Discussion over the supper table last night was about whether to stick with the plan today of visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and then stay at a hotel in Jamestown or to push all the way home. The trip all the way home would be a long hard one in that we were about 640 miles from home and may take 12 or more hours on a motorcycle. Keith and Eric had already decided to go for it and the rest of us decided to join them. The trip has been great but it is time to go home.
So, the new plan was to get up extra early and leave by 5:00 AM central time. It was a beautiful morning as we were packing our bikes. The full moon was setting in the west and the eastern horizon was starting to lighten. Filling our bikes with gas, reading a psalm, saying a prayer, and we were on our way....
The ride was indeed a hard one. It was chilly in the dark but our first problem was that at times we were driving directly into the rising sun. It also is tough to spend a lot of miles continuously on a motorcycle. We needed to stop about every 60 miles to stretch and and every second stop to fill with gas. But, we stayed with that regiment and made relatively good time, into North Dakota fairly quickly. Each stop we were shedding layers of clothes as the rising sun kept adding heat into the equation. After a lot of time and miles though, we made it, getting home around 7:00PM.
At our last gas stop we re-capped our week and said a final prayer of thanksgiving. All agreed that it was a great adventure and we were very pleased with the week. We rode at or around 3,000 miles total and not a single breakdown. Except for some rain in Spearfish and snow in the BigHorns, the weather was great and the scenery greater. We grew in our appreciation of God's creative wonder and the fellowship of a bunch of Christian men. And we had a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks guys! See you next year.
