Days 9 & 10 - Home

Saturday - Day 9

We headed home from Deadwood on Saturday. The last two days were going to be long and boring because of the amount of miles we needed to travel. We originally planned to go straight to Dodge City, KS. However, a couple from Canada (Julie and Dan) that said you need to go to the Badlands National Park. I convinced Eric because it only added 30 miles to our trip home. Plus, it would add one more Park to the trip.

We reached the city of Wall when Eric noticed that his front tire had small bubbles along the center of the tire. Not good! He decided to head back into Rapid City and have them replaced. He verified with the local dealer that they had a set of tires and away he went. He said there is no reason for both of us to miss out on the park, so I continued on. (I later decided that splitting up was not a good idea.)

The park itself is a bit underwhelming once you've seen the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and the Black Hills. However, it was interesting to see how the landscape can change is such a short distance. The park is probably the shortest one I've ever driven through. It took about 40-minutes to complete. I might have spent more time if it was the first part of the trip. But like I said, after seeing the other parks, the standards were pretty high at that point.

Eric said he would call me when he reached the dealership so I would know he made it safely. When I reached the end, it was like a desert wasteland. There was one small gas station, but no cell phone service. I decided to take my original path and find cell phone service at the next town to give Eric a call. I headed east on Hwy 44. Small town after small town there was no cell phone service. It was 12:45 so I was starting to get a bit worried that Eric was sitting at the dealership wondering what happened to me. I hit Hwy 73 going southbound towards Tuthill.

Halfway down 73, I hit road construction. This is not the first time I've seen construction on the trip. The sign said "Construction next 13 miles." Not what I was hoping for, especially since I did not have any cell phone service. I pushed on. Gradually the road became much worse. At first it was compacted dirt roads. It then turned into a very loose dirt/sand mixture with grooves everywhere. If I was driving an off-road bike like a BMW GS, I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but on my RT it was a different story. I was in the middle of nowhere, temperates were above 100 and not a cell phone tower in sight. I was a bit nervous, but I did not have any other choice but to keep going. I knew at this moment that splitting up was a mistake. Had I dropped the bike, got stuck, etc., I wouldn't have anyway to call for help. Lesson learned.

I finally reached pavement in Tuthill. Still no cell phone service. At this point it's 1:20. I concluded that Eric's bike was finished and that he was sitting there waiting on me to call. He called my cell, left a voice mail, and told me he was heading south to the town of Hot Springs and to call him. I reached the town of Martin with 1 bar on the phone. I called and told him to meet me in Chadron.

We finally connected around 3:30. I grabbed a quick bite and we took off towards Kansas. We had decided that we would probably not reach Dodge City. We reached Ogallala, NE around 7:30. We had dinner and decided that we would drive as far as we could then stop for the night. As were reached the Kansas border it was nightfall. As a general rule, we don't drive at night. There are too many hazards to contend with on back roads, including deer. 50-miles from Colby, KS, I spotted a deer on the left side of the road. My eyes just about popped out of my head!! We slowed our pace considerably knowing that more deer where ahead.

20-miles from Colby, I spot two, very large 4-6 point deer on the left side of the road. They never even flinched as we passed them by. I knew that we needed to get off the roads for the night. We arrived in Colby around 11:15. Every hotel was sold out except of a Quality Inn. They had a few smoking rooms left. We took it and went to bed for the day. What a long day it was.

Day 10

We were on the road by 8:15, knowing we had a long day ahead of us to get home. The day was very uneventful. We arrive home around 6:45. It always feels good to make it back home safely after a ride.

Total trip - 4077 miles. That's an average of 407.7 miles per day.