This weekend Kyle, my dad and myself, headed out to St. Louis. Why? That’s the starting location for this years Iron Butt Rally.
I wanted to run out there, see some bikes and meet some of the folks brave enough to attempt this rally.
We left Cincinnati at 8am Saturday and took a leisure ride out to St. Louis staying off the interstate and mostly on Route 50. We hit a few other squiggly roads when we could find them.
Our complete route was this:
The day started out really well, it was nice and cool, apropos 60 degrees, which can be chilly but we were ready for that. Somewhere about halfway through Indiana we hit a warm front and temps climbed rapidly. At 11am we were still under 80 degrees, buy noon we were well into the 90’s with a bucket load of humidity.
When we arrived in St. Louis, my bike said 103 degrees, dads said 107. It was hot. Route 50 west of Indiana pretty much blew, it’s flat and straight forever with very little to excitement. Was neat to see some of the country though.
In St. Louis we gawked at all the hardware and bikes equipped for the purpose… Riding 11 days non-stop to places yet unkown. The Aux fuel tanks, hydration systems, GPS gear, with backup gear, and aux lighting was all very impressive.
We stopped in and looked around for the folks that I wanted to meet. Unfortunately it was the end of a long hot day. They were getting cleaned up for the nights festivities and weren’t around. The hotel was booked solid (as we expected) so we needed to get rooms elsewhere. We headed up the road a bit and checked in to the luxurious St. Louis Hampton Inn. We showered and headed out to dinner.
After dinner there was a pretty significant storm was moving in so we didn’t head back to the other hotel. We talked about our route home, and cashed in our chips.
Sunday we left around 9am, and stopped at the arch.
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| From St Louis Aug … |
More photos are available in the gallery. We had a similar mixed ride home, about half highway, and half off the beaten path.
All told around 850 miles for the weekend, and it was hot and humid :/