4th of July Weekend Trip

Somebody tell me please how we got to the 4th of July so fast this year?? Seems like it was just the 1st day of spring last week and now we’re in the middle of summer already……

Anyhow, with the 4th falling on a Tuesday and not enough vacation time to take a week off at a time I decided to make the holiday into another extended weekend like we did over Memorial Day weekend and take another bike trip. This time I decided to go in the opposite direction and revisit an area that we’d been to over a 4th of July weekend back in 1984. The area I’m talking about is Southwestern Wisconsin, Platteville in particular. Back in 1984 my buddy Dan was living out there and going to school, so my bride and myself took a bike trip over a long 4th of July weekend and went out for a visit. Without recapping that entire trip now I’ll just say that there were places we visited that I wanted to see again and figured that now was as good a time as any so……..

Friday afternoon, after getting out of work, I stopped by the credit union to pick up some spending money and then went home and packed the bike. The plan for the Friday portion of the trip was to go as far as Hobart Indiana, where the oldest daughter is currently staying with her in-laws, spend the night there and then take off for Western Wisconsin first thing Saturday morning. We left home about 5:30pm and headed down 31. The ride down was mostly uneventful except for an incident with the bike cover. On the last trip I had it stuffed down between the handle bars and windshield and it rode there for the entire 6 days without a problem, but this trip, somewhere past South Haven, all of a sudden it decided to launch itself into the air. It took a second or two and a couple 100 yards to come to a stop on the side of the road. Once we got stopped Chris took off back up the road to retrieve the errant bike cover. From my spot with the bike I could see cars dodging the bag and I was hoping Chris could get to it safely before somebody mutilated 80 bucks worth of bike cover. After a couple minutes to hike back up the road, he waited until traffic was clear and then ran out and scooped it up. I decided when he got back to the bike that one time doing that was enough and put the cover on the top of the packs, under the netting for the remainder of the trip.

We didn’t stop again until we got to the Michigan City rest area. 10 minutes later we were back on the road. I got within two miles of Jen’s current residence before I had to call for final landing instructions…..turned out we went one exit too far, but that wasn’t too bad seeing how I was operating on memory…..I left the map at home, duh.

We found the house easily with the instructions and pulled in the driveway, got unloaded, met the in-laws. Dinner was only a couple minutes away and they’d put on quite the feast….steak on the grill that was excellent, mashed taters, corn and even green onions. After stuffing ourselves we kicked back for awhile and shot the breeze, met all their dogs and played with Ryan for a bit. It was almost 10:00pm when we made a run to the local DQ with Jen driving to get desert. A little bit after we got back it was pretty much bedtime for everyone so we joined in too, to get a good nights rest for the journey next day.

Saturday morning I woke up at 6am. The house was quiet so as to not wake sleeping babies or dogs I went outside and sat in the morning sun. I ended up dozing off for awhile and waking up to the sounds of flowers being watered with a hose about 8am. Mr. Polgar said breakfast was about ready at that point so I headed indoors to the dinner table for a morning feast that equaled the previous night’s dinner. There were eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and biscuits and gravy…more than I could possibly stuff down the pipe. After breakfast we hung around until about 9:30am and then said our goodbyes, jumped on the bike and headed towards the Windy City, Chicago.

In typical fashion I gave my rider the choice as to going around or thru the metropolitan area and he, also in typical fashion, said go into the belly of the whale. So, that’s what we did……Traffic was a bitch to put it mildly. No surprise there. Major construction on the Dan Ryan into town kept us considerably below the speed limit, but we never came to a stand still either, so we counted our blessings as we headed out the North side of downtown. I decided to take 90 (Toll Road) and head west toward Rockford, just to get away from the disgusting urban sprawl, but traffic was even worse on the toll road and we ended up creeping the bike for about 2 miles just to get to the damn toll booth. Figuring that that was a freak occurrence we pulled into the first oasis we came to and took a break for about 45 minutes. After ingesting and expelling fluids we jumped back on the bike and continued westward. I’d planned on jumping off the toll road after we got past Elgin, but before we got to Elgin there was another toll booth and another long line to suffer thru. At that point I said that’s enough of that and we got off at the next exit and headed South a couple miles until we hooked up with routes 20 & 72 West. From that point on the ride became enjoyable again and more rural the further West we traveled.

Our next stop was in Genoa Il. It was warm there, high 80’s and you could smell rain, but we’d yet to see any. We talked to a guy at the gas station who suggested we hang around town and check out the races and fireworks at the track later that night and if we’d had a couple extra days to burn I’d probably took him up on his suggestion. As it was time was going to be an issue so we thanked him for the info and headed onward towards the far reaches of Illinois and Wisconsin.

As we went thru one small town later in the afternoon we did get rained on for a couple minutes, but not even enough to consider getting out the rain gear. Out in Western Illinois the roads were mostly good and got hilly as we got closer to the Mississippi, making for an enjoyable cruise. We took a break before we reached the Wisconsin border in a small town called Pearl City. Got a drink and a candy bar and shot a couple pics, including this one of "downtown" Pearl City.

Once we passed the Welcome to Wisconsin sign and entered the land of cheese we were within an hour of our destination, Platteville. Only problem was that there was a detour on route 11, due to a bridge being out for repairs and the ensuing detour took us about 30 miles out of our way. Pretty irritating when we're that close to the destination to have to add miles to the trip, but what are you going to do? We had to stop in Darlington Wi, for fuel (they even had a race track there! :-O ) and then it was just a short run to Platteville from there.

It was just about 5:00pm when we pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel. We got a room and then went across the parking lot to Ed’s Diner for supper. Now generally it’s not a good idea to eat in a place that’s attached to a gas station, but ole Ed had his act together and I had an excellent steak with onions, mushrooms and melted cheese…(hey, it’s Wisconsin), mashed taters and finished the meal off with a big Chocolate malt made the old fashioned way. After our meal fit for highway ramblers, it was time to cruise out Northeast of town to the fabled “M”.

The weather was iffy at this point, looked like it could rain any minute and it was darker than it should’ve been for the time of the evening it was, but we soldiered on to the parking lot at the bottom of the mound. Thanks to the weather we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was one other car present and the folks from it were already at the top, but otherwise, the hill was ours for the taking. On the way past the big farm at the bottom of the hill I’d noticed a late 40’s early 50’s Pontiac sticking out of one of the barn doors so before we hiked up to the summit I walked back down the road to the barn to get some pics of the classic old car / barn scene. Were I a wealthy man I’d have gone and knocked on the door to the house and asked if it was for sale, but being painfully aware of my current limitations I settled for a half dozen shots and then hiked back up to the park at the base of the mound.

The weather was getting more iffy (or is it iffier?), with lightning and thunder off in the distance, so we started up the steps to get in whatever time at the top we could before the weather got inhospitable. It took a couple rest stops to make it to the top, but once up there the view was as cool as I remembered it being 22 years ago. As far as you could see in every direction was a patchwork of farmland, dotted with homesteads that looked to be islands in a sea of various shades of green and gold. The folks already at the top were friendly and asked if I’d take a couple pics of them with the orange and red sunset sky behind them. I did that and then shot some of them for myself too with the sun breaking thru the clouds as a red ball just off the horizon. Lightning continued to flash off to the west of us as we chatted a bit and then as the sun disappeared they said goodbye and headed off back down the steps to the parking lot. We stayed on top for awhile longer, until it was pretty much as dark as it was going to get that night. When it started to spit rain we decided it was time to call it a day and headed down the stairs, fired up the bike and went back to the motel for the night. It wasn’t long after a hot shower that the lights went off and we headed for dreamland.

I don’t like to waste much time sleeping when I’m traveling…..I can sleep at home, so our wakeup call for Sunday morning was at 6am. I got the bike packed and got things ready while Chris tried to get the sleep out of his eyes. By 6:30am we were on the bike and headed back out to the “M” for a morning visit. The weather didn’t look much better in the morning than it did the night before, but when you’re only somewhere for a short while you just plug on ahead and hope for the best. We got to the parking lot and climbed the steps up to the top again and took in the view for awhile. We explored the South side a bit but there was a chance for quite a fall so we didn’t hang around there long. I shot a bunch of pics and then as we were about to come down I heard the clip clop of horses’ hooves and around the bend came an Amish buggy at a good clip. When we got back down to ground level several more buggies went by in procession, no doubt on their way to morning services.

We decided, once the buggies had disappeared down the road, to say goodbye to the “M” and head out for Dickeyville and The Grotto while the weather was still bearable. We took the new highway that went thru Platteville all the way to Dubuque Iowa and got to Dickeyville in about 10 minutes. The road was wet as we pulled into town and followed the signs to the Grotto. It started to spit rain as we parked the bike and headed into the grounds. We spent the next hour and a half taking pictures, wandering the grounds and dodging raindrops. After 22 years away I was impressed at how much I remembered about the placeand spent a fair amount of time looking for items that I’d photographed the 1st time I was there, that I wanted to shoot again. With the weather not being all that agreeable and our stomachs growling from lack of breakfast we decided to pack it in and head down the street to Valentines Restaurant for a farmer’s Style breakfast.

After a breakfast fit for a king (Dinner plate sized pancakes and a pile of hashbrowns) we waddled out to the bike, fired it up and headed for DuBuque Iowa. It had been raining while we were having breakfast but had pretty much stopped by the time we left Dickeyville. We made the short highway ride into DuBuque, going over the bridge spanning the Mississippi. We had no plans to stop anywhere, I just wanted to cross the river a couple times and add another state to our conquests so we headed south out of town on Route 52. I was hoping we'd have a view of the river from the road, but for the most part it was not to be. We made a fuel stop on the outskirts of Bellevue IA and then cruised thru old downtown, where mainstreet ran alongside the river. We parked the bike and walked around for awhile, checked out the sights and watched a tugboat go up river thru one of the locks. We'd pulled into town just about the time that their 4th of July parade was coming to an end and remanents of the parade were leaving downtown as we strolled around. One of those remenants was a old Model A with a bunch of folks in it dressed up to be the Beverly Hillbillies and as they came down the street I got out in the middle of the road and shot a couple frames of them as they went on by. I'll bet the whole parade woulda been a good time with participants like those folks

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With threatening skies overhead we decided to jump back on the bike and continue on along the river. We suffered thru some rain as we rode South but it never got bad enough to stop and put on the raingear. When we got to the junction of 52 and 64 we decided to jump over the river back into Illnois and take 84 south. so that decision made we headed thru the little riverside town of Sabula. I couldn't help but wonder as we cruised thru a half dozen streets if anybody from Sabula had even been to Grand Haven. When we made the turn East to head over the bridge we both kinda made a "yikes" sound as we saw what we'd have to drive over. It was a blue bridge, a tall bridge and a skinny bridge, all of which would've been no problem had it not been for the fact that this old bridge's roadway was entirely steel grating. NOT my favorite surface to ride on but at that point we were committed to make the crossing so up, up and over we went....as a whopping 25mph as I tried to keep the back end and the front end of the bike pointed in the same direction. We managed to make it to the other side without incident, to be welcomed by a "Welcome to Illinois" sign and decided right then was a damn fine time for a break. So we parked the bike and took a breather while I took some shots of this bridge, built in the early '30's by the people that made up the commuities of the area. I took a pic of the plaque posted at the entrance, but I don't think it's readable at the size I'd post here so here's what it said.....

"The loyalty and courage of the people in the communitites along the "shortened route", which has been created by this river crossing, are the things which have made this structure possible. Realizing the neccessity of providing more adequate transportation facilities to keep up with the ever increasing demand of traffic and desiring to stimulate even futher commercial intercourse between the states of Iowa and Illinois, as well as to provide for the comfort and convenience of the motor traveling public, the citizens of the communities along this route have banded together in a common effort to turn their dreams into a physical reality. With boundless faith and unlimited courage they have carried on thru every hazard, meeting each rebuke with renewed energy and increased determination to win. The physical results of their efforts are here before you in these bridges and connecting highways. the less tangible results of promoting the common welfare can only be measured in the years of service ahead. To these, the communites along the new route between Chicago and Cedar Rapids, we dedicate this bridge". (Dated December 1, 1932). I could close my eyes after reading that and see model A's coming up and over that bridge on their way to Chicago or Cedar Rapids and thinking nothing about a couple of goofballs on a motorcycle 70 years later. When built that bridge must've been quite the structure. I'm almost surprised it hasn't been condemned and closed by today's standards. At any rate if I'm ever out that way on the bike again I do believe we'll take another bridge across the mighty Mississippi. Steel grating and rain ain't the best combo for safe traveling on two wheels, especially over a big ole river.

After we'd caught our breath we got back on the bike and continued South towards US 80. We made a couple other stops before getting to 80, not really being in a hurry to get anywhere at that point and knowing we would be sleeping somewhere along US 80 in Illinois for our last night out. Once we got going East on 80 the "trip's over lets go on home" mentality set in and we tried to cover some ground before the end of the day. About 6:00pm we reached Ottawa Illinois and decided that was as good a place to stop for the night as any so we pulled off the freeway and into the parking lot of the Super 8 motel. We got a room, got directions to a good place to have dinner and found it with no problem. After dinner we just headed back to the room and kicked back for the rest of the evening. We had about 4 to 5 hours of road time left to get home the next day so we cut ourselves some slack and had the wakeup call come in at 7:00am.

When the phone rang the next morning I jumped up and started to get things around. We got the bags battened down on the bike one last time and then at Chris' request had breakfast at the Dunkin' Donuts. After ingesting the sugar buzz materials purchased there we got on the bike and put the hammer down. Not much to see between Ottawa Illinois and the Michigan state line so, except for a fuel stop, we hauled butt until we got to the Welcome to Michigan rest area. It was also about that time that the skies opened up and finally decided to rain on us in a serious fashion. So we put the rain gear on and headed for home. We arrived in South Haven, minus the rain that we'd left behind, about lunch time and after one last fuel stop we hit the local Wendy's for lunch. After wolfing down Wendy's version of a Taco salad we got back on the bike for the final hour's worth of ride and pulled into the driveway just about 2:30pm. Total miles for this trip were somewhat less than our first journey to Virginia, but we did 910 miles in 4 days and saw some interesting stuff. It'll probably be the last bike trip for this year cuz there's too many other things that need to be taken care of now that it's July already and none of my chores for June got taken care of......at any rate it was an enloyable ride and I'm looking forward to the next time, whenever that may be........stay tuned.

For all the pics of the whole trip click HERE.

Tom