Trip to Wisconsin - July 23rd, 2010

Well, Wisconsin is deceptive as it is actually to Hudson Wisconsin which is on the opposite bank of the St Croix River from Minneapolis/St Paul.

This trip would be about 1,200 to 1,300 miles so was not sure how long it would take as this would be my first really long trip on my BMW GS 1200.

I decide to leave at 1:30 P.M. on Friday and try and make it to Nashville TN for the night, then to Bloomington IL for the next night and finally to Hudson WI on Sunday night.

But, like most of my trips, nothing ever seems to go to plan, and, frankly, this is a damn good thing. I am not running a train system I am riding a motorcycle dammit, and things are not meant to go to plan. That's the whole point of riding.

I left Conyers at 1:30 P.M. and headed out towards Atlanta on I-20 to pick up I-75 to Chatanooga and then I-24 to Nashville. The weather was beautiful withe tempratures in the high 90's. Stopped for lunch as I climbed out of the Tennessee River valley headed to Nashville.

The first deviation from plan was a missed exit just before Nashville, but what the hell, I wanted to see Nashville anyway and besides it was way to early to stop and I was not going back 16 miles to pick up the exit. TomTom added to the fun by dying in downtown Nashville in the middle of rush hour. This is a left over problem from the Florida trip when my Yamaha vibrated it to death. While the BMW was much smoother, the damage was already done and clearly it needed replacing. But, with the help of the GPS on my iPhone I left Nashville on the wrong interstate, I-65, and soon discovered I was headed for Louisville KY instead d of Evansville IN. Not to worry, I had arrived in Elizabethtown KY and would figure it all out the next morning. No signs of the Pacific or Atlantic yet so it could not be all that bad. The old adage of you cannot possibly be lost if you do not care where you are came into play, and I bedded down for the night.

Saturday morning the weather was fantastic, the Tom Tom was fully charged and functional once more and programmed to head for Evansville IN and told not to use Interstates. Using the "Fastest Route" TomTom will try to only use Interstates and so typical of TomTom, it wanted route me the long way through Louisville KY instead of shortcutting across the backroads to Evansville. Maybe it had a point. After an hour of riding through rural Kentucky past cow sheds, horse barns and roads so narrow that there was barely room to pass I finally made it under the I-65 less than a mile downroad from where I started, it just took 50 miles to get there. This is one of the annoying features of TomTom. If you tell it to go the fastest route it will head for the nearest Interstate even if that adds a 100 miles to the route. Tell it to avoid interstates and you will often find yourself riding along a cow path parallel to the Interstate for miles, but unable to get on it because of a fence. There should be a selection that says "Fastest route - but be reasonable."

Got to Bloomington IL about Mid-Day in a light drizzle. TomTom waited until I was downtown and really need guidance to quit once more. Saw an Office Depot and stopped to get a TomTom, but they were out of stock of the 130 which is what I needed to fit my existing bracket. Got out of town and onto the right rode with the aid of my iPhone and headed for Chicago. Clearly way to early to stop for the night in Bloomington, and besides it had stopped raining. A long construction delay put me in Chicago in rush hour traffic with lots of rain, but made it through and headed for Madison WI which seemed a possibility for the night.

I-90/I-39 does not actually go through Madison WI and once I had turned onto I-94 and headed towards Minneapolis there seemed no point in stopping as i still had a couple of hours of daylight so pushed with a stop for gas at Tomah. By the time it got dark I was only 40 miles from Minneapolis and it did not make sense to stop for the night with only 40 miles to go, so just headed on into a specatacular sunset as the sky turned red and the sun disappeared behind the hills.

As my destination was a newly developed area, TomTom did not have a clue so the iPhone had to come to the rescue once more and took me the last 10 miles or so. 920 miles and 13 hours of riding for the day. Not bad. The day ended with a real appreciation for the Sargent seat.

Wisconsin is not called the Land of lakes for nothing. There are many rivers. These are not streams, mighty rivers that include the Mississipi and the St Croix.

The St Croix feeds into the Mississipi here, and a trip on a Stern Wheeler along the St Croix really gives you a feel as to how it was to travel by river boat in the early days. Stern Wheelers draw very little water and so a perfect for carrying large amount s of cargo or people alomg waterways that can be quite shallow in places.

Waiting to board you get a view of the river and realize that river boats were not restricted to the very large rivers, but were capable of navigating some quite narrow twisting turns.

Because of their shallow draft, were able to navigate quite strong currents with the skill of a good Captain.

I am sure that in thier day these riverboats not only carried farmers, their produce and the goods that they needed, but also served many trappers who I will bet did not always use the regular landings as these boats would be able to pick them up anywhere along the river.

Even today, the amount of river traffic is phenomonal, and although riverboats have been replaced by barges and Interstates its clear that without these boats and the rivers they plied, the development of the interior would have taken far longer.

It became time to head back and so thoughts turned to replacing the TomTom and luckily a sing store in Minneapolis had 5 of them. With the bike once more loaded up and a new TomTom in the rack, we headed back to Georgia.

About thirty minutes out I ran into rain and stopped to put on my rain suit. I had a set of Road Toads that I love as they do not leak a drop, but the polyprpylene allows the air to filter through so you do now sweat. Rain does not necessarily mean cold, it just means wet. I had a pair of light weight tennis shoes on, but fortunately had a supply of rubber bands and plastic trash bags, so with my feet encased in plastic, I was soon back on the road and dry.

Once through Chicago, I was soon back into the land of corn and wind turbines. The wind turbines do not look very large from the road side but they are huge. The turbine room on top is the size of a small house. I had passed 18 wheeler fltbeds that forty foot beds carrying the turbine blades. Each blade hung over the back of the flat bed by about ten feet, so each blade must be about fifty foot long. Once mounted you have a diameter of about one hundred feet or more. They turn deceptively slowly, but when you consider the circumference of the blades must be in excess of one hundred yards, the speed of the tip of the blades must be pretty high. Yeak I know, but when you are sitting eating up interstate miles you have time to wonder about these things. You go through an area of several miles where they dominate the landscape all the way to mthe horizon in all directions.

Image it to Mt Vernon IL that night. It was getting dark and still raining. A check of the mileometer showed I had travelled 680 miles which was just over halfway, so it seemed a good place to spend the night.

The next morning I was greeted by a steady downpour which lasted all the way through my second cup of coffee. Looked like it had set in for the day, so put my rain suit and helmet on and loaded up in the rain.

iPhone said there was a Super WalMart right across the interstate so it seemed a good idea to go over and buy a pair of water proof boots as the trash bags were beginning to show wear from stopping for gas and walking in them.

Headed into WalMart in a steady rain, went to the back, found a pair of water proof boots and headed for the cash register to pay form. Stepped out into the parking lot and was greeted by a clear blue sky with not a single cloaud anywhere to be seen. The sun was shining and the parking lot was bathed in steam. If this is wat it takes to stop the rain I have to remember it for future trips :-)

The weather was perfect all the way to just otherside nashville where it strated to rain again. I rode into a fully fledged thunderstorm at the start of Eagle Pass as I climbed over the mountains that rimmed the Tennessee River Valley. Fortunately the traffic was moving slowly, all in the right lane so I had the left hand line to myself. As i crested the top of the pass I rode out of the thunderstorm into a steady drizzle and absolutely fantastic landscape. The air was clean and smelled great as it always does after a rain and all the foothills were swathed in white table cloths. Just beautiful.

The rain held all they way to Chatanooga and on to Atlanta, but not enough to be a real problem. I pulled into my driveway at 6:30 P.M. with anew respect for the GS 1200. It may look like an overgrown dirt bike, but it will run the Interstates with any of the large cruisers no matter what the weather. In spite of all the rain, both I and everything on the bike stayed perfectly dry. That is an achievement all of its owm!