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Tuesday July 23, 2013
Breakfast was in the attached restaurant and was complimentary. Our room was $119 last night. In two weeks when the Sturgis Rally is in full swing, the same room goes for $349 a night. Glad we stopped in early.
We hit the road towards Rapid City at around 7:30am. I wanted to stop by the Harley dealer there to see if they could replace the left highway peg. They had some Harley stuff, but I would have had to buy a full set. I may have to do that anyway, but I can wait till I get home and take my time picking out what I really want. They had a rally tent set up with a huge number of new and used bikes.
After a quick gas stop we were finally on the road toward Norfolk, NE. I-90 isn't a bad road, traffic was light, the weather was cool and construction was minimal. The advantage of the interstate is that when there is construction, they just send you over to the other side and you keep moving. You don't have to ride through the mess.
After our first gas stop we could see a dark cloud in the North off to our left. There was even lightening in it. You could tell it was an angry storm and it was chasing us along the highway. We could soon see another storm in front of us, but we never seemed to get any closer to it.
We stopped for lunch/gas at a place in Chamberland, SD call AL's OASIS. They have a restaurant and gift shop as usual and a grocery store and camping. Lunch was good and inexpensive. I had to take a customer call so we stopped for over an hour. Just as we were starting out again we started to get a drizzle from the storm to our East. Nothing serious, just enough to wet the road some.
After about 50 miles we pulled over for a nap break. Lunch and the warming weather was beginning to take it's toll and Jon needed a quick 3 minutes to close his eyes on a park bench. It seemed to have worked because he made it another 2 1/2 hours to Norfolk.
We turned south off of I-90 onto State route 81 which would take us all the way into Norfolk. As we headed South the scenery turned from grassland to corn. Especially after we crossed the border into Nebraska. The landscape turned a little hillier and there was corn as far as you could see in all directions. At the tops of the hills all you could see was corn, corn and more corn. Now I know why they call it the Corn Husker State. Oh, there was a cow or two along the way as well.
Our last gas stop before the 90 mile run to Norfolk was in Freeman, SD. One of only about 3 or 4 towns between I-90 in South Dakota and 275 in Nebraska. The roads in Nebraska aren't as well kept as in South Dakota either.
So far on this trip we have made no reservations for hotels. We stopped in at the Hampton Inn in Norfolk and were told they were booked up. The lady said that there are a lot of corporate headquarters in Norfolk (go figure) and that they are booked up every Mon, Tue and Wed. We went down the road a few blocks and found a Rodeway Inn with rooms. So far our cheapest room of the trip. We ate at the BIG RED sports bar right next door to the hotel. The food there was good and reasonable priced. This place has beach volleyball courts out in the back.
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Copyright (C) 2004-2013, Larry Manka. all rights reserved.
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