Day 13. Trains, Plains, and Rockets

We were off to our normal early start, about 0915. We had a pretty sad "continental" breakfast, if you could call it that, provided by the hotel. Maybe we need to get up earlier! Anyway, we made our first stop of the day the Golden Spike National Historic Site in Promontory, UT. We watched the 2 replica steam locomotives being driven out on to the rails. The National Parks Service does a great job explaining the history of the transcontinental railroad.





Inside the Parks building, John found another penny masher.



When we left, we were on Hwy. 83. We saw a sign that said rocket display. We stopped in the parking lot of ATK, a premier aerospace and defense company, supplier of aerospace and defense products, munitions, smart weapons, propulsion and composite structures.(taken from google search) They had a large display of rockets and rocket motors. Each rocket had a plaque telling how ATK was involved. I found it interesting that each of the 2 solid fuel booster rockets for the space shuttle, burn almost 1,100,000 lbs of propellant in 122 seconds. That's 9016 pounds of fuel burnt every second!! in each booster!!
The ATK complex is in the middle of nowhere and is huge.



In the picture, the large horizontal rocket is the space shuttle booster. The skinny upright missile is a Minuteman. The fatter, stubby upright is a submarine launched Polaris.

We next stopped in Snowville, UT for lunch. We found a neat place, Mollie's.



After lunch, we took hwy 30 south to the Nevada border.
Here we are again in the middle of nowhere... There's a lot of this out here.



Yup, help is 93 miles behind us...






We stopped for the night in Ely, Nevada. Tomorrow, we are going to take Hwy. 50 across the state to Reno.

Day 10. Devils Tower

Lyle and Garth went to the Buffalo Chip last night to see the Guess Who and CCR with Lee and Gabi. They rolled into camp around 0100 this a.m. I was up by 0600 ready and showered. Everyone else rolled out of bed around 0700 or so. John rolled in around 0745. I'm not sure what LL&G have planned for today. John and I went to the Belle Inn for breakfast.  After eating, we took off for Devils Tower. We stopped along the road to take a few pictures.





We went in to the Devils Tower Trading Post where John found another penny masher.



We left there and went down through Sundance and took old Hwy. 14 east. It's the frontage road on the north side of I-90. We came across the Vore Buffalo Jump. They now charge admission to the hole in the ground. They wanted $5.00 just to walk up next to a hole and look in. Kent said that the place charges admission only during rally week. Anything for a buck. We decided to skip paying and will look in the hole some other time.



We went back to camp and let the bikes cool before adding a little pre-mixed coolent to them. We were going to go back to Stugis one more time but neither of us felt up to it.

Day 2, Murdo, SD to Alliance, NE

Today, things got a lot better. We got up and went to breakfast at the GTO Diner in Murdo. Good breakfast, but the family behind me was pretty funny. I couldn't see them but I could hear them. She was complaining that there was nothing on the menu she could eat. He was crabby as hell and wasn't too sympathetic. Someone else was crabbing that the sun was shining on her and burning her. It was funny to listen to, all they could do was bitch and complain...
After breakfast we went back down 83, then west on 18 in South Dakota.

I really like being in the middle of nowhere.



That took us through a very impoverished looking Rosebud Indian Reservation. We stopped for gas in Martin, SD. We followed 18 for a while, then went south on 391/27, through Gordon, NE. West on 20 to 87, then south into Alliance. We stopped just before town to check out Carhenge.





We walked in to the Carhenge Pitstop and the first thing John sees is a penny masher.






Here's John at Carhenge.



Me too.



After taking in all that Carhenge had to offer, we drove the 3 miles to Alliance. We got a room at the 1st INN. Yesterday we drove a little over 600 miles. Today we quit at 220.



Tonights weather looks like rain, so we pulled the bikes up under the walkway.