Day Two - Missouri

We got up in time to have breakfast at the Fairfield Inn. It was a bare bones kind of breakfast...toast, bagles, donuts, individual boxes of cereal, packets of instant oatmeal. I was almost just going to skip it when I noticed that they had a big bowl of hard boiled eggs!! Sounded good to me. After enjoying a few, the guys suggested that I be the third in line on the road today. I don't have any idea what brought that on!!

As we were preparing to leave, we found out that someone had robbed the front desk just before we took all of our stuff out to pack the motorcycles! The security tape shows a guy reaching over the counter to grab money from the clerk as she was closing out her shift. The next shot on the surveillance is Mark and me walking down the hall toward the front desk with our stuff!! We moved our bikes out front to load them and a State Trooper pulled up behind us to investigate the robbery. It was too good to be true to have all three motorcycles in front of a police car so we took the opportunity for a photo shoot!!

Hopefully, this is the only time that we will see this!

Looks like Mark has been a bad boy!

We showed the photos to the Trooper when he came back outside and he thought that they were funny. He used to have a Harley Fat Boy and wants to buy an Ultra Classic like ours. He said he wished that he could be going to Sturgis too. We suggested a police escort for us in order to save time on the road.....no dice. He was a really nice guy and we enjoyed talking with him.

After heading west on Interstate 64 and passing Louisville, KY, we began crossing the lower portion of Illinois. Corn, corn, corn, soybeans, soybeans, corn, corn. A little slow on the scenery. We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Illinois because, quite frankly, we had waited too long to get gas and were concerned about running out. The only thing that they had was 85 and 87 octane! I am thinking, "all that corn and this is the best you can do?". My bike takes 93 octane! Didn't have a choice....gassed up and the engine pinged more than a geiger counter in Iran for the next 160 miles.

This was my view for most of the day. Notice in the left hand lower corner that the air temperature gauge is almost pegged at 120 degrees. It was HOT on the bikes today.

We were all excited about getting to St. Louis, crossing the Mississippi River, and seeing the Gateway Arch. Around 1:30 pm we got our first look at the arch, but the traffic was so heavy that it was not safe to take a picture while moving or to stop and try and get one in traffic. We just headed to the waterfront to see it in person. When we got there it was a real disappointment! Except for a small area around the arch itself, the area was a slum. There were gambling boats all over the river, broken beer bottles on the road, burned out and abandoned buildings, and people hanging around that you would rather not meet. There was a sign at a parking garage warning that if you don't hide your valueables from plain sight in your car, that they probably wouldn't be there when you got back!!! We had no intention of getting any further than 3 feet away from our motorcycles!

What we decided to do was just run up on the sidewalk by the security barriers, take a few pictures, and then haul freight before someone saw us and we all got tickets.

That is Mark and me in the front and the arch in back.

Where was security? Look at this park Job!

Needless to say, we were anxious to have another view of the arch (in our rear view mirrors) just as soon as possible. We headed west on Interstate 70 and for about the next 7 miles, the locals played a game of "one..two..three..EVERYBODY CHANGE LANES!!" As soon as we got out of town, we stopped and had a late lunch at a Lone Star restaurant.

The stop at Lone Star turned out to be helpful not only to keep from losing too much weight on this trip, but the waitress is a Harley enthusiast and gave us some tips about where to stay for the evening. Basically, she said that if you try and stop west of Columbia, but east of Kansas City, that we would probably be sleeping in a corn field! We have had confirmed local temperatures today of between 96 degrees and 101 degrees. I had no intention of not spending the night in a decent motel. After eating we decided to continue on to Columbia and call it a day.

We found a Marriott Residence Inn (very nice...can't splurge like this a lot!), took a swim in the pool, got a bite to eat, and then found out that there was some severe weather at our next destination in Grand Island, Nebraska. It seems that they are having severe thunderstorms, hail, and whatever other horrors pass for bad weather out here. After looking at the weather channel and reviewing out route and maps, we decided to get a very early start tomorrow, probably 0500, and try to get there after the severe weather and before the normal follow-up scattered thunderstorms arrive.

Did 445 miles today in a total of about 8 hours on the road. Tomorrow should be interesting....stay tuned!