Monday 29th June
We were woken up at about 2:30 this morning to the sound of thunder and a chorus of car alarms. It was the loudest storm I have ever heard there was almost no time between the lightning and thunder and the rain was torrential. Very glad we were not riding in it.
By the time we got up the storm had stopped and the sun was out in full force. First stop was Sturgis Motorsports to get the front tyre fitted, thankfully they had ordered it in as requested and fitted it straight away. We were on our way by about 10:30 Sturgis is a strange town it's whole life seems to evolve around one week of the year. Sturgis Bike Week, it's the only reason we went there and I am sure many people go there throughout the year because of its reputation, they estimate that there will be 1.2million people attending this year as it's the 75th anniversary. There are bars that have been built that only open for the rally. The campsites seemed to go on for miles out of town, with big marquees being set up. There was one camp site quite away out of town called the Broken Spoke Camp Ground that had a massive barn / bar where they were prepping it for the bike week. I'm glad we rode through well before and not during, it sounds like a nightmare week. We were heading to North Dakota and the Enchanted highway.

The enchanted highway is just another straight road but someone had decided to build these large metal structures along it.

Tuesday 30th June
Damp start to the day, light drizzle of rain but not cold. We had a long ride ahead of us and after the heat of the last few days I was glad of the cooler weather. We had a few light showers throughout the day we stopped at a small town in the middle of nowhere called Gregory in South Dakota.

Wednesday 1st July
Another cool day, well high 70s very pleasant. We rode to Nebraska and had a look around the Ashfall Fossil State Park, where they are still digging up fossils. They have built a big shed over the dig with viewing areas. The stuff they unearth is very interesting but can't imagine any thing worse than spending the amount of time they do carefully excavating the fossils, it looks about as interesting as watching paint dry. At least you could sit back with a beer or three and watch the paint dry.

From there we went to Sioux City in Iowa for lunch and decided that there was nothing here worth staying for so set off towards Minneapolis stopping in the middle of nowhere for the night. We covered close to 400 miles to day and the amount of bends in the road were few and far between.
There is nothing but farms in this neck of the woods and big farms at that, fields of crops as far as the eye can see for hundreds of miles for the past days, not sure how many days it seems endless.

Thursday 2nd July
The weather was perfect today as we rode to Minnesota. Really not sure how or why we came to Minnesota I think someone somewhere said it was really good, but just another big city.

Friday 3rd July
Another perfect day for biking, on our way out of Minneapolis we stopped off at the Mill City Museum.

It was part of the old Flour mill that was destroyed many years ago. The tour was quite interesting as they had restored the freight elevator and installed seating and the tour went up and down to different floors and at each level they had built replicas of the actual mill and its workings plus added some dramatic lighting and sound effects. The view from the top was pretty cool too.
From there we were heading along the side of the Mississippi River to Davenport, to check out a glass bridge. The ride along the side of the river was fantastic, good winding roads running through great country side and in and out of lots of picturesque towns. By the time we had reached a small town called McGregor we decided to stop there for the night.

We found a dingy over priced hotel in the middle of town that had no internet or hot water. Not one of our better choices.

But once showered we went in search of food. We stopped off in a tiny bar for a quick drink and got chatting to some locals, well not from the town but from the state. We got chatting and were given a list of things to do if we were to stay more than one night. Had the hotel been better we would of stayed another night, In no time at all we were finishing our second drink and felt the need for food, we were recommended a place just across the street where we treated ourselves to a steak.

Saturday 4th July
We were up quite early as there were no curtains either in this hotel and the blind was broken so sunlight blazing through the windows a noisy air con unit and a fridge that kept making the strangest of noises did give us much choice. We set off to Spook Cave. For a boat tour through what was a long winding narrow cave that had water running through it. It was called spook cave as years ago the entrance was too narrow to enter and people could hear strange noises so they dynamited it to gain access and than dynamited loads more of it so they could turn it in to a tourist attraction.

Once back on the road We stopped off Le Clare and had a look around the Antique Archeology shop from the TV show American Pickers. From there we headed back north as we could not get a hotel we eventually found a place in Dubuque.