Chapter 5

Dad is off to get a new headlight at the Honda dealership and the rest of us are doing various things to get ready for the day.

We are going to start our trip today at Fort Osage which is about 15 miles from our hotel here near Independence Kansas outside of Kansas City. Not sure how long we’ll stay there but there is a visitor’s center and a fort complex. I’ll be sure and take pictures.

It’s going to be a hot one for sure. Yesterday it was in the mid-90’s and very hot and it doesn’t appear we’ll be riding out of this weather any time today. Forcasts are for it to cool down across the region and hopefully even more so as we move north up the Columbia river.

Here’s a map for the first part of our journey today. Since I don’t know where we’ll end up tonight I’ll have to do that map later.

*** Time passes ***

We did get to go see Fort Osage. This was the first official U.S. trading post after the expedition was completed. It was constructed and run by William Clark. If the temperature was 70 it might have been fun to spend a little more time there. 🙂

There was the beginnings of a dugout canoe that was interesting. It’s amazing that it would be so involved just to go up or down river. And forget putting the canoe in the water yourself. It probably took 4 grown men to lift a dugout cottonwood tree from the bank to the water.

… and I was very right about the weather yesterday. For most of the day we rode in 97-99 degree weather. It was H-O-T!!! Then, out of the blue, one of the biggest thunderstorms I’ve seen in a while and there was no way around it other than to stop. So we pressed on.

Usually in the rain it’s not hard to ride or to see the road. This was a “tornado watch” area, however, and the wind was so strong I had to lean the bike into the wind to stay on the road. And we were not going that fast either, maybe 45 mph. I could see in the rear view mirror everyone slowing and flasher’s blinking and soon there was talk on the radio to slow down and get off the road.

I’m a “press on” kind of guy and tried to convince the rest of the group to get on to the hotel, even in the driving rain. Why I wanted to press on was because we were only 2.5 miles from the exit! But there was a rest stop and I was conviniced to get off and wait a while.

Anyway, after about 5 minutes I convinced everyone to get back on the road and get on to the hotel which we did and got there in just a few minutes, still under the heavy rain. But at least we were stopped.

So we get our room, take a shower and head out to eat. At this exit there was a “Family Restaurant” within walking distance which is where we decided to go. The food was pretty good and the price was definitely right at $11 for a hot meal.

We did not attend the Corps of Discovery festival to re-enact the first meeting of Lewis and Clark and Native Americans in the early 1800’s. Sometime in the morning there was a order to go a different route so we blasted on past this event.

Of significance was how straight and flat the roads are in Kansas and Nebraska and just how little traffic there is on most of the roads out here. There should be very little traffic as we move on through South and North Dakota and then on into Montana.

🙂  🙂

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— Main.JohnWesterman – Published 03 Aug 2004