Yamaha Bolt on Tail of the Dragon — Tommy on the Tail of the Dragon - 16 years old from Washington!

***WARNING*** This is a long post!

The adventure was to be a “state collection” road trip. My mom has these goals of collection. She has already been to all continents (Yes. Even Antartica) and all oceans. She recently (2021) rode in all 50 states and is working on all 13 Canadian provinces by motorcycle. Also on the agenda is visiting all countries…some of which she may or may not have entered legally. My mom is a very adventurous woman and I felt honored to have been asked to join this adventure. What made it more enjoyable was that my son was able to make it along on his bike too, at only 16 years old!

Seeing how this trip had a mission of “collecting states,” there would not be a lot of sightseeing or other touristy-type stuff happening. There was about a week of relaxing and fun that we had planned into the mix though. Originally, we were going to hit 46 of the lower 48 states, California and North Dakota being the 2 not touched. Mom already had ridden to those states before so we planned to skip them. Let’s just say that plans often change!

We woke on Saturday, August 1st, 2015 to our alarm going off at 4am. By 5am we were walking out the door. We’d packed our bikes the night before, so my son and I jumped on our scoots. My wife and daughter decided to tag along in the car with us the first day and follow us on our journey to Montana. We left Shelton, WA while it was still dark and rode into Olympia to meet up with my mom.

The first day was a pretty uneventful ride through Washington, Idaho, and into Montana. There were fires in Eastern Washington so our fuel stop in Moses Lake was pretty smokey with ash falling everywhere. I-90 had lots of construction happening through Idaho and Montana, but I have traveled this road since 1987 and don’t remember it ever NOT having road construction. I’m not much of a “freeway flyer”; I prefer to travel by back roads, but there is something to be said for the interstate system. We were on a mission, so speed was a necessity. I-90 in Idaho has a 75 mph speed limit and Montana’s was 80 mph, so we were laying out some ground.

My son’s tank would only hold about 3 gallons of fuel, so we needed to stop often for go-juice. This was ok with me on this trip as I was on a borrowed bagger which I was not used to. I ride a Dyna Wide Glide. I’m use to my apes, forward controls and a nice stretched out riding position. Sadly my Dyna was acting a little funny 2 days before we left and I had a bad feeling about it. My Dyna has over 80,000 miles on it and it has been ridden hard, so my dad offered up his 2011 Ultra Classic. Before we left for this trip I had removed the trunk to help with the weight distribution and added a street glide windshield to it which helped me a little (although I personally don’t care for windshields or fairings), but the cramped riding position had me begging to stop. I was thankful for my son, Tommy’s, little tank.

Tommy was riding a 2014 Yamaha Bolt R-Spec which I had put together originally for me to ride cross country a couple months prior. The stock seat had been replaced with a spring solo and only ½” of pad on the seat, no saddlebags, no windshield, bare bones, no frills, no BS. He had a tank bag for gear and that was it. I like the minimalist approach to bikes and it rubbed off on my kid. Some may think it’s not smart to run cross country without a windshield or saddlebags, but hey, I’ve done it before, and I will do it again….. and so will he!

My mom was riding a 2012 Heritage Classic, all stock. She absolutely LOVES her bike, and I have to agree, the Softail is a great platform. Hey, enough about the bikes, let’s get back to the ride…

We crossed into Idaho, over the continental divide, through some twisty roads and steep hills. It was a beautiful area and fun as all get up, even for being an interstate. We rolled into Montana, kicked the speed up a nickel, and made it to St. Regis where stayed at the Super 8 motel right off the highway and across from a local market, gas station, and burger stand. Perfect!

We rose early the next morning, as usual. We packed up the bikes and said our emotional goodbyes to my wife and daughter. It would be 4 weeks before we would all see each other again. My wife is my best friend. We go everywhere together and don’t spend a lot of time apart from each other. Four weeks was going to be hell!

My son, my mom and myself headed East on I-90 and took in a beautiful bright-red sunrise thanks to the fires in Idaho, Washington, and Montana. Even Glacier National Park had fires going on at this point. We rode on through Montana, Wyoming, and into South Dakota where we exited the interstate at Spearfish to ride through Spearfish Canyon.

We continued to roll on into Sturgis for the 75th Annual Sturgis Black Hills Motorcycle Rally, or as I lovingly call it, “Trailer Week”. I must say, Spearfish Canyon was an absolutely beautiful ride, with great roads, scenery and small towns. Of course it was PACKED and the ride was slow, but it was still worth it. I plan to go back with my wife (but not at the time of the rally) to spend a week riding the area.

Sturgis was fun; we stayed in Whitewood at the Iron Horse Inn and that place kicks butt!! It is set up with an alley way between the 2 buildings that are lined with rooms and it features big overhangs so that the motorcycles, which were parked directly outside our door, were for the most part, protected from the elements! We took the shuttle from the motel into Sturgis and played on Main Street and Lazelle where all the vendors are. Pretty small event going on this year; it was just me, my mom, my son and 700,000 of our closest friends! Sturgis is an experience I feel every biker should have at least once in their lifetime. For many, they long for it every year. For some of us, we want the experience, and then we want to get the hell out of dodge for some place a little less crowded.

The weather in South Dakota this summer was crazier than usual. We happened to luck out and not get hit with any of it. I’m still not sure how we did that… Oh wait, it’s because EVERY night, after we checked into a motel my mom would turn on the weather channel and see what was happening. We just so happened to have had the perfect weather on our one day in Sturgis.

The next day we rolled off into the sunrise heading for Wall, SD. We had planned to fuel up, then play a bit and grab some breakfast. After gassing up the bikes and looking around us, all we saw were black clouds. We looked at each other and decided breakfast could wait, it was time to get out of there before the storm hit! I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to hang in Wall (see how much had changed in the six years since my last visit) then ride the Badlands a little, but it wasn’t worth putting on rain gear. It’s only a 2 day ride from home; we will come back another time! Most of South Dakota as seen from I-90 was beautiful, some parts were a little boring, but it still had a beauty of its own.

Escaping Wall, SD without breakfast was a bummer, but I was grateful.

As we approached Minnesota, we hit our final fuel stop for the day. We were gassing up the bikes when another rider pulled in and asked, “Which way ya’all heading?” “East,” I replied. He looked at us and looked over our bikes and said, “Where’d you come from?” I told him we had left Sturgis that morning. He seemed pretty upset with me at that point. As we got to talking some more, he said he had left Wall, SD about 15 minutes after us, and he fought the rain until the last 100 miles or so! Wow, we got lucky!

It was time to keep pushing on. We were supposed to stop there for the night, but nope, we decided to get some more miles between us and the storm.

Our next destination goal was Freeport, Illinois to see some family, get some Mrs. Mikes potato chips, and see our old town. Between where we were in Minnesota and Freeport, things were not looking too good. Heavy rains and tornadoes had been in the area and were expected to continue. Well, they stayed away from us! We exited the interstate in Minnesota and jumped on some farm roads going through small town USA. It felt pretty good to be “home”- farm lands all around, the smell of cow manure, tractors, corn fields… yep all was good.

Minnesota turned into Iowa. Then into Wisconsin where we really pushed Tommy’s fuel to the limit. We had been fueling up every 120-140 miles and we pushed his tank to 160 on this leg – his bike actually got 70 mpg by staying off the interstate!

We stopped in Monroe, Wisconsin at a long time family favorite, Baumgartners Cheese Store and Tavern. Monroe is a small Swiss-style town, famous for cheese. Baumgartners is one of my favorites in the area because the food is delicious plus they took my favorite, Mrs. Mikes Potato Chips made in Freeport, Illinois, and made them even better. They microwaved the chips to warm them. OK, so what’s the big deal? Well, Mrs. Mikes chips by nature are very greasy and salty, so when these guys warmed them up, the grease seemed to ooze out and the salt became more pronounced……mmmm, just thinking about them is making me hungry for their chips. Road trip? OK, time to back telling our road trip story before I start planning my next one.

Anyway, after we fueled up our bellies and our bikes, we rolled into Freeport, Illinois, and hooked up with my Aunt Mary after we checked into the hotel. She kindly chauffeured us around as we checked out our old town. She ran us out to Lena for Root Beer Coolers and then back to her place for a mini family reunion.

The next day we ran into Milwaukee, Wisconsin and went to check out the House of Harley dealership. The dealership was AWESOME! I fell in love with that place! The people were nice and friendly, but the historical building was cool as hell and the layout was great. I wanted to ask for a job there! Oh, wait… I suddenly remembered that we were back in the Midwest and they have ….. (gulp) snow here! I was happy to have moved away from there because of the winters – I don’t like the cold or the snow. I’m the kind of person that, if I want snow, I will go to it. I don’t want it to come to me! I am currently looking to relocate to a warmer climate, but I’m staying in Washington until my kid is done with high school. Two more years, yay! (Six years later…still in Washington to watch my grandbaby grow up).

From Milwaukee, we caught a high-speed ferry to Muskegon, Michigan. That was pretty cool. I have only been on the local Washington ferries: old, worn out, and slow. This one was very nice, smooth, and cooler than any other “boat” I have been on. It’s 88 miles across the lake and it took just over 2 hours to travel it. All motorcycles had to be tied down, Tommy was able to take care of his bike, and I took care of mine and moms.

We met a cool couple from Paris, France; they had flown into Milwaukee and were taking a month to travel around the Great Lakes. They told us that last year they had flown in and rode around the northeast part of the U.S. Tommy got a quick geography lesson. He was wearing his Sturgis 75th anniversary shirt. The old guy pointed and aasked, “There’s a motorcycle rally in Sturgis?” Tommy said “Yep.” The old guy added, “In Sturgis, Michigan?” “What? No, in Sturgis, South Dakota” Tommy replied. Tommy looked to me. “Dad, did you know there is a Sturgis in Michigan?” What the hell? Do kids learn anything in school these days? I guess my grandfather was a bad influence on me; we would sit and look at maps all the time.

Docked in Muskegon, Michigan after having just crossed Lake Michigan by high-speed ferry from Milwaulkee, we were done with the flat farm lands and ready for some mountains again! We got back onto the interstate, worked our way to I-69… I love that, I wanted a sticker that has the interstate symbol and 69 in it. Never could find one, oh well. We rolled through Indiana and into Ohio where the people were a bit crazy for my taste. But the worst was yet to come!

Next up was Niagara Falls… oops, change of plans. Thanks to the weather channel, we missed the storm in Illinois by a day and watched the storm chase us to Ohio. Since we were a day ahead, if we went on to Niagara Falls, it would catch up and we would’ve been riding in it. The Falls weren’t high on any of our lists; we skipped it and rolled on. We cut across New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and into Maine. We had to stop at the Atlantic Ocean because my mom had never ridden her bike there before. I think this was the highlight of the trip for her. We also thought it was pretty funny that Tommy rode to the Atlantic Ocean before he rode to the Pacific Ocean…that we live an hour and a half away from!

After Maine, we made our way down to Massachusetts for the night where we met up with the storm. We hung out there for an extra day while the rain blew through. By this point, I wanted out of the northeast portion of our great land. The drivers seemed like they were out for blood and anyone on a motorcycle seemed like the best candidates! All I could think was get me out of here before I do something stupid! Sanity wasn’t too far away, just a few more states, but I had to chase it down.

We rolled on through New York again, staying out of the city, on to New Jersey and into Pennsylvania - Amish Country. I thought Amish people were against technology, including power, automobiles, etc. Apparently there must be different levels of Amish because the ones we saw had tractors, power, and credit card machines? I’m sure the “true” Amish were further off the beaten path. I thought we would start talking with kinder people here, but nope; the Amish did not like us. That was kind of crazy since they owned many retail stores and non-Amish people are their customers.

The people may not have been the most pleasant, but the scenery sure was – awesome rolling hills, lots of green trees, and decent roads. At the hotel, there was a hot air balloon being launched. We watched it from the time they pulled everything out of the trailer to the time she was in flight. That was a pretty cool event to watch. We didn’t realize just how loud they really are, but we could hear the “flame thrower” way up in the air. I used to think people were nuts to just go watch hot air balloons, but I soon I realized how calming it was. Good, because the most dreaded part of the trip was the next day, Washington D.C.!

Surprisingly, this was a good riding day! Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Maryland was great and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge coming into Annapolis was pretty cool! I thought for sure traffic was going to be hell, but we blew right through to Arlington. We got into town way too early to check into our rooms. Thankfully we were able to drop kick our gear with the friendly hotel desk clerk while we went for lunch. After we ate, we wandered over to the US Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima). We tried going into the Arlington National Cemetery, but it was closed off due to a “suspicious package” that had been left.

We crossed over to the Vietnam Wall, the Korean War Memorial and back to the Vietnam Wall. It was very touching and even though I did not lose anyone in the war, I know people who did. I have seen what it did to our soldiers who were there. I come from a military family. Both my parents served during ‘Nam, Dad again in Iraq, and grandparents in WWII, so I have a lot of respect for our troops. I did see some stuff going on there that made me sick! Some Asian tourists were mocking and climbing all over our monuments! I was pissed and thought ‘Damn, show some respect!’

The Arlington National Cemetery had reopened by that point, so we went in, looked at some headstones, wandered around and watched the changing of the guard. That was pretty cool to watch. They don’t take crap! When you are asked to stand, you better stand. The First Sergeant let one lady have it who thought she was too good to stand. As he was speaking he looked right at her, held his hand toward her, and screamed that she was requested to stand. She was too busy on her phone and showing no respect so he stopped the whole ceremony until she stood and was off her phone. It wasn’t too long before she realized it… Loved it!

Rolling out of D.C. was a breeze, no issues at all. It was there that the trip got better for me. Don’t get me wrong, I had been enjoying myself for the most part before this, but the northeastern part of the U.S. was not for me; it was too busy and everyone was in a rush.

Next up, we headed for the Skyline drive. Originally we planned to run the Skyline all the way down to Blue Ridge Parkway, but weather and roads again played a part in changing our plans. The Skyline was an absolutely beautiful ride! We cruised through spectacular scenery, wonderful winding roads and saw plenty of wildlife. We came around one corner, where I saw something moving in the brush, as I started getting closer I realized what it was… there was a big ass BEAR standing about 10 feet from the road! ‘Well crap,’ I thought, ‘I know I can make it around before he decides to grab some lunch and Tommy might, but mom, nope.’ Mom would stop to try to pet the bear. So I stopped back a ways just so we could all look at the bear, hoping he would get spooked. This is where I wish I had my Dyna and loud pipes, to scare it off. It didn’t take long for the bear to realize we were not going to be his lunch that day so he walked back into the woods and we continued on.

We made our way down through Virginia, heading for West Virginia, where we pulled into a gas station and had problems with the pumps. Two hillbillies walked out together. One asked me if we were having problems, “Yep, the card reader ain’t working,” I told him. He told me he would try it for us, so I handed him my card. He swiped it, it asked for our zip code, so I told him what it was. As he types, he says “9, 8, 5… 985, where ya’ll from?” He then looked at the license plate as I said “Washington”. He said, “State? Dang gum, you’s far from home!” How wrong he was… I felt right at home. These were cool folk, down to earth, humble, not in a huge hurry. How I missed rednecks!

The rest of our gas stop story was more visual than anything, but basically he asked where we were headed, I told him, and he advised us not to take the bike down the road because of the twists and turns, cliffs and mountains. Wrong! That sounded great to me! So we continued up the road as planned into West Virginia to a view point pull off. Holy crap, those good ol’ boys were right about that road, and we were happy to have experienced it!

Back into Virginia and heading south to North Carolina, was spectacular. I could see living down that way. Beautiful roads, scenery, and people; man, this was the life! We were getting close to South Carolina and the plan was to clip a few miles and move back on through to North Carolina and into Georgia for the night. We stopped for gas again before the South Carolina state line and ran into a couple more “country boys”. We BS’d with them for about 20 minutes. They were heading out to ride dirt bikes, but they also said they do Civil War re-enactments. I found out this guy works for Homeland Security and his wife works for the FBI. Really!?! Man he did not look or act like it. He looked like a backwoods shine runner, and acted like it too. He was cool as hell; I could have sat and talked with this guy all day.

But we had to keep rolling, we had a storm to meet up with at the hotel and not before. So we cruised on into Dillard, Georgia for the night, had an awesome dinner, truly some of the best food on the trip. The hotel, well that’s another story. The next morning was one I was really looking forward to… heading for Hwy 129 and the Tail of the Dragon!