecast was for very high temperatures through northern Kansas.  Our goal was to make Smith Center, KS so we would have less than 400 miles to ride the following day going into Colorado.  The morning temperatures were very nice, almost to the point of being chilly at 60 mph.  Route 36 runs straight across Missouri from Hannibal to Saint Joseph.  Along the way we passed through (or near) Marceline, the hometown of Walt Disney, Laclede, the birthplace of General John Pershing, and Chillicothe, where we could not find one place to have breakfast, so we had to settle for McDonald's, where I was undoubtedly the youngest person by at least 25 years!

It was another 75 miles to Saint Joseph, MO, the last big town before we entered Kansas.  At that point it was starting to get pretty hot and we still had 215 miles to go to get to Smith Center, Kansas, where we had reserved a room.  Saint Joseph was the starting point for the Pony Express when it ran from there to Sacramento, California in 1861 and 1862, so from there on we saw many signs for Pony Express stops, as well as signs for the Oregon and California Trails. 

Waiting for the train to pass

Dad's helmet sticker

 From Saint Joseph, MO to Belleville, KS, we could definitely feel the increased temperatures - it was reading 109 degrees on Dad's Goldwing by then - and the wind was picking up, gusting at times up to 30 mph.  Of course we had no luck, hitting several road construction stops as well as a train crossing, which stopped us flat under the sun.  The only light-hearted moment was passing through Dorothy's place, the town of Home, Kansas - get it?  There's no place like Home?! 

Belleville to Smith Center is 63 miles, and we really wanted to push through even though the conditions were pretty lousy.  On that last leg we hit 115 degrees with 30-35 mph winds gusting out of the south, gusting so hard that we were riding in a constant leftward lean just to stay upright and on the same line on the road.  Needless to say, by the time we pulled into the motel in Smith Center, we were thrilled to sit inside in the air conditioning with cold drinks in our hands. 

Ellen's helmet sticker - I think I need a helmet sticker too!

A few things about Smith Center, which I had never heard of before this trip...it is just a few miles from the geographic center point of the lower 48 states, and the words to the song Home on the Range were written by Dr. Brewster M.  Higley in 1872 in a cabin nearby,

with the music written in 1947 by Dan Kelley, 

when it was adapted as the Kansas state song. 

Up and on the road before dawn

Breakfast stop

The next morning was to be our last leg, 367 miles to Loveland.  It wasn't forecast to be quite as hot, and the winds were supposed to have dies down, but we still decided to leave as early as possible to beat the heat.  We were on the road by 5:30am and the conditions were great - cool and calm, a far cry from the day before.  We rode 96 miles straight through from Smith Center to Oberlin, KS, where we stopped for breakfast at the Frontier Cafe, and then is was on to St. Francis, KS, another 70 miles, before we stopped for gas.  From there we zigged north into Nebraska, where we gained an hour going into the mountain time zone, to pick up route 34, which runs straight into Loveland.  Once into Colorado, Ellen raised her arms in triumph at making it back home, and we stopped in Yuma to meet up with one of Dad's Goldwing buddies, Monty, who showed up with a cooler full of water, soda, candy bars, and fruit on the cargo rack behind his bike!  Monty rode with us through Akron, Brush, Fort Morgan, and Greeley before peeling off for his home in Milliken, and we rode the last few miles on our own to Dad and Ellen's house.  After a quick lunch, Dad and I went to spring his dog, Buddy, from the kennel, and then it was just a peaceful, rest-filled day after that.  Little did I know that it was the only rest period I would have before the chaos of a four year-old nephew and a ten month-old niece ensued the next day!

Shenandoah National Park from Skyline Drive, Virginia

New River Gorge Bridge, north of Beckley, West Virginia

New River Gorge Bridge

My guardian angel on my trip

View of the Mississippi River from the top of the Gateway Arch

The Old Courthouse on Dred Scott Way, viewed from the top of the arch

Arch shadow

At the top, 630 feet in the air

The tiny 5-seat pods that take you to the top

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri

Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Missouri

Mark Twain Riverboats

Tom Sawyer's whitewashed fence

Three years later, here I am again, making another trek across the country to visit family in Colorado.  This time, though, I have the opportunity to make the outgoing trip with my dad and stepmom, Ellen, as they return home from a Motorcycle Touring Association rally in Matamoras, Pennsylvania.

We left Maryland Sunday morning, June 24th, at 6:00am, heading west on I-70 to Frederick, then south on route 340 to Front Royal, Virginia.  Front Royal is where Skyline Drive, which runs 110 miles through Shenandoah National Park, begins.  It was a very pleasant morning and a nice ride 35-40 miles through the park, at which point we zigged west through Luray to I-81 south to I-64 west.  Route 60 winds 35 miles through the West Virginia hills to route 19, which took us right to the New River and its notable bridge.  The New River Gorge Bridge is the longest single-arch bridge in the world and the second highest bridge in the US.  It's so high that you could stack 2 Statues of Liberty on top of the Washington Monument and they wouldn't touch the bridge.  From there we headed for Beckley, WV for the night.

We had planned to head south into North Carolina on Monday and hit Great Smokey Mountain National Park and ride route 28, called Tail of the Dragon, before heading for Lynchburg, TN to see the Jack Daniels distillery.  However, we realized that we would not be able to do all that and still make it home to Loveland, Colorado by Thursday evening, so we scratched that whole plan and headed west on I-64 again, through Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, into southern Indiana.  Interesting things on the way?  The unfortunate name on the Louisville sports arena (KFC Yum! Sports Complex), the very angry WV driver who ordered up a vanity plate that read IH8MYEX, and billboards for Holidayworld in Santa Claus, Indiana.  No sightseeing stops this day.  We ended the day in Evansville, Indiana for the night.

Another early start today, on the road by 7am.  We made it to Saint Louis by 10am, but sat in stop and go traffic with a lot of trucks for a bit.  Once we got off the interstate, we passed the new Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, and parked to visit the Gateway Arch.  What an impressive sight! 630 feet tall, completed in 1968, and hosts 2.5 million visitors per year, with 1 million of them riding the tiny little 5-seat pods that take you on a 4-minute ride to the top of the arch and its observation platform.  You get a tremendous view of the city and of the Mississippi from the top, with visibility measured in miles.  Below on the river there are helicopter tours and riverboat cruises offered, and on the other side you can clearly see the Old Courthouse where the original Dred Scott decision was handed down, before it was overturned by the Supreme Court.  We stopped at the Saint Louis Bread Company for lunch, which was suspiciously similar to Panera, and then headed out for an overnight stay in Hannibal, Missouri.  Hannibal is the boyhood home of Mark Twain and the main setting for Tom Sawyer.  It's a quaint little throwback town on the riverfront, offering dinner cruises on the Mississippi aboard the Mark Twain riverboat, with train running through town every half hour or so.  Now we're turning in for the night so we can get an extra early start tomorrow - it's supposed to be blazing hot, over 110 degrees in northern Kansas, where we're bound!  Need to get some miles behind us before we get baked in the sun!

Day 21 - Home, Sweet Home

Sorry, no pictures to share today. I got an early start so I could get to Shenandoah National Park in order to see all of Skyline Drive before heading home, but unfortunately it was far too foggy today to attempt a 105-mile ride along the top of a mountain ridge. So I continued north to Winchester, VA, keeping watch for a clearing of the fog at the tops of the mountains - never happened. Oh well, just a good excuse to come back again for another try. This was the first day in the whole trip that I felt really tired while I was riding, so I was really happy to reach I-70, Frederick, and finally, home. After 5,325 miles and 24 states in 21 days, it's a wonderful feeling to walk back into your house and be in familiar surroundings with loved ones. Thanks for following along!

Day 20 - Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

Another really exciting day today! I was up and out the door this morning to ride to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky in time to pick up my ticket for the 10am Historic Tour. On the way through the park to the visitor's center I saw 4 deer by the road, just nibbling on the dew-covered grass, and 2 huge wild turkeys! (Yes, Charlie, they were even big enough to feed your family for Thanksgiving!) It was a good thing I'd reserved a ticket ahead of time because that particular tour, as well as several others, was sold out by 9:30am. I grabbed a park brochure and a map and we were soon on our way down the wide, paved path to the historic entrance. As we approached the steps leading down into the cave, there was a definite change in temperature as we could feel the cold air from the cave the closer we got. Down the steps and into the darkness, the temperature had to have dropped at least 20 degrees, probably more, but it was quite comfortable after being in the 90 degree heat on the surface.

The historic tour lasts 2 hours and visits landmarks like Giant's Coffin, the old salt peter works where they mined nitrates for black powder, Booth's Amphitheater, Gothic Avenue, Sidesaddle Pit, Bottomless Pit, Fat Man's Misery and Tall Man's Agony, River Hall, Mammoth Dome, and the Ruins of Karnak. Fat Man's Misery, as the name implies, is a very narrow section of the caves, but only from about the knees down. It feeds into Tall Man's Agony, where the ceiling height remains the same but the floor steps up a foot and a half, so one has to crouch to get through the next 30 feet or so. While we descended gradually to a depth of 360 feet below where we entered, we ascended all at once by means of 192 steps up from the Mammoth Dome. Mammoth Cave is the largest cave system in the world, with 367 miles of mapped passages, and they still are not done mapping everything. It's so large that you could fit the 2nd largest (Jewel Cave in South Dakota) and the 3rd largest (in the Ukraine) inside Mammoth Cave with over 100 miles to spare. All of Mammoth's passages fit within a 7-mile by 7-mile square, with tunnels lumped on top of each other like a bowl of spaghetti, as the ranger leading the tour put it. This is another place I want to go back to so I can see more of what the caves have to offer.

From Mammoth, I headed for Lexington and then Huntington, WV to Hillbilly Hot Dogs, a restaurant featured on Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins on the Food Network. Interesting place, with even more interesting combinations of toppings for hot dogs. Check out their menu at www.hillbillyhotdogs.com. The garlic ranch fries were very good, and the West Virginia Dog and the Hound Dog I had were good too. I don't think I ever would have thought to put cole slaw on a hot dog!

From Huntington it was less than 50 miles to Charleston, WV. Tomorrow is my last day on the road, much to my mother's and Margo's mom's relief! I have to admit, 21 days is a long time to be away from home, and as much as I have thoroughly enjoyed my trip, I will be happy to be back in my own house again! Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive are just about all that stand between me and Catonsville now.

Day 19 - Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee

Wow, compared to how little I got to see yesterday today was jam packed. I got into Memphis a few minutes after 8, crossing the mighty Mississippi one more time, and found my way to Graceland. I've never been a huge Elvis fan, but I do enjoy his music and this seemed like one of those things that you just have to see. There were plenty of people there early, and most of them were lining up to buy tickets for the $69 VIP package that allows you to tour everything, airplanes, stables, the works. I chose to just do the mansion tour. They give you headphones and an MP3 like device so you can listen to the audio portion of the tour - saves paying tour guides, I guess - and load you on a shuttle to go across the street to the house and grounds. Elvis bought Graceland for $100,000 when he was only 22 years old and lived there until his death in 1977. He made many upgrades and improvements over the years, including building a racquetball court and fitness center in the back yard - that cost twice as much as the whole house did in 1957! The decor of the house must have been state-of-the-art at the time of its last upgrade in the 70's, but I have to say that the green shag carpet on the ceiling of the"jungle" room was kind of comical (Sorry, Barb!). A very interesting tour, nonetheless. I didn't know Elvis was such a philanthropist - there was a whole display of checks he had written giving donations to a wide variety of organizations.

From Graceland, I went back to the north to Union Avenue and the Peabody Hotel to see the famous "duck march." If you're not familiar with the ducks, there are 5 northern mallards that are trained to ride the elevator down from their rooftop home, at precisely 11am (with the Duckmaster as a chaperone, of course) and walk the red carpet to the fountain in the lobby. They spend all day there until it's time (5pm) to reverse the march and go back to the roof. There were tons of people in the lobby to see the ducks, and a fair number of us who were there sans chindren! The tradition started 76 years ago as a practical joke after too much Jack Daniels, and it was such a hit that the ducks have been there ever since!

Beale Street is just 2 blocks to the south of Union Avenue, so I went there for lunch. The best pulled pork sandwich ever! At BB King's Blues Club! The BBQ sauce was the first thing I looked for in the gift shop. Too bad there was no live blues music, except for the lone trumpeter on the sidewalk. This is a place I would like to revisit when I can stay overnight in Memphis. As I left Memphis, I rode up Riverside Drive along the Mississippi and could see Mud Island and its hanging red cable cars, featured in the John Grisham book and movie, The Firm. Then it was back on the road to Nashville.

I was afraid that I might not get to Nashville in time to see the inside of the Grand Ole Opry House, but fortunately I had some time to spare. I got into the 4:30 backstage tour and learned all about the history of the Grand Ole Opry and its cast members. We saw the dressing rooms and even stood on the stage, which has a large circle front and center, a piece from the old Ryland Theatre which used to house the Opry until the new Opry House was built. I was hoping to see an actual performance there, but they are scheduled for Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, so I missed it. Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krause are there this weekend, and I would have liked to see either one of them. That's another thing to put on the list for next time.

Home is now only 48 hours away! Tomorrow I visit Mammoth Cave and maybe the Maker's Mark distillery before settling in in Charleston, WV.

Day 18 - OK City to Baxter Springs, KS to Joplin, MO to Little Rock, AR

Not much going on on Tuesday other than a lot of riding. I didn't have anything in particular that I really, really wanted to see, other than maybe Branson, MO, but that was too far out of the way and would have added more miles than I was comfortable with for one day, so I just meandered through Tulsa, then exited the Will Rogers Turnpike at Miami, OK, the capital for 6+ native American tribes in the area. From there I followed old Route 66 off and on into Baxter Springs, KS and then into Joplin, MO. Then it was south into Arkansas, through Bentonville, Fayetteville, and then east to North Little Rock. I had originally put Little Rock on my itinerary so I could see the Clinton Presidential Center and the Central High School National Historic Site, where schools were first desegregated after Brown v. Board of Education, but since both of them closed at 5, before I got there, I figured I could use the extra rest. The temperature had climbed back into the 90s and I was pretty tired from riding all day. Called it an early night so I'd be fresh for the early morning ride to Memphis.

Day 17 - Raton, NM to Oklahoma City, OK

I knew I was going to lose an hour's time as soon as I entered Texas and hit Central Time again, so I dragged myself out of bed and onto the road by 6:30am. It was pretty chilly! I guess I've always thought of New Mexico and Texas being all sand and desert, but the elevation in northern New Mexico really makes a difference. There was snow still on the sides of the road in some places! I saw 4 jackrabbits and several more pronghorn before passing into the lone star state around 8:30, no make that 9:30 with the time change.

That seemingly small panhandle of north Texas is deceptively wide - it seemed like I was forever going east across there. I passed north of Amarillo, through Dalhart, Dumas, Borger, Pampa, and Canadian before entering Oklahoma - finally! From there, I rode through Arnett, Vici, and Seiling before turning southeast towards Watonga and Geary. I took the last 35 miles to OK City on the interstate and checked into my hotel around 5:00. Today I learned that there are more trees and fewer livestock in Oklahoma than in Texas, but both states must lead the nation in road-killed skunks!

I made the mistake of laying down on the bed to talk on the phone. A short nap ensued before I went back out to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a tribute the the 168 victims of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. I had expected this to be a very somber visit, but I was truly moved by the memorial and the significance and symbolism of each individual part. There are 2 gates, one at the east entrance and one at the west. The east gate shows the time at 9:01am, the minute right before Timothy McVeigh's bomb exploded, representing the city's innocence prior to the event. The west gate shows the time at 9:03am, the minute immediately after the bombing, representing how life was forever changed by the event. A reflecting pool stands between the gates to soothe the wonds of those whose lives were altered by the explosion. On the south side of the reflecting pool stands a field of 168 empty chairs, one for each victim of the tragedy, inscribed with his or her name, and arranged in 9 rows representing the floor that person worked on or was visiting at the time. Smaller chairs represent the children who died in the attack. On the north side of the reflecting pool stands the survivor tree, an American elm tree that withstood the explosion and now stands tribute to those who survived. Surrounding the survivor tree is the rescuers' orchard, an array of fruit and nut trees representing all of the emergency personnel who responded to the disaster. Next to the museum building is a children's area, lined with ceramic tiles decorated by children all over the world and sent to Oklahoma City as a sign of solidarity with the city as it struggled to come to grips with the tragic events of April 19th fourteen years ago. Finally, outside the west gate, the original fence set up to cordon off the building still stands with thousands of tokens of remembrance left by visitors to the memorial. A very sobering experience, for sure, but definitely well worth a visit if you are ever passing through OK City.

Finally, dinner time! I found my way to Bricktown, surrounding the minor league baseball stadium, and had dinner at Earl's Rib Palace, which was on the Top 10 OK City restaurants I found online. And, bonus - there was a marble slab creamery right next door! Now I'm definitely ready for a good night's sleep so I can make it through Tulsa and into Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas tomorrow!