The Science Wing

This is the final posting for the Summer 08 Trip to Alaska.

We made it home today after 41 days on the road.  We began our trip on June 19, 2008 and arrived home on July 29, 2008.  We saw a lot of wonderful sights and experienced quite an adventure.  We met a lot of really interesting people during our travels who have joined the blog and been in e-mail contact with us.

We would like to thank all of you who made the trip with us.  Each day we thought of you, what sights you might like to have pictures of, and what information you might find interesting.  We hope we met that end.  Thank you for your comments and e-mails.  They kept reminding us that you were riding along with us.

We will be making a video of the adventure that will be available to anyone who wants it.  Just let us know.  We will also be available to talk to groups about the adventure.  Just let us know about that and we can make some arrangements.

The pictures posted today are a selection from multiple days during the adventure.  There isn’t space enough to post everything that we would like to, but here is a sampling.

Tonight we are in beautiful downtown Muscle Shoals, Alabama after an extremely hot day on the road in the afternoon.

This morning we rode through the Ozark Mountains on some very twisty roads.  An unusual aspect of the road was it felt like a rollercoaster because the hills were short and close together.  I thought that I was going to “get air” a couple of times.

We don’t have any pictures for today but plan to do a retrospective of some better pictures tomorrow night for our final entry.Tomorrow we are planning to arrive hom

Today we rode nearly 500 miles and landed in Jefferson City, Missouri which was not our original intent.  We intended to end up somewhere around Hannibal, MO but the road to Hannibal was flooded due to recent rains.  There is still a lot of water along the side of Hwy 36 on which we travelled.

There wasn’t much to see except corn and soy bean crops.  We don’t have any new pictures for today.  Sorry.

Tomorrow we will continue the ride home.

Why in the world would Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” want to go back to Kansas?  (No offense, Kelly).  In fact, why would anyone want to go to eastern Colorado?  We have been greeted by some of the most offensive odors at the cattle feed lots.  We wish we could bottle them so that you would not have to take our word for it.  We understand from a couple (Cliff and Patty) that we met yesterday, that what we encountered was not as bad as southwestern Kansas.  Our nose hairs are still burning.

The terrain was not very exciting as the roads are flat and straight.  We did see some corn and other crops in addition to lots and lots of cattle.  Did we mention that we could smell them too?  Phil got a great picture of a crop duster from his bike.

And what about those storms?  Today the trike surpassed 100,000 miles.  We were trying to get to the exact point where the odometer turned from 99,999 to 100,000 but we had to pull off the road at 99,997 because of a severe thunderstorm that produced baseball sized hail, 60 mph winds, deadly lightening, and heavy rain.  So, we waited it out at 99,997 until the storm moved south east of our position.  We did a video interview and waited some more.  We took time to call home, but the signal was weak.  There is a picture of what I had to do to get a signal. The built-in weather band on the motorcycles was very helpful.  We rode to the 100,000 mile mark, took a few pictures and rode on to Phillipsburg, KS at a slow pace to make sure that we stayed behind the storm.  It worked and we are staying the night in Phillipsburg.  Cliff and Patty are staying at the same motel, so we took their picture.

Tomorrow, we are still heading east.

We left Steamboat Springs, CO this morning after breakfast with some interesting riders from Oklahoma.  We rode on roads with beautiful scenery until we reached the Rocky Mountain National Park.  I can’t remember if I have mentioned it before or not, but we do not have to pay to get into a national park or national monument.  We just show our senior pass (age 62 and above) which cost $10 and expires when we do.  This is a big savings.

Once in the park we rode among some of the most beautiful mountains that we have seen.  We stopped frequently to take pictures.  We spotted and photographed elk, marmots, some mouse-like rodent, ducks, and other birds.  Some of the pictures came out quite nice as you can see.

The mountains are behind us as we are in Greeley, CO which is located in the plains of eastern Colorado.  Tomorrow we will continue our trek east.