Mid July I flew with my friend and her partner to Los Angeles where I picked up a Triumph America 900cc as a rental and my friend bought a 2000 Harley Davidson Fatboy with 7,000 miles on it. We rode from LA out through Zion, Bryce Canyon, Route 12 & 24, Canyonlands, Million Dollar Highway, Rocky Mountains, Denver and up to Sturgis, South Dakota for the huge motorbike rally held there every year.
Every year about half a million bikes arrive to celebrate bike week. Next year it will be the 80th anniversary and the tally of bikes will no doubt be even greater. Kent flew out to join me for a week of fun at Sturgis Buffalo Chip (10 minutes outside Sturgis) where they have fun going on all day and at least 3 performers at concerts every night. Some of the performers we saw were, Skid Row, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Godsmack, Collective Soul, Styx, Dee Snider, Disturbed, Keith Urban, Snoop Dog, Toby Keith and many more.
My friend and her partner, who has never ridden on a motorbike before and rode behind his Mrs for nearly 6,000 miles, headed off after 4 days over to Milwaukee to the Harley Davidson Museum and on down Route 66. I headed south from Sturgis after it finished and met them in Santa Rosa then we continued on Route 66 until after viewing the Grand Canyon and heading to Kingman we headed up to Las Vegas.
A day and a half in Las Vegas was fun, we stayed at Treasure Island and explored around there then the second night was spent on Freemont St which was lots of fun. The days were getting hot so we headed back to LA early and found ourselves a hotel near the airport. My friend took her HD to the Logistics company to be shipped to NZ and I returned my rental.
It was an absolutely fabulous trip, we only got rained on once for about 2 minutes otherwise the weather was perfect wherever we were. We met lots of interesting and fun people and travelled a LOT of miles. I rode for 31 days and 4500 miles. We had some wonderful experiences and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I'm now home again (2 days) and trying to adjust to the change in lifestyle, termperature and non movement haha