Wow!! What a day! Kickstands up again at 7:30 a.m. However, fate would have us making a few unscheduled stops early on – two for road construction and one for trains. Yes, that’s one stop for two trains. As luck would have it, as soon as the eastbound train cleared the road, a westbound train kept us sitting there for a few more minutes.
We met some friendly folks along the road today, including the trucker from Denver who helped us pass the time at the first road construction stop, and the father and son from New York, who helped us all get in the picture at the Badlands National Park sign. We met two brothers at Mount Rushmore who were traveling via motorcycle from California across the country to visit their other two brothers at different locations in the South.
Riding through the Badlands was truly amazing, as was seeing Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial/Monument. The Crazy Horse Monument is huge, dwarfing any other monument you’ll see in America.
It wasn’t all about seeing the sights today, however, as Ed and Carey entertained themselves for awhile along the flat, straight stretches of Interstate 90 performing several experiments with the differences in get-up-and-go between 92 horses (Road King with a fine-tuned, stock 96 cubic inch motor) and 110 horses (Ultra Classic with a Screamin' Eagle 103 cubic inch motor).
We also had our first, and hopefully only, bit of trouble today. Ed says, however, that there’s no Harley-Davidson that’s going to leave you stranded on the side of the road as long as Limbird is along.
We traveled about 490 miles today, and we stopped counting stops at some point. With the change in time, we had a 13-hour day, not counting checking in to our hotel in Newcastle, Wyoming, or having dinner over at the Old Mill Restaurant.