Rick i would love to find out the route you took. We were wanting to go that way leaving from atlanta to sturgis this year. How long did it take ? thanks Rick L.
Rick L,
Here's a link to the
map of our route from Nashville to Sturgis. The stops are included. We spent one night in each stop except Minneapolis. We were there two nights. We left on 25-Jul-2008 and arrived in Keystone, SD, on 1-Aug-2008. So, it took us 8 days to get from Nashville to Sturgis and it was 2,443 miles.
We had bad weather the first morning out. Rode in some hellacious rain from Nashville to Bowling Green, KY. On the second day, the scenery up the coast of Lake Michigan was beautiful! The Mighty Mac was quite an experience. The ride around Lake Superior on the third and fourth days was beautiful. We saw a young moose and an adolescent black bear along the road between Sault-Ste. Marie and Duluth. We stopped in a little town called Marathon almost at the northern-most point of Lake Superior. Nice little Canadian town with some beautiful scenery. Good pizza at the local pizza joint, but they don't deliver to the TraveLodge on the highway.
Spent out 5th and 6th days in Minnesota hangng out with friends of one of our group. Took the girls to the Mall of America. That was expensive and tiring, but cool. If nothing else, seeing the free-standing lego store in the mall was awesome!
The 7th day, we started out avoiding some really bad weather just southwest of Minneapolis, hiding out in a Famer's Co-op for an hour or more. Afterwards, we had a beautiful ride through southwestern Minnesota, across the northwest corner of Iowa and then into southeastern South Dakota. On the 8th day, we left just before sunrise and rode through some beautiful farm country and then beautiful hills after the Missouri River. At midday, we rode through the Badlands (beautiful!) and then stopped for lunch at Wall Drug.
Wall Drug is where you see all the trailer queens parking their cages with attached trailers and then rolling the bike off the trailer to ride the last 100 miles into Sturgis so they can say they rode to Sturgis. Most of them have someone follow them into Sturgis with the support vehicle and trailer. Others actually pay to park the cage in Wall while they travel to Sturgis. Too funny!
The ride from Wall into Keystone was super slab and major highways. Keystone is right at the foot of Mount Rushmore and is the gateway to Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Iron Mountain Road, and some of the most beautiful country in the area.
We made a day-trip out to Devil's Tower in Wyoming that was just awesome. That was a 300 mile day-trip. We rode a total of about 700-800 miles in the region while we were at the Rally.
On the return trip, we fast-tracked back on the super slab through KC and StL. The second day, we rode 775 miles from just before sunrise east of Sioux Falls on the Missouri River until after sunset east of St. Louis in Illinois. That's the longest day we've ever ridden and it was suprisingly less difficult than I had anticipated.
I know, I know... everybody here has done multiple Iron Butts and 775 in a single day is no biggie...
Well, hey, it was a big deal for us. Before this trip, our longest day was about 400 miles. We did 560 the first day out from Nashville to Muskegon and then 775 the day before we got home. These were big milestones for us.
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Topic: Mighty Mac (Read 3737 times)