R_D Posted May 3, 2009 Posted May 3, 2009 We are getting to the end of our journey and will post day 10 in a couple of days. Iron Butt 4810 – Day 7 SD 29 ND 29 FARGO MN 10 94 WEST TO BELFIELD 85 SOUTH TO BELLE FOURCHE 90 SPEARFISH Today we finished South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wyoming. We took advice from other riders and started early, limiting our breaks to 15 to 20 minutes when we stopped for gas. And we managed to knock out 1015 miles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah! RD already had a Saddle Sore award, but this was my first. An Iron Butt Saddle Sore is a 1000 mile ride completed within a 24 hour time period. RD rode from Oklahoma to Needles, California in a little over 17 hours. I’m pretty jacked. Today started out with a huge billboard in South Dakota warning us to watch out for jackrabbits. Great. Another animal to add to the dangerous to people on motorcycles list. What’s with the jackrabbits in South Dakota? Why would they spend money on a large billboard on prime highway land just to advertise rabbits? I’m thinking of the killer rabbit in Monty Pythons “Holy Grail.” While yesterday we seemed to be wearing all the wrong gear, today we had all the right stuff. The weather was sunny and cool. The road was long and straight. We flew. We decided to get to Belle Fourche, Wyoming by taking 85 South and God smiled. It was the most awesome 120 miles of heaven I’ve seen yet. Picture this. Rolling green hills cut out here and there by ravines, gulleys and ponds. In the background are occasional juttings of mountains. Not too many. Just enough sprinkled here and there for effect. Rarely did we see any sign of humanity. No houses, no barns. Even the power lines faded away. But there were animals. I was on deer and moose duty (I think RD is pulling my leg on the moose) and was supposed to alert RD when I saw any. I’m getting pretty good at reading his sign language. A curved “c” hand flicked in a tight circle means, “tell me only about the deer on the side of the road not the ones out in the pasture with their babies!” Sheesh! The only time we were in danger, he was oblivious. A full-grown antelope with big horns was running full speed ahead to cross the road about 30 feet in front of us. I didn’t have time to do anything but wave one arm. The antelope saw us, or heard us, or both. Thankfully he spooked and pivoted, running in the direction he’d come from. RD was zipping his vents closed and missed the whole thing. Should I be worried? Today I saw 2 herds of buffalo. One on the road to Belle Fourche. Like 25 or thirty of them. Just hanging out being buffalo. How cool! I also saw many herds of antelope. Never saw those in the wild before either! Then I saw a very small deer. I couldn’t believe his mother left him all alone. As we passed by he stood up on his haunches and flexed his ears. JACKRABBIT!!! I added killer rabbits to the list right after moose. Iron Butt 4810 - Day 8 WY 90 MT 90 ID 90 WA 90 395 RITZVILLE Tomorrow is my birthday, so RD gave me a present – an early night at the hotel. After I do laundry, double check the day’s receipts and write, I’ve been getting about 4 or 5 hours a night. So tonight is a real treat. In spite of the stop we still added another 880 miles of US of A to the odometer. We started in Wyoming, drove all the way through Montana, hit Idaho and Washington. We are just outside Oregon. RD says we have 8 states and a little over 1800 miles to go in 2 days. It’s going to be close. He’s worried that the roads are not going to be as good as what we’ve been on. He’s done a great job of picking the roads so far. Can we ride about 900 miles a day in the heat for two days? I think so. Can we survive the wildlife…don’t know. Today just as we were leaving Idaho, we came up on a young horse grazing right next to the highway. Loose horse, I thought. So did RD because we slowed down immediately to see if he would move. He was about the size of a yearling colt from the back. When he heard us coming he lifted his head and looked right at us. Bullwinkle! RD swerved right and the moose, he didn’t move an inch. Didn’t even flinch. Just kept standing 3 feet from the highway and chewing like he’d been doing it his whole life. RD turned and looked at me and made his “Did you get the picture sign.” I looked down and sure enough the camera was in my hand, which was frozen into a white knuckled death grip fist. Then it started. My emotional backlash from a close encounter of the wildlife kind. “You were serious? There are real moose here?” He laughed. “I thought you were making fun of me. Was that a baby? Where is the mother?” Rd laughed harder. “Do they have packs or herds or something? Are there any more?” “Oh,” he said, “You better add elk to your list.” Then he took me by a statue of one on our gas/dinner/bathroom break to make sure I didn’t confuse it with a goat or something. Do you realize that in 8 days we have had close encounters with moose, ground hogs, deer, antelope, pheasant and jackrabbits? With added fear of bears, elk and buzzards? If he tells me I have to watch out for cougars tomorrow, I’m ditching him and walking home. If I put all the animals I have to watch out for on one of those yellow hazard signs, it would just be one big black dot. Today I spent the majority of my time shooting pictures of huge mountains in Montana. Mountains with rivers, mountains with snow, mountains with trees and mountains without trees because last years fires killed them all. I even have pictures of what the locals call “Crazy Mountains.” Southern Montana is well endowed in the mountain department. And in the very cool twisty turny road department as well. RD is feeling the pressure and the backache of our mounting miles. He’s more worried about those we haven’t driven than those we have. Whenever he gets worried, he gets real bossy. I’m beginning to realize just how small a motorcycle can be for two people after eight days. Almost as small as the side cases that hold our entire luggage. Somehow this all resulted in RD laying down the law on a few things. It’s never worked in our marriage before, but I always applaud his perseverance. RD rule #53 – Do not fall asleep on The Mistress. If you do and fall off, I’m leaving you. Donna rule #1 – Ignore RD’s rules. Donna rule #2 – Do not sneeze in your helmet. New thing I learned on The Mistress today – how to give RD an Advil from the small bottle in the right hand pocket of my jacket, return bottle to pocket, and zip pocket while going 75 mph on the back of a motorcycle. New thing RD learned today – no one can swallow an Advil without water. Iron Butt 4810 - Day 9 OR 395 CA 395 NV 395 80 Elko Today we covered Oregon, California and most of Nevada for a grand total of 930 miles! So much for getting to bed early. I spent my “birthday present” writing and taking a long hot shower. I just couldn’t settle. Consequently, my internal alarm went off, and we were loaded and on the road long before our wake up call. Good thing too because our route today was tough, tough, tough. We started by getting into some foothills where the road was very curvy and narrow. No guardrails, very little shoulder and steep drop offs. I was definitely on deer, bear, elk, antelope, moose, pheasant, jackrabbit, cougar alert. We went through 2 national forests – Umatilla and Malheur – both of which would have been the kind of roads we would go over twice if given the time. Can deer jump down on top of you from say 20’ above you? Would they? Just wondering. The Oregon BMW club was having a rally and other BMW’s and their riders surrounded us. It was so cool to be around other beemers and see people in the same kind of gear. The bikes were every model, color and year you can imagine. A lot of them had the same “character” as The Mistress. But she still reigns supreme. Since starting this type of riding, I’ve wanted to get a picture of us heading into a curve. I’ve caused us to scrape more metal on asphalt trying to get that one perfect leaning shot than any other acrobatic contortions I’ve come up with. Today I think I got it. “Leaning Trees” will be left to my grand children one day. With all our focus on animals, we were nearly whipped by the road itself today and a herd of salt devils. Towards the end of our ride through Oregon, known by the locals as the Oregon Outback, we started seeing salt flats. We were in high desert. Suddenly we were driving into a herd, and I do mean a herd of dirt devils. Only they were salt. They were on both sides of the road and we couldn’t tell if they were moving or hovering. The terrain changed to desert quick. Sand. No plant life, just sand. And the road changed to construction with gravel. Which went around a huge salt lake. Needless to say, we were relieved to leave Oregon behind. It had cost us precious time. But once we hit Reno and picked up good highway, we hauled and made up for the land of the salt devils. All day long RD has been giving out the thigh hugs. We’d lost our intercom system during the downpours from a few days ago. Today he figured out the problem was a bad cable. I asked him why he fixed it now since we’re almost done with the ride. He said he was lonely. And he’s been chatting ever since. We finished today in Elko, Nevada. Tomorrow is the big day. We have 1000+ miles to finish. RD and I have seen the most amazing country from a viewpoint that few people ever do. And even though we are sore and tired, we are sad to see the adventure end. When we started this run, I expected we would drive from city to city with a little country in between. Amazingly it was just the opposite. About 90% of the trip has been in rural and wilderness areas broken occasionally by a town or city. We’ve seen wildlife. We’ve seen hotels at just the right time. Gas stations just in the knick of time. And weather patterns before they became a problem. And signs. Lord, we have seen signs. The sign to Gettysburg, the sign to Niagra Falls, and the sign to Elizabethtown, the home of the annual “More women named Elizabeth in one place in one day” festival. In fact, I’m thinking of taking pictures of nothing but all the signs decorating our country. To see the pictures from these days please click here.
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