2004 — From Big to Small

We started out the 2004 trip with the largest contingent the OFMC had ever seen. And then, by the time it was over, there weren't more than two stud bikers arriving home together at any one time. Call this the year of individuality. And by the way, the photos this year are courtesy of Johnathon.

Roll call: The usual three, John, Ken, and Bill. The sons, Jason and Johnathon. The son's buddies, Randy and Todd. And Dennis, the soon-to-be brother-in-law of Bill. We had one Harley (Bill); one Kawasaki (Ken); and six Hondas, three of them VTXs (Randy, Johnathon, Todd), a Gold Wing (Dennis), and two Shadows (John, Jason).

The destination was Deadwood, with sights set on the Beartooth. Staying flexible, however, led to a very different trip than expected.

We left Denver on Saturday morning, blasting out I-76 to Sterling before turning north for Nebraska. Alliance was definitely in the plans, as we intended to revisit Car Henge, which Ken and Bill and John had just stumbled upon some years earlier.

Car Henge didn't happen. We thought we were on the right road but as we rolled on and on it became clear that we had somehow missed it. John thinks he's clear on where it is now, so next time we go up this way we hope to find it.

Our destination for the first night was Hot Springs, SD, and we did find that. Checked into the nice little place up on the hill where we have stayed before.

We also managed to find the Needles Highway the next day, which we had looked at before but had never been on. This was every bit as great a motorcycle road as we had been told it was. Gotta love those pigtail bridges. And of course we stopped at Mount Rushmore.

Arriving in Deadwood on Sunday night we were in for a treat. It seems we had just chanced to arrive in town on the day when the Neville Brothers were doing a free concert on the main street of town. Laws prohibiting carrying open containers on the streets were temporarily set aside and we joined the crowd eating, drinking, and listening to some great music.

Of course, Deadwood also has gambling, so after the concert it was time for more drinking and for a lot of money to pass out of our hands into the pockets of the casinos. It was at this point that the young guys showed the older guys just how much money they had that they could afford to piss away.

The evening ran very long for some, so it was no real surprise the next morning that some bikers didn't have any inclination to press on. No problem, that just meant another night in Deadwood. We didn't have a schedule. Plenty of good riding in the Black Hills. But on this third day we lost the first of the crew. Randy needed to head home, and he did.

Fully recovered the next day, we headed down the canyon to Sturgis. Bike Week had come and gone several weeks before so the town was mostly shut down. But the Knuckle Saloon was open and we joined the very sparse crowd inside. Then we prowled the town a bit, bought a few t-shirts and other proof that we had been there. Having done Sturgis, it was now time for Jason and Todd to turn toward home, while the remaining five of us headed west on I-90.

Of course we didn't intend to stay on the superslab for long, so at Spearfish we got back on the two-lane and looped our way toward Devil's Tower. Along the way we passed through Hulett and were struck with how nice a little town it was. We hadn't gone 100 miles but what the heck, let's see if that motel has some rooms. It did and we checked in. Again, spontaneity struck.

It was a very lazy day, which included a run out to Devil's Tower and some drinking there. As evening fell we found our entertainment in watching the local critters pursuing their various interests along the trails on the other side of the stream from our motel. The simple life.

In the morning it was time to move along, with Sheridan and the Bighorn Mountains in our sights. There was no hope of doing the Beartooth now, not after these divergences from the plan, but there was a place in the Bighorns that we had spotted on an earlier trip that was looking mighty appealing. We cruised on up and found the place but the folks running it were weird. Kind of reminiscent of "The Shining." John especially was of a mind to head on to another place he remembered. So we did, but when we got there it turned out that it cost more than twice what the other place did, so we went back.

Back at the first place it seemed no one wanted to be bothered to check us in. Ken got pushy about it and they finally saw fit to take our money. There was food, shelter, warmth, nature, and all in all it was a pretty nice place to stay. But it rained during the night and when Dennis went out to his Gold Wing in the morning he found that the kick-stand had sunk into the wet dirt and fallen over. No harm done, though.

From there we headed down through Thermopolis, through Lander, through Green River, with intentions of stopping somewhere around I-80. There wasn't anywhere to stop, however, so we pushed on to the foot of the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, to Manila. Ken was strongly in favor of stopping here—his butt was in serious pain—but the other guys were disinclined, so we pushed on to Vernal.

Vernal was the last night for the group. Come morning Johnathon was hot to get home and he took off alone on his own. The other four got a lazier start and rode to Dinosaur, where three plans diverged. Bill and Dennis were interested in a Saturday night in Steamboat Springs. John needed to head south in the direction of his new home south of Montrose. Ken wasn't interested in Steamboat, but was interested in some roads he hadn't been on before. So Dennis and Bill stayed on U.S. 40 and went to Steamboat, and on home the next day. John and Ken took the road south together as far as Rangely, and then parted ways. John reached home that day as planned and Ken, who planned to stop for the night somewhere, ended up going all the way home, too.

And I'm not putting all those different single-person and two-person routes on this map. Dennis and Bill were out the longest, so their route home serves as the official one. A pretty dang good ride, wasn't it?

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