FJRiders.com

A plan was in the making for some months to do another western trip this year, and it ended up being just 2 of us. I’ve known Dean a long time, he bought my 2014 Root Beer. He had to use up vacation time in June, and had to be back by July 3, so that dictated the calendar. And with that, this is what most of the plan looked like. While I had been out west 4 times, Dean had never ridden there, so the idea was to give him a good sampling. We had to work around CFR 2022, which fell right in the middle of it all.

As usual, Fontanaman has been an excellent source of suggestions, and he also manages to post up the odd gem I make mental notes of. Then there’s a few others, BigJohnSD, ~G, and Pterodactyl who have always been very helpful, these guys are awesome, can’t thank them enough. Met a new guy DaleI who provided ride suggestions also, and we hooked up again at CFR.




Dean is loaded for bear, he takes too much stuff.... which played out later. I described that in the tire thread.





The OH part...... The bikes are loaded on the trailer, departure date June 9, and we’re first headed to Ohio for an annual ST Owners event, OH-STOC. A group of Canadians always attends, and our very good friends Pat and Annette (and family) have hosted this since 2008.

When I say host, they go all out, cooking, baking and feeding us. We are a family, and the usual crowd is 50 or so, from points near and far. This event is not to be missed. Our normal thing is to book cabins 9-10 months in advance so we can have one grouping of cabins. This year at Dillon State Park near Zanesville.

Ohio Parks is refurbing their cottages at many of their parks, this is the recently reno'd one we got. Layouts are similar everywhere, all have AC and heat. I am mentioning this in case we someday want to do an SEO Ramble and stay at a park.... can be done with some advance planning, and the cost here was $470 all in for 3 nights.... typically he who books gets the bedroom with the queen bed, the other bedroom has a double and two bunk beds. Option to camp out in the screened-in porch or sleep on the couch as well. Very economical.








to be continued......

Thursday is arrival day, and there is no dinner planned.... however, Annette has been busy all week making pies, many times from berries she has picked in her own back yard.... baked them up in the cabin..... that's Pat scooping out the ice cream. I scored blueberry, but there was strawberry rhubarb, cherry, apple, mixed berry, peach....... eat your heart out, Niehart, but I'll have a suggestion for you later.....





Here we are lined up for Friday dinner, homemade lasagna, garlic bread, fresh veggies/dip and salad, and I'm filling my cup with juice. Notice the jar at the far end of the table.... there are no rally fees, you just put into the jar what you feel your food was worth. In the mornings, breakfast casserole, fresh fruit, orange juice, pancakes and syrup, and biscuits and gravy. Saturday dinner was pizza from a local pizza joint on the park property, each cabin ordered whatever they wanted.



Caveman TV in the evenings.........



Lunch stops were on the ride plan. For Friday, Pat had arranged a homestyle Amish lunch at a private residence, cost us $22 each to get stuffed, paid on the way out. Fried chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes, etc... and of course, pie!
Somebody said there were 42 bikes parked on the front lawn and driveway......






to be continued........

I'm hungry.

wheatonFJR wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 8:50 pmI'm hungry.

Me too...This is going to be good, looking forward to the next installment!

~G

Who likes big group rides? I'll bet not many will say yes. I'll describe how this works in a separate thread, but imagine 42 bikes in one long string... it only works if the ride leader is quicker than anyone else and pulls everybody along. For the last 3 years I've made it, we had a very slow and deliberate leader on a Goldwing trike, it was painfully slow, so I'd make up routes and go separately with a half dozen of us.... well, "Bill" passed away and this year, I discovered our ride leader would be quick, so we decided to give that a whirl on the Friday, since we had signed up for the Amish lunch.....

Wow, very enjoyable, no issues at all, had some great twisty roads in an area of Ohio most of us haven't normally paid attention to. If you had been part of this, I'm sure you would have enjoyed it, seriously.... again, it depends on the leader. He didn't share the route ahead of time either. So here we are lined up getting the rules repeated by Pat and finding out who is riding Sweep. "Tony The Car Guy" is leading and "Shuey" is doing sweep in his car.



Gas and bio-break........



This pic taken by Dean, while on the move at a good clip on a straight section..... we're pretty spread out, Tony nowhere to be seen, likely about a mile ahead... yes spread out that much or more.



When there's a turn, the leader will drop a 'breadcrumb' to indicate which way to go..... this guy was hilarious, so animated in pointing us, and the sign fit quite well.



Suffice it to say, it was so much fun and at the end everybody heaped kudos on Tony. I saved the track. On Saturday, there would be another one, this time Pat was the leader....

Saturday's fuel/bio-break, gas station is to the left of the pic. When done, we line up ready to go.



Aha, trouble mid-ride..... we were coming down 285 into Caldwell, and at the corner of 821, we had a breakdown... Dave, from Canuckistan, riding his Triumph Trophy had the shift lever pivot break off, and could not shift as the shift lever just flopped about. A quick assessment, and we see it will take some significant surgery as the thing is buried behind the footpeg stay and a side cover. Not only that, not repairable on the road..... we inform ride leader Pat, decision made to trailer the bike back to camp.... Pat had his trailer with tools....
The group went to some special burger joint for lunch, and visited a spot on the 'bucket list' so to speak. Tony The Car Guy, second row, fourth from the right in the red t-shirt.





Dave and I are missing from the photo..... I did a slab shot to Zanesville to get my trailer, meanwhile Dave called Triumph dealers.... one in Columbus, one in Cleveland. We put our engineering hats on..... stopped at Ace Hardware in Caldwell to pick up a few bits and pieces, Napa for a T45 Torx bit. It took a couple hours to get trailered back to camp. Pat had a toolbox in his covered trailer, so we got to work McGivering a shift lever pivot.. had to drill out the broken off part, heat it with a torch, EZ out, fab up a nylon bushing with drill, hacksaw and file.... got 'er up and running!! Columbus Triumph had no part but said Cleveland guy did..... Cleveland guy not open until Tuesday..... Dave would ride home Sunday, order it in locally. I'll just say stupid design, 8mm screw where a 10mm needed IMHO.



Saturday, Dean and I loaded up again, ready to head out Sunday morning for points west.....

Great RR Ray! Looks like you guys had a good time. Thanks for taking us along! See you soon!

Nice!

Happy to help with ride idea Ray. Good stuff. More?

Sunday and Monday are slab days with the trailer... as I rode the FJR onto the trailer, discovered a fork oil seal leak, we'd have to fix that later.

Leaving Columbus OH, needed coffee, lotsa places closed. Pulled in to McD's, closed due to staff shortages, drive-thru only. This would be a little theme for the day.... so I walked up.....



It was coolish, off and on drizzle, and I commented to Dean that every time I've come near Chicago, it rained heavy, I'm happy to be trailering. Then we needed lunch on the west side of Indianapolis... we'll try Culvers, due to staff shortages, takeout only..... as we'd pulled up it started raining and then it came down really heavy, wind blowing like a tornado.... our order came and we ran to the car... food barely adequate, won't do a repeat. As we drove the next couple of hours, wind damage very evident. Temperature 10C (50F) in Indiana, warmed up as we got into Iowa (Happy to be trailering).



Rolled into Des Moines for the night, dinner at Jethro's BBQ.



Monday, headed for Spearfish..... across Iowa and SD, breezy in spots, temps 32C (90 F) for most of the day. I love AC and trailering some more. Alerted ~G and Pterodactyl may need to do fork seal repair. Made some calls, no seals in stock anywhere, finally located one in Rapid City we could pick up.

Dean wanted to stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD for lunch, again, many places closed. Not worth it to me, unless you got some kinda corn fetish, keep moving. Crossed the mighty Missouri River in Chamberlain. Dean later wanted to stop at Wall Drug.... I said no, every place we stop we blow another hour....





Picked up the seal and some fork oil at the Yammy dealer in Rapid City, went to Wallymart for some brake cleaner. Weather looking a little gray ahead, big thunderstorm had rolled through Spearfish the night before. Another one predicted for this evening would include hail up to golf ball size...

At the Spearfish Day's Inn, first up unload the bikes and address this fork seal... sprayed down the fork and brakes (just in case), pried up the dust seal and I apparently did an amazing job with the SealMate..... wrapped a rag around the fork and zip-tied it, we'd see how successful this would be tomorrow...... our room had a bonus exterior door, so we parked the bikes there. It would start raining about 8 pm rather hard, and thunderboomers and rain went on until 2 a.m. No hail, it apparently went northeast into an adjacent county, some had pea-sized and others got golf balls which did a lot of damage.



We would stay in Spearfish 3 nights..... to be continued.

Man. You and fork seals! lol.

Loving the report.

We had the fortune of joining Ray at a ST gathering several years ago and we joined in on that group ride. I was skeptical, to say the least, having a large group of bikes on a "group" ride - call it PTSD from my Harley days. But they way they did it - yeah, it worked out great and we had a really good time - great riding (you know - all those flat, straight, boring roads in SE Ohio) and nice folks.

Looking forward to more stuff, Ray!

OK, we interrupt this report for a group ride lesson...... Yes, it's called Drop and Sweep, not sure who invented it but a lot of the credit goes to my old buddy Uncle Phil from Nashville, he owns 4 ST1100's and is quite the character. The leader will go, and when approaching a turn (or questionable area), will drop a Breadcrumb... that's rider #2, and it is his job to point the direction. He stays put until all are gone by and the Sweep arrives. Where it goes wrong is if the Breadcrumb doesn't wait for the Sweep, and part of the group gets lost. Your turn as Breadcrumb will come eventually. As far as the ride goes, a good leader "pulls" and everybody rides their own ride. It can get stretched out a long way, however, you are allowed to pass within the group if somebody is too slow..... provided safe to do so. With a good ride leader, it can be a lot of fun.

Tony The Car Guy is the young dude on the left at the ride meeting.... at one point I was #2 behind him going a good clip and the rest of the group was at least two minutes behind....he was right into a groove and didn't realise it. Next turn, I suggested we just stop and wait for everybody to catch up....

Back to the trip..... we're in Spearfish after the big thunderstorm, cool morning and we're headed on a route BigJohnSD took us on 6 years ago when he had his FJR.... off we go down the Spearfish Canyon Hwy, to Deadwood, then south to Keystone....

Pactola Reservoir





Main street Keystone where you can spend lotsa tourist dollars.... this is only the half of it all.



Chain saw carver has been here a while..... lotsa stuff to look at....





This pic on the way in.......



Ride right on by the main gate and go around for the profile view........



And here is a top secret pic that few Mericans even know about...... Mt. Rushmore from the Canadian side......



We next went on down to Hill City to a lesser travelled road BigJohn took us on.... it sorta follows a railway through the canyon and you cross the railway tracks about a dozen times... then on to the infamous Needles Highway...... wonder why they call it Needles?



This day there were a couple of rock climbers......









We left Needles and went down Hwy 89 and back up 85 to the Spearfish Canyon Road. Nice day, but it was windy blowing us around on the curves of 85..... back to Sylvan Lake....





Back in Spearfish, inspected the fork seal and no evidence of leakage!! Let's see what tomorrow brings........

Wednesday, we're going to visit Devil's Tower.... weather report, sunny and about 75F all day. It's not a particularly long ride, and we first loop up to Belle Fourche and across 212 to 112..... where we have to stop at the Stoneville Saloon out in the middle of nowhere...... Billy Fitz showed me this way back in 2016.





Darn, looks like we're gonna miss the big day........



After some breezy riding through the lovely high speed sweepers, we got down in the flats and we both pulled over to take a pic of the landscape.



Dean is parked beside me a bit further away..... I don't see anything near his rear tire, do you?



So we pull out, and immediately Dean is crying rear tire is flat, like almost instantly.... found the leak in a tread groove, but there was nothing in the tire. We walked back and could not find any shrapnel or anything. I installed a red sticky string, quite happy this would last the rest of the trip.



I wanted to stop in Hulett for a coffee at the cafe we'd visited years before.... every damned store and eating place was closed or not open until much later... on Wednesday? But looked like some places were struggling.....

So off we go, took a couple of pics, then rode in to the entrance..... a few cars blocking the way, and I see some longhorns and a couple of buffalo laying there grazing away behind the fence.... I snapped a quick pic and rode around the traffic jam, I just wanted to get a coffee. Meanwhile, Dean hung back took some pics of the animals and such.



Dean has been taking pics and riding around the tourist area at the entrance, meanwhile I'm drinking my $4 gift shop coffee that was $2 too much.... we had fully intended to pay the bucks to go in, but Dean now said he didn't want to.... so we left, went back out to the road and took some additional pics we thought would look nice....







We rode the Wyoming countryside and went into Sundance for lunch. There wasn't much open or going on, but I thought this place had promise, so we did a U-turn.....



We were greeted by an older server who had an amazing sense of (sarcastic) humour. We had a great time there, and it was recommended we have the homemade vegetable beef soup..... well, it was more like stew and very good.



I had the Philly steak sandwich and Dean had tacos..... both were quite good. They had homemade pies, but we apparently arrived too late. The locals stop in, and some buy whole pies... get there before noon....





We made our way down 585 to 85 again, and part way up 85 Dean says, this is a great road, I'm really enjoying it. I informed him we had ridden this same road yesterday but today we don't have to battle the wind..... we rode up Spearfish Canyon Road and arrived in Spearfish about 3:30, I was looking forward to a hot shower and an afternoon nap. While I turned towards the hotel, Dean said he was going to ride back down the Spearfish Canyon Road (and back) and take a bunch of pictures. He really liked that road.

When he got back, we loaded up the bikes.... still no evidence of fork leak and the fixed tire was doing great.

Don't kid anyone, We only show this view to our friends from the North

bigjohnsd wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 8:47 pm

Don't kid anyone, We only show this view to our friends from the North

That's certainly all they see as they look to their south.

I'm sitting in the shadow of devils tower right this very minute.

bungie4 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:23 pm I'm sitting in the shadow of devils tower right this very minute.

Well, you could have been sleeping in my guest room you douche!

Thursday June 16 - We're headed to the Outpost to park the trailer there, and near Buffalo, took a couple of shots of the Bighorns in the distance.... we'll see those on the way back....





Of course, we already knew at that point that flooding closed down the Red Lodge and the Beartooth, and Jellystone....... it would be some days later that Jellystone would open up the west gates... we weren't planning to go there this time anyway, but we'd have to see what was up with the Beartooth as time went on.



From I-90 we headed up 287 and the northern part above Townsend had a section of construction. The driving lanes were all washboard for miles and weren't maintained very well... but we got through it. We got settled in at the Outpost, bikes unloaded. Dean spend an inordinate amount of time repacking his bike since we were leaving the trailer there for the next coupla weeks... he overloaded IMHO and he'd pay for that later.......

Friday morning, we headed off taking I-15, Pterodactyl once said it was good riding as far as interstates go. We arrived at Butte, and I marvelled at the monster copper mining operation, but I didn't take any pics on the approach... we carried on to Hwy 43 that would take us over to Wisdom and on over to Hwy 93. Stopped at the Big Hole battleground for a quick pic, didn't go into the visitor center this time. This pic from the trail area below, lots of hikers and bicyclists.



Hwy 43 intersects 93 at the border between Montana and Idaho, and the Chief Joseph Pass is on the Continental Divide at over 7000 feet elevation. I first came here in 2007 when there were no guard rails and the trees were smaller. You could ride those twisties and think you were looking out into thin air, actually quite daunting to me in 2007.... Back then, an ST-Owner guy on a Goldwing went over the edge and it took over two weeks to find him, even knowing his last ping from his SPOT tracker. It was actually an ST guy found him after the official search parties kinda gave up.

The accident prompted guardrails, some were lanes widened and these days the trees are quite tall so you don't see as much of Big Sky.... and the twisty bits are still there. We rode north (down) to Sula for a planned lunch stop and to top off with fuel. Great homecooked lunch stuff if you're ever there, always good. Dean had the Farmer's burger and I had a grilled Reuben on homemade bread.





We headed back to the summit, played the twisties again, took some video (for later editing), and headed south.... this was a shot somewhere near Salmon, ID... The little sign said "Watch For Rock", and I thought.... how could I miss it?



We originally intended to stay in Challis or Stanley, but Challis was booked solid for some kind of marathon. Stanley was also booked solid and very expensive. I stumbled on an RV resort in between at Clayton, and was able to reserve a double-wide. Camp store, take-out food and gas pumps on site. The double wide was huge 3-bedroom thing, older but refurbed, kitchen, two baths, and laundry. All for $130. The place was busy with families on ATV's, trail bikes and side-by-sides, plenty of pickups, Jeeps and RV's.

As I was checking in, I discovered they had milkshakes made with fresh huckleberries. The owner told me how she had searched and waited for 3 months to get huckleberries. They're kinda sorta like Ontario wild blueberries but unique. Nobody will tell you where to get them, they grow wild and are hand-picked, and you may see the odd place selling huckleberry jam or other products. Well, I love them, so this was my real huckleberry milkshake.... although I didn't need the whipped cream, but it was freshly made too....



to be continued........

A "Great" road between Stanley and Clayton!

You should have stopped at the hot springs, we used to stop there every year on the way out from our annual Elk hunt.