A tin cup or a gilded goblet, a hut or a castle, wobbly bicycles or a Bentley -- to wherever and by whatever means, my love, our journey is splendid, our cup is full.
After leaving our friends and the beautiful fall colors in Wausau, WI, we headed south through Wisconsin and Illinois in the general direction of St. Louis. We're taking our time and trying to limit our daily mileage to less than 250 miles, and alternating our stays between Wal Marts and campgrounds. We've not traveled through this part of the country, so we're trying to go a bit slower and smell a few of the roses.
We'd skirted the St. Louis area before on the west side, but had never stopped to see any sights. This time we took the time to go into the city and tour the Gateway Arch and the associated museum. We stayed at a park on the Illinois side of the river which was about 40 miles out of town, and took a day to drive in and wander around a little. Here are some pictures of our visit on a beautiful fall day --
A couple of shots of the arch as we approached it
These are the little pods that you ride in -- with a supposed capacity of 5 people (but they all better be pretty small or very friendly people). You crowd into these things for 4 1/2 minutes while the train of them crawl up the inside framework of the arch. An interesting way (and probably the only one) to get to the top.
Some of the views of the St. Louis area from the viewing area at the top of the arch -- 630 feet up:
The mighty Mississippi
Looking straight down from the window
Busch Stadium - home of the St. Louis Cardinals
Downtown St. Louis looking West
They also had a great museum at the site and two theaters which showed several outstanding documentary films -- one about Louis and Clark and the other about the building of the arch. We'd recommend the whole park -- its called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and is run by the NPS.
We'd wanted to take a bit more time, but there were a couple of weather fronts chasing us, and we'd decided to take another more easterly route, which would allow us to stop for a few days and visit Mammoth Cave in Kentucky before heading to Alabama. We got ahead of the front, spent a leisurely night at a Wal Mart in Owensboro, KY and then rolled into Cave City on Wednesday. We'd located a park (map) with very attractive rates -- and highly rated -- that was just outside Mammoth Cave, and would allow us to stay several days and explore the area. We had a great 4 1/2 hour tour of the cave yesterday, and although it rained a bit last night, the sun is back out this morning and we're getting ready to get out and explore the Bowling Green, KY area today -- the Corvette Museum looks like it might be interesting.
We're only a couple of hundred miles from Red Bay, so we'll head out of here on Sunday and get to the Tiffin factory a day or two ahead of time and see if we can get things started early there. We're having a couple of custom items done to the coach (new shift panel and a bedroom ceiling fan), along with some holdover warranty items and the 2 year engine/chassis service -- all at three different places -- so we'll probably be there for at least 10 days.
I know its been a long time since we've settled down and updated this site, and we apologize. It took a week or so to recover from the crush of the Sturgis Rally, then beautiful fall weather settled in and the park was very busy over Labor Day weekend (and it impacted us even more since a number of the seasonal staff had left) and we were running everywhere. We were decompressing from that and realized that we had only a little time left in the Black Hills, so our days off were spent hitting the sights that we had not managed to see. At the same time, we got wrapped up with getting things ready to hit the road (which can be a bit of a task if you've been sitting for 3-4 months).
In any event, we've left the Black Hills and are on the road again, on our way to Red Bay, Alabama (where our Tiffin motorhome was built) to get some service done, and some warranty items taken care of. But, before we get into that, here are a couple of the highlights of the last month at Custer State Park ------
My brother Tom and his girlfriend Trish came up from Boulder, CO in late August to spend a few days in the Black Hills. We had a great time with them showing them the area and visiting some of the attractions that we had not seen yet.
Tom and Trish visiting us at one of the entry gates
Clowning 
around at the fish hatchery in Spearfish
Mandy snapped this one while we were looking at a classic fish boat from Yellowstone which is on display at the Spearfish hatchery
We also took the opportunity to go to the Wild Horse Sanctuary south of the Black Hills with Al and Claire on one of our last days off, and had a great time taking the tour and seeing the wild horses that are being taken care of on this 14,000 acre ranch.
Looking down from a ridge above the Wild Horse ranch along the Cheyenne River
Some of the wild horses that are being cared for here . . . 
About the same time, Mandy had her 62nd birthday, and of course you know that means her eligibility for the NPS Senior Pass. Here she is proudly getting her "old folks card" at the local Forest Service Office in Rapid City.
Our seasonal tour of duty was over at Custer State Park as of the 16th, and so the rest of our time during the early part of September was spent taking care of all of the things we needed to do to get checked out and to get the motorhome (and us) ready for some time on the road. We left Custer and headed east on I-90 on Saturday the 19th with no real schedule other than our appointment in Red Bay starting on October 7.
We spent our first night in Mitchell, SD at the Cabela's store, and then went downtown and toured the famous Corn Palace before we left. They were having a weekend Polka Festival, and, since it was Sunday, we happened upon an interesting midwest phenomenon -- a Polka Mass. Not one of our bucket list items, but it was unique . . . . .
After looking at the maps as we approached Sioux Falls, we decided to head further east than we'd anticipated, and visit Wisconsin -- we wanted to spend some time with a number of our friends from Yuma who are from the area, and are there for the summer. We arrived in Wausau, WI on late Monday and have had a great time being tourists, and cycling and visiting with our good friends Mark and Faye, Carl and Judy, and Tom and Carol -- as well as enjoying the outstanding Fall colors which are showing themselves all over the place. We hiked up Rib Mountain, just west of Wausau, and Thursday dug out our bikes and did a great 40 mile "colorama ride" (as Mark puts it), seeing a lot of the area around Wausau and enjoying the wonderful fall weather and colors.
Visiting the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota along the way
The "North Yuma Group" of the Yuma Foothills Bicycling Club enjoying a ride and the beautiful fall colors -- Tom, Judy, Pat, Carl, Mandy, Mark, and Greg -- (Faye took the picture)
Greg and Mark comparing their Merrills before the hike -- identical except for size (8 vs. 15) . . .
The North Yuma group upheld the tradition -- no bike ride is complete without a stop at a garage sale, a bit(?) of lunch, and an ice cream treat -- we had all three, in addition to our beautiful fall day in Wausau!!
As it looks right now, depending on the weather, we'll probably stay here until Saturday or Sunday (we're parked at the Marathon County park right in Wausau), and then began wandering south toward Alabama. They have had a great fall up here, but it won't be long before the rains come and the temperatures begin to fall -- and we want to be out of here before that. Fortunately, we'll get to take our time heading south as we still have a week and a half before our service appointment, and only about 800 miles to cover. As of now we're thinking of spending a couple of days in the St. Louis area, and then following a non-freeway route through Tennessee to Red Bay -- we'll update our progress in a week or so.
Update: We left Wausau on today (Saturday), as the weather was beginning to close in. We're now parked at a Wal Mart in La Salle, IL (with excellent broadband internet reception) and looking at a forecast for good weather through the rest of the week. We'll get down toward St. Louis tomorrow and then play tourist for a couple of days there.
Well, we've both managed to survive the 2009 Sturgis Rally, but it will probably take a few more days for our hearing to completely return to normal. We haven't heard any published attendance figures yet, but the thumbnail estimates are in the area of 400 to 500,000 bikers in the Sturgis area, with somewhere in the area of 50 to 60,000 of them coming south 50 miles to visit us at Custer State Park.
Or you can figure it from this perspective: Mandy and I, from 7/30 to 8/9, sold (and attached) just short of 4400 bike bands to motorcycles coming into the park. There are about 25 entrance gate attendants -- so if each of them averaged the same sales as us, the attendance would be about 55,000 -- that's a bunch of bikes.
We got to work 12 days with only one day off, and most of those days were 9 hour shifts, so we'll have a bit of overtime pay coming our way -- but overall it really wasn't worth it. Yes, the rally is an experience not to be missed, but Harley after Harley after Harley, all with loud and louder exhaust pipes, gets pretty old after a couple of days. Fortunately, the bikers were, for the most part, more fun and polite than a lot of our customers, but the workload and noise from working the entrance gates for that length of time was just overload -- at least that's our take on the event from our corner of the world.
As you might imagine, there were a number of pretty nasty wrecks on the twisty roads in the park, but no fatalities. In fact, we've heard that over the whole Black Hills area there was only one motorcycle fatality during the rally -- which is pretty amazing, given that probably 90 percent of the riders that we saw were not wearing helmets.
We were also surprised to see so many wearing virtually no protective clothing -- basically screaming along the highway in doo-rags, t-shirts, tank tops, and flip-flops (and leather vests). I guess we've got a lot to learn about the Harley "live to ride" mystique, but we're pretty certain that its not what we're after.
The rally was a very positive event for us in one big respect -- during our one day off during the rally we did get a chance to have a great visit with Greg's cousins Mark and Rick, along with Mark's wife Brenda and Rick's companion Ann. They were all down for the rally from Bozeman, and were having a great time. We'd not seen them for at least 3 years, so it was good to catch up with them and get re-acquainted.
Overall, we really didn't have a lot of time to take pictures -- and the ones that we did manage to get really do not relay the feel of the crush of noise and people that we experienced -- but, for what its worth, here is our 09 Rally collection:
(We actually took this one when we went to Sturgis in June -- things were pretty quiet then . . . . . . )
this was the scene at Sylvan Gate on one of our busy days
the crowd at Sylvan Lake for the Buffalo Burger cook-out
Scenes from the Park's West Entrance Gate on a normal rally day
Doing the accounting of the bike bands and the money with our revenue supervisor, Lou
And, finally, our favorite -- this guy has been bringing his mother-in-law to the Sturgis Rally for years, and he wanted to introduce her to us.
