River Road Ride

[Itchy]

Welp... never done any kinda ride report on here before, or anywhere else for that matter, so cut me some slack. I'll also apologize in advance for not gettin a whole lotta scenery pics, but like I said, I'm learnin. Anyways... enough of that.

 

Weekend before last we did our first river run of the year. Temps were in the 50's in the morning, reaching mid 60's in the afternoon. Probably mid 40's headin home that night. Pretty damn cold. Great group of friends though and we saw some sights, had some bites and stayed out of fights.

 

My day started here, at the Bethany Cafe. Formerly the Marrowbone Inn. :

 

 

Darryl and Danny decided to join me for breakfast beforehand :

 

 

I decided to have a light breakfast, as you can see.

 

 

Mikey showed up just as we were finishing up breakfast and Amanda was throwing on her leathers. Looks like its time to head out and meet the others enroute.

 

 

We set out on a brisk pace to rendezvous with our comrades, who were awaiting us at the Rosebud in Pana, Illinois. Unfortunately we were only a couple miles outside Bethany when catastrophe struck. Danny's saddlebag mounts that he designed and fabricated himself for his V-Rod, suffered the motorcycle equivalent of a wardrobe malfunction. Sadly, his calculations hadn't accounted for the weight of his passenger Amanda. So... while Mikey and Darryl forged ahead to alert the others of our plight, Danny, Amanda and I returned to her place and removed the offending bags.

 

We then set a new " even brisker " pace, to meet with the others. We received a hearty welcome at the Rosebud.

 

 

After a brief fuel pit in Litchfield, we headed on to Alton. After this long and grueling ride of ohhh... 45 miles or so between Litchfield and Alton, I realized that we were in danger of dehydration.

 

Cold beverages were in order, so we made a pit-stop at Fast Eddies in Alton.

 

 

Fast Eddies is a great place. Big greasy 99 cent cheeseburgers, Kabobs, wings, frosty cold beverages and all the shrimp you can stand to peel and eat. Shrimp are like 20 cents apiece, if I recall correctly and are biguns too.

Some damn hot waitresses there too.

 

The place is usually packed. Mikey and Pierre enjoyed themselves. Right before I took this pic, Pierre was saying " 5 more Jack and Cokes and I'll be good to go !! Yeeehaaaww !! "

 

 

After prying Mikey and Darryl off of that good looking blonde with the big poofy 80's hairdo, we headed off down the river road towards Grafton. We waved at the giant Piasa bird ( sorry, no photo's this time ). Someone told me once that the Piasa bird was some sorta mythical creature to the Native Americans in that area and that the first explorers in the area found it painted on the bluffs, much like today. Dont know about that, but I like that story so I'm stickin with it.

 

When we hit Grafton it was time for a late lunch, so we stopped at the Fin Inn.

 

 

The Fin Inn is a unique little restaurant with huge aquariums filled with huge fish. No.. I didn't get to pick out the one that I wanted to eat. I did however get an excellent whitefish dinner, in good company.

 

After a good lunch we headed on up the river past Pere Marquette and to the bridge at Hardin. ( Another missed photo op ). Parts of this road I did very quickly , allowing me to stop, take off the gear and grab the camera to get some rollin photo's. Here's a few :

 

 

After crossing the bridge at Hardin, we turned back South and hugged the other side of the river all the way to the Brussels ferry. Seems like every time I've ever crossed here, there are a ton of bikes on board.

 

 

Ok... now hold on a second there little buckaroo. I need ya to back up and take a closer look at that second pic. Look just to the left of that shiny V-Rod. See that girl with the gorgeous head of long brown hair. She hopped out of a car at the back of the ferry and slowly strolled down the lines of bikes checkin em all out.

 

Naturally... when she got to my bike, she stopped for a long appreciative look and gave me a BIG smile. Shwing.

I think this girl may have had the finest tush, I've ever been priveleged to witness.

 

Yeah, I know... all you ladies are saying " what a pig ". Well the only thing I have to say to that is, " Oink, Oink "

 

Ok, back to the ride. As you can imagine, after all those winding river roads, bridges and ferry rides, everyone was parched. Borderline deyhdration forced us to seek out cold beverages at the Wild goose saloon.

 

 

Once again, right before I took that last pic Pierre was sayin " just 5 more Jack and Cokes and I'll be ready to roll !! "

 

I reckon that just about wraps up our little river ride with the exception of me showing everyone that I was King of the Ping-Pong table at a little bar in Gillespie.

 

 

As usual on any ride, I usually forget to mention something really cool until someone reminds me about it. I'm sure this one will be no different. The camera thing is new to me too. I've always taken shitloads of pics, but they were always crappy quality and I finally quit trying to take scenery pics.

 

Now that I've finally sprung for a good digital camera, I'm hoping to change my habits on that. Hopefully these pics will post well.

 

Adios,

Itchy.

[dhb]

Nice job, Itchy. We don't seem to get enough ride tales from your part of the country. The pix were nice too. I don't think I'd ever been able to leave that breakfast, though.

Take Care,

Dave

[Spat]

Right on Itchy, the Great River Road rocks, lot of memories of Alton, Grafton and those fish joints. So they are still keeping the Piasa bird painted up, that's cool to see on that bluff wall. Some good riding up through that area.

You did a good job here.

[Francois_Dumas]

Great report, thanks for the pictures, nice to see so many different parts of the US.

 

Bit 'alien' though to 'us here' seeing folks riding without a helmet

[Bud]

Just looking at the pics and not reading and then "Fast Eddies"!

 

Well, that's in my neck of the woods.

 

The next time you are headed south give me a shout. Come on down and we will go for a ride in the Shawnee. Lots of good roads, winerys and food.

[itchybro]

Dude, we need to hang out just to confuse people!!