June 30 Day 10 everyone is busy

It was named Hoyt Arboretum in honor of Ralph Warren Hoyt, the county commissioner who championed the formation of the arboretum. We thought it was appropriate that is was with the Vietnam memorial as well.

When Jim and Chris headed out to check the route for tomorrow they came up on some cyclist down on the road. This is Melissa whose friend went down when her front pannier rack broke and caught up in her front wheel. It bent the frame of the bike. Holly below is her friend, pretty banged up. The guys were able to go to Lakeside Cycles and she was to get a frame like the one she had. Later Chris dropped her by a hospital to get checked out, they found out later she was ok.

This is Mary and Nevin who are from Milwaukee and ready to ride across the states

June 29 Day 9 A lazy Day, No Traveling

Good morning Doogie, He like hanging in the camper.

Keeping up with the blog.

This is Gordon the owner of Lakeside 

We had dinner with Tom Ernst and his wife Nancy and their son, Davis who is quite the bike rider

Tom worked us at Richardson Bike Mart for 10+ years ago. He moved to Portland 3 years agowhen his wife received a promotion with IKEA. He now works with The Athlete's Lounge. We miss him having him with us,so it was a special evening to go out to dinner with the family.

June 28 Day 8 going into Portland

This morning while Jim was checking the truck out, this little deer wandered up. It was real friendly.

It appears it had been hit. There were scars on both of it's sides and a bit of it's ear missing. The owner of the Resturant/gas station was going to put it in his trailer and take it to one of his pastures to get it away from the highway. He was concerned the game warden would be angry with him. Jim and I said at the same time. "We won't tell!"

It's a long way to Oregon. We have driven 2,698 miles. We didn't take all interstate so our trip was more scenic. We became tourist stopping at road side attractions. The interesting thing is we haven't driven as far as we are going to ride our bikes!

This is the Dalles Dam and Lock. It was started in 1952 and finished in 1957. 192 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River. Since then it has generated 192 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 10 million tons of river cargo annually. All for only $299. Million!

The land has changed so much on this journey. A few miles back there wasn't a tree to be seen.

We are traveling the Columbia Gorge. We finally get into Portland. The traffic is so congested. It's only 

1:30pm. We touch base with Jim Mosley, a friend who just moved from Dallas to Portland back in March. He hooks us up with an RV camp. He comes by to visit then we are off to dinner. His new found favorite bike shop, Lakeside Cycles which happens to be next door to his new found favorite bar, Genisis. We head there and stop to visit with Gordon the owner of the shop. He and Merrill and daughter join us for dinner at the bar. It was a lovely evening.

June 27 Day 7 On to Sprague Lake

Welcome to Idaho! It's really mountainous and a lot of forest lining the mountains

This is the old Mining town of Wallace. In it's day Silver was what brought people to this little town.

The fellow talking to the fellow on the ATV. Cooks outside all year round on the smoker behind him

He asked us where we were from and we said Texas. He said "Yeah, I've heard of that!"

This is what happened in the trailer. I guess we hit one too many bumps. The picture below is 

What Jim did to reinforce the rack. Pretty darn good job.

This is our campsite at the Sprague Lake Resort. 

June 26 Day 6 see Frank Sanders, Devil'sTower and Little Big Horn

It is taking less time to tear down camp. We were on our way to Devil's Tower. But first we had to see a friend, Frank Sanders and Tanya. They had been through last fall and bought bikes and rode them to 

Jacksonville, Florida.  Frank is a rock climber that takes clients up Devil's Tower. He has climbed it over a 1,000 times. He has a lodge next to the Tower.

Devil'sTower is  fascinating . When you get close to it you can only think that someone had carved it. With it's long columns running down the sides. We took the mile walk around it. It is very peaceful there.  Still you wonder why there is only one thing like the tower in the entire world.

I was looking up info on Little Big Horn and realized we would be going right by the site. When we were about to turn into the area we looked down the road and all of these Native American Indians  came riding up the road. We took pictures then went on into the site. When we got to the gate to pay they said there was no charge. It was the anniversary of the battle of Little Big Horn. June 25, 1876.

We had been reading about it but never paid attention to the actual date. 

After seeing the memorial. We headed on to Bozeman. Having been to Yellowstone several times before we reminded each other of the cycling we did through Yellowstone and even a snowmobile 

Trip. The skies were dramatic with storm clouds over the mountains. It never did rain hard but the temperature really cooled down. The winds on the highway were fierce. They even had signs warning of strong side winds . We were glad to be off the road. Tomorrow we are  off to Sprague Lake Lodge in Washington State.

June 25 Day 5 Devil'sTower Tower

This is our camp with Devil'sTower peeking over the tops of the trees. We set up camp and rolled into Huelett for dinner stuff. Soon as we get back at camps, it starts to pour and the wind is shaking the camper like crazy. Jim lowered it closer to the ground.

It's Dinner Time!

At Devil'sTower Movie night at the KOA Camp " Cloose encounters of the third kind".

June 24 Day 4 Custer Park

Our new friends Tim and Amy and others told us to drive through Custer Park to see lots of wild life.

Especially Buffalo. Well, we never did see buffalo, however we did see the Wild Burros. They are descendants of the burros that use to take tourist to the top of Mt. Rainey. When they ended the trips they let the burros loos and they flourished in Custer Park. The only other wild life were prong horn deer

Doogie is quite at home riding on the console. He can hang on really good in the switch backs.

We almost didn't stop to see this memorial in progress.

It is massive. in perspective Mt. Rushmore would barely fill up the space behind his head. This was started in 1948. Korczak Ziolkowskiwas commissioned by Cheif Standing Bear to build the monument. 

He has passed on. His wife and 7 of his 10 children are still building it.

June 23 Day 3 Mt. Rushmore

We are up early and thought we would check out Mt.Rushmore and how together there. Well,the roadwewefe on was the wrong direction and wound up in Hill City. In around a out way we got there.

It is amazing when you finally see it. You go around a corner and there it is. We decided together audio tour and we well we were glade did. We learned a lot more about every phase of the mountain's history.

The guy who took this was great! He got down on the walk to shoot up so we would have the 

Presidents in the background.

We relaxed the rest of the day. We met a couple, Tim and Amy from  Miinneapolis. They had been coming to the same campsite for 23 years. The best thing is they helped us with some issues and gave us some great tips on the camper.

We went back to Mt.Rushmore for an evening event a friend Jeannette Thompson had told us about 

She and other friends had just come back from This area. It is a beautiful ceremony. There were about 2,000 plus people there. 

The the end of the lighting the ranger invites all vets and active military to come up on stage.

Jim is in blue near the right hand side. The park ranger asked for for something these guys hadn't heard in a long time. He asked for 6 volunteers. Those guys are to the right and participate in lowering the flag. The rest he calls to attention...."Right Face".

After the flag is folded the rangers goes to each vet, they put their hand on the flag and say their branch of the service. All total their were 90 vets on that stage. Lots and cheering, proud people.

Everyone left with smiles and a Full Moon was in the sky. It was a beautiful day.

June 22 Day 2, morning at the camp site in Goodland Kansas

Sorry for the delay Internet was not cooperating. It's a beautiful morning. We are up and ready to head to Keystone South Dakota and Mt.Rushmore

It is about 450 miles to there.

We missed a turn, but the GPS made a correction we wound up going down a dirt road between fields which would have been great except it had rained and it had big muddy patches. We were afraid we would get stuck, but made it out. The truck was a mess. We got into a town and were able to wash  the trailer and truck off in a car wash.

Baby Boomers Bike Ride Across America

Jim has been in the bike business for over 50 years. We have owned the Richardson Bike Mart since 1980. We also have been Long time friends of Chris Kegal since 1983.

When Jim and I were planning our marriage in 1986 and talking with Bill Bryan our minister, Bill ask us what fun plans we had for our future.

Jim told him “I would like to ride across the States with my best friend/wife, Rhonda.

 I looked at him and said, “That is a cool plan!”

Fast forward to 2013 and here we are. Starting July 1^st we start in Portland Oregon and will ride with 11 friends and our 2 Jack Russells  12 year old Diggity and 2 year old Doogie to Portland Main.