the long drive home

Friday morning we were all up and packing things for our trip home. We said our goodbyes to Mike and Les who we were blessed to meet here at Custer's Gulch. Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime. Safe travels guys.

We slowly made our way through Custer, Hill City and finally Rapid City where we hopped on I-90 and headed east.

We couldn't believe the amount of motorcycle traffic coming at us. There was a steady line of motorcycles, vehicles hauling motorcycles and toy hauler campers that obviously held motorcycles, all heading towards the big rally in Sturgis.

Mike and Les will have a lot of company this week :-).

As we were leaving the campground I heard air leaking in the dash of the Freightliner. There are two air pressure gauges on the dash and both were showing normal and everything else was working normally so it was more of a loud "hissing" annoyance than anything else.

South Dakota is a pretty long state and took most of the day before we reached the Minnesota state line.

Rudee had the laptop fired up and had found a campground, Adrian Municipal Campground in Adrian Minnesota. She called and they had room for all three of us and it was only $22 for full hook ups.

We arrived to find the campground was part of the city park. The camphost was very nice and when she saw our rigs she decided to take me to the sites in her golf cart to make sure they would work for us. The sites looked fine and we quickly got parked. There was a steak house just outside the entrance to the park so we all decided to walk there.

After dinner we all agreed to be up and ready for the road at 7 am and then we all turned in.

Rudee and I watched a movie that lasted a little longer than we would have liked and didn't get to bed until after 11:00 That would have been fine except for the large, loud, scary thunderstorm that rolled through around 2:00 am and woke us up. :-(

Saturday morning we were all up and headed out right at 7:00 am. We had about 650 miles to cover to get home and it was going to be a long day driving.

Rudee made us an egg, bacon and cheese muffin for breakfast as well as packing us some snacks to eat on the road.

The air leak was still going strong and was getting louder. I did find where it was leaking from on one of our stops but couldn't get it fixed. I finally stuffed a towel around it to quiet it down some but I still had to turn the volume of the radio and CB almost to maximum in order to hear them.
The drive was pretty monotonous and boring. Once I get the big circus train up to speed it's just a matter of setting the cruise control and hanging onto the steering wheel.

We made pretty decent time until I took the wrong exit in Waterloo Iowa. I was looking for US 18 and ended up on US 18 Business which took us through the business district with all of it's stop and go lights.

We all made it through my little detour just fine and were soon back on the "big road". Heck fire, I always wanted to see what Waterloo looked like. :-).

Ron and Terri decided to take an extra break for lunch. We were wanting to get home before dark so we decided to forgo lunch and just keep hitting the snacks Rudee had made. Niles and Deb followed Ron and Terri into the rest park and we all said our goodbyes over the CB.

Rudee and I continued on alone and were in and out of rain for the next 100 miles. We finally broke into blue skies and were in the clear for the rest of the way home.

We made it home at 7:15 and pulled back into our site here at the KOA and did a quick set up. We were both hungry so we hopped into the Dakota and had a late supper at Applebee's.

Back at the 5er we unloaded the bike as the sun was setting and then just called it a night, we were both dead tired.

We spent 2 weeks in the Black Hills and had a great time sightseeing, riding our bike, and spending time with good friends (both old and new). We drove 2150 miles traveling back and forth and the truck and 5er both did great (except for that @#$& air leak!!).

Monday morning we are both back to the 8-5 world and are pretty bummed about it. Post vacation depression I guess (or maybe just the fact I really can't stand my job anymore).

Our goal this week is just to get settled back in and get back into the swing of things. I'll keep you posted.