Springfield Ride Report, Part 1

My current excuse to ride is my Springfield quest. This could be a nod to the Simpsons, I suppose, butt more likely it’s just an excuse. To pursue them all, I’ll need to trek from the Midwest to Maine, Florida, California, Oregon, and 29 other states in the process. My most recent extended kitchen pass sent me west last August, through more small towns that I could ever remember, except for the Springfields. This, by the bye, is my first ride report, submitted for your edification in three parts, at a mere 0.52 words per mile.

Party of the First Part.

I suppose I could have left the house before dark on the first day, butt there was a certain appeal to staying in bed for a few more hours before an extended trip away from the wife. Besides, all I need to do was get from the Twin Cities to Des Moines by suppertime. I eventually saddled up before noon, and took a leisurely run south down mostly straight two-laners, taking the available time to check out my old haunts through central and north-central Iowa. In Des Moines, I’d stay with B, a life long friend and occasional riding bud. He and his Buell would join me and my FJR for the first few days of this trip.

For a host of reasons, I haven’t seen that Buell much, and am often surprised at the lack of miles. Unfortunately for it, its owner/rider works too much, parents too much, coaches too much, does other things too much to get out and spank the thing regularly. As a result, B really needed a long ride, on which I was more than pleased to accompany him. The key for his participation was to block out the time a year in advance, and accept no excuses to reschedule or decline. I’m not nearly so hard to accommodate (was that a hat dropping?).

Our first day would be a Saddlesore to Santa Rosa, New Mexico (B’s first). We had a few hours of rain in the morning (or what was left of the night) butt otherwise enjoyed a mild, calm, and overcast day. Rode the slab to Wichita, then veered west on US 400. Dodge City was a shock, having never before seen a slaughterhouse as big as a Chrysler plant (although you can’t usually smell automotive manufacturing from a mile away). US 56 brought us to Copeland, Kansas, where they advertise some old round barn as a tourist destination. I thought the real attraction to Copeland was on the north side of SR 144 on the west side of town, where some obsessed individual has festooned a half mile of fence with caricatures of local and national figures fabricated from steel plate. US 160 brought us to Springfield, Colorado, for fuel and a few captured images near the “Welcome to” sign. We rode south to Amarillo, then west on the slab to Santa Rosa, chasing the last of the sun into town and our motel.

The next morning we were up before the sun, needing to ride to the south rim of the Grand Canyon by early afternoon to complete a Bunburner. Slab, slab, slab. Ho hum. Turned north at Flagstaff to Cameron, then west on SR 64, which has been improved somewhat in the twenty plus years since I was last on it, including better Native American trinket and flat bread sales facilities and miles of brand spanking new asphalt cement concrete pavement. IMMHO, the posted speed limited could have been raised (IMMHOTPSLCHBR). We arrived with hours to spare on our Bunburner, and the Ranger was happy to witness our finish in exchange for buying a couple of annual passes. After a few obligatory pictures of our bikes at the rim, we set up camp, took a long hike, checked out the new interpretive center, pestered another Ranger, talked to multiple tourists from foreign (mostly) and domestic (less so) lands, cooked a simple meal, paid for showers and retired.

With the certified rides out of the way, some of the pressure was off, butt we still had our agendas: I needed a few more Springfields before I went back to Minnesota and B wanted to return to Iowa via our old scout camp on Norway Lake in the Upper Peninsula. We kept up the pace. How could we not? The weather was ideal, the landscapes fantastic and we had established a suitable rhythm. The first one awake would chastise the other for sleeping so long, and then we would break camp. At the first fuel stop, there would be coffee and gas station breakfast burritos (GSBBs). Then we’d ride until almost dark, taking 10-15 minute fuel breaks every 180-200 miles, with the final fill just before the end of the day. Dinners were after we had set up camp, and were either rehydrated food packs or a few more of the MRE’s I brought back from Baghdad (thems good eatin’).

From the Canyon, we backtracked a little until heading north on US 160 through Tuba City and Cow Springs, both of us were tempted to stop every mile or so along US 191 through Monument Valley, butt decided independently that pictures could never do the place justice. I was torn between riding slower to get better views of each edifice and riding faster to see what view the next mile would bring. Too much of this slow/fast stuff would trash my tires, so I decided to continue apace. Out of Moab, we followed that twisty canyon up the Colorado to Cisco, and then ran the slab east into Colorado again.

At Loma we turned north to wind up and down the Douglas Pass, though Dinosaur (I don’t think that was always the name of this place) and Vernal. Much of this day was through steep and open range and I couldn’t reason if the dead cattle I saw had been whacked by traffic, or had fallen to their deaths from far above the highway. I kept an eye on the uphill side of the road, just in case. South of Rangely, we outran a rainstorm by speeding into it, arriving under a gas station canopy just as the deluge began. We set up camp with the last of the sunlight just upstream of the dam at Flaming Gorge, at a National Recreation Area site down five miles of aggregate of which the Buell and its rider failed to enjoy.

The next morning was electric – as in, cold enough to require the Widders. It was my day to take the lead, which turned out to be the Fates smiling back at me, as B leads with a slightly less spirited pace than I do, and the run up US 191 into Wyoming required more sprit. We were met with beautiful pavement, no traffic, stunning views, fantastic sweepers, all climbing for twenty miles or so until we reached a magnificent plateau, seemingly higher than the adjacent mountains. Truly a laugh out loud, top of the world experience (although there was no one to hear my laugh at a buck plus the rest of the way to Rock Springs). Obviously, IMMHOTPSLCHBR.

We continued northwest, becoming only slightly lost in Jackson (distracted by an attractive tourist, I failed to see the route make a left turn in the middle of town), and then into Grand Teton N.P. where we had done some backpacking what seemed a century ago. This was a fitting final stop for the both of us, as we would part ways at Yellowstone, just a few miles north. Here I recalled sharing the same path in our youth, before separating to find our own ways as adults, only to return to the same trail decades later. Sort of weepy, butt who had time for that? We said our goodbyes and ran north into Yellowstone, B exiting out the east side and I the west side into Idaho and my newest least favorite place in America, Idaho Falls. I might have felt differently about Idaho Falls, butt only if this part of the ride had been less miserably hot and less strongly headwinded. Butt it was, and more so than the Oklahoma panhandle in 2004, which had previously held the least favorite place honor.

On the west side of American Falls Reservoir, on SR 39, is a barely corporated yet important little burg. My two immediate goals were to ride out of the heat, and to collect another Springfield. As it turns out, the Springfield was the easy part. The heat only quit once the air conditioner at the El Rancho motel in Twin Falls had been cranked for an hour. I planned an early departure for the next morning, assuming that the heat would continue across Nevada.