Day 7: Welcome Home

Spencer, IA to Milwaukee, WI: 3 states, 457 miles, 11 hours on the road, 10 in the saddle.

We made it! After 2600+ miles in the saddle, rain, wind, scary mountain passes, unplanned detours, and all the other great stuff, WE MADE IT! All safely too I must add (thank you angels). Only one small issue with one of the bikes today, which considering there were up to 13 of us at times, that's pretty good.

Today's ride was another adventure. Over 200 miles of rain. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Pretty much the whole time in Minnesota it rained. Thank goodness the roads are pretty straight. We were all absolutely soaked, but we pushed on as nothing was going to stop us from what we'd traveled over 2500 miles for.

The rain stopped just before we reached Milwaukee. For a moment we thought that was going to be the best thing that would happen today but we soon learned different. About 30 miles west of Milwaukee we started seeing folks standing at the over passes waving at all the bikes as they passed under. It was pretty cool. Some even had signs hanging down for all the bikers to read. And I was one of the bikers! How cool is that! I did it!

Paul happened to notice that the on and off ramps to the freeway were blocked by the local police and clued in that the parade was just a few minutes behind us. So, our group made a beeline for one of the off ramps and waited for the parade to come by. It was awesome! I couldn't even guess how many bikes went by but it had to be well over 500. Unbelievable! Paul then led the group into joining the parade. Things got a bit chaotic from there as people got separated, the heat was getting over whelming, and bikes and cars were weaving all about. But in the end we all made it to our hotels safely . Another great day of riding, regardless of the miserable rain.

Seven of us are at the same hotel and hooked up for dinner. Kerrie, Troy, and Tiffany rode over and joined us. We found a really cool Italian restaurant just around the corner of the hotel. The hostess asked us if we wanted to eat at the kitchen table and we took up the offer. It was such a blast. We actually ate at a table in the kitchen. Every time a server would walk out to deliver a plate, they'd announce the item and present it to us to look it over. Don pretty much wanted everything that went by. The chef even came over several times to chat with us. It really was a lot of fun.

Tomorrow will be a day of festivities and I'm looking forward to it. We do need to get our bikes in for oil changes and will do that first thing. One of the Harley stores is open 24hrs. Neat!