Chapter 4

Wow, what a day!

I was so excited to get going I could hardly sleep. After a sleepless night and waking up for real numerous times I finally got up at 6:45 and took a shower, packed and worked my way out the door.

It wasn’t long out of town before we were on Missouri highway 100 and the Lewis and Clark trail. The first part of the ride was in cloud cover and light rain that turned into steady rain until lunch time. We stopped in all kind of neat places where Tuffy and Spangle could get out and take a peek around. In this particular instance they were taking in the scenery around the first place where we could see the Missouri river on our trek from St. Louis.

In that same town the train came rolling through while we looked at a few of the local landmarks. I wish I could remember the town but the significance is we thought it was a previous residence of Daniel Boone. Turns out we don’t think Daniel was any where near this place! 🙂 What can a bunch of guys do on a motorcycle? Certainly not read a book trying to figure out the local landmarks.

We ate lunch at the Hermannhof Winery in Hermann, Missouri. It is a very small town and we were their first customers at 11:30 in the morning. The rain was light as we arrived and continued as we ate lunch.

We mounted our iron ponies in the rain and started on our way back upstream towards Kansas City, Missouri around 12:30. There was great debate on where we should go on our way to Fort Osage, Missouri.

It started out innocently enough as we followed my GPS on our way to Columbia, Missouri. I took a wrong turn on Missouri highway T and missed the turn to FF. Yea, big mistake. We ended up on interstate 70 for about 30 very tense miles as we went past Columbia and on to SR 41 to Arrow Rock. Well, it was sort of that simple.

I was lead biker and I heard someone over the radio say they wanted to stop at the rest stop … that I had just passed. So, at 85mph I motor on to our scheduled exit and stop at the nearest place I could get a Diet Coke. I guess it didn’t matter that it was an XXX adult store stop. Even though I didn’t go in I got to see a lot of interesting people while I waited for the old guys to come find me.

They did find me and asked me why I waited where I did. Even though it was now 90 degrees and I’m tring to find shade.

The rest of the day it was very hot if we stopped. We all have our riding gear on in case a sray minion decided to send one of us launching. So it’s hot. Really hot. there is not a cloud in the sky which is opposite to the way we started in the morning. In fact, the last 2 weeks of riding for me have been in pouring rain at times.

Any way, I digress. We make it to Arrow Rock and there are some very friendly people there, and a cat. The post master and a girl running the ice cream shop and a stray cat, to be exact. Richard strikes up a conversation with the Post Master of Arrow Rock. Ironically, they kept talking to us as if we were a part of the passing scenery.

We all have milk shakes that they had to send out for milk to complete the order. We all agreed that the milk shakes were the best we’d had for the day.

It was an interesting little town. It appeared to us that there was a lot going on for such a small place. Being a historical place there was the transient feeling to the place that you might expect. There was also a perminance that you won’t find any any other place except a cultural attraction like this place seemed to be. They had a theater with all the major names for plays that you would expect in NYC.

We didn’t stick around long enough to figure all that out though. We were off again … hell bent on Fort Osage. None of us knew exactly where that was, though, and the day was getting longer and hotter as we rode.

We did finally find Fort Osage but by the time we go there at 5:30 it was closed. So we are off to there tomorrow morning first thing before we start our trip north west, then due north again.

My estimates are that we are exactly 1/2 of the way across the USA. The next few days we will spend going mostly north to the northern clines of he USA. We’ll pass through Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. We don’t know yet all we’ll see while along the Missouri river in those states. Sturges was mentioned at dinner as was Mount Rushmore. I have now less that 20 days to do it all so we may be limited in time to do all this.

We are currently in Blue Springs, Missouri. Celestial reading: N39º 1.728′ W94º 16.501′ for those of you with sextants. It’s nice to see the western longitudes increasing now into the 90’s and tomorrow the parallels will increase beyond the 40th. Tomorrow expect us beyond the 40th parallel north.

Tomorrow it is our plan to attend a “Corps of Discovery festival” to re-enact the first meeting of Lewis and Clark and Native Americans in the early 1800’s. Dad really wants to see the replica of the keel boat so we are hell-bent on getting to the festival area before they leave there.

This is the extent to our advanced planning on the trip. Hence forth it’s winging it from stop to stop. So far we’ve had no trouble getting what we need. And thanks to GPS I think we’ll have as much information as we need along the way.

It was a busy and fun day. I look forward to tomorrow.

🙂

Home
Previous chapter
Next chapter

— Main.JohnWesterman – Published 31 Jul 2004