Saturday, August 10, 2024 & Sunday, August 11, 2024
On the second day of the trip we left Elkhart, Indiana and continued west down I-80. We crossed into Illinois and cruised for a little bit then rode through a swarm of bugs. It honestly looked like a little black cloud, but by the time we saw them it was too late. They splattered everywhere! I even tried tucking my head down, and it helped a little, but not very much. We just kept riding and after completing about 100 miles, we stopped for fuel and decided to lube the chains since we did 800 miles in total. It was definitely time!
We kept riding until we reached Grand Island, Nebraska. It’s basically central Nebraska along I-70. My goal was to make Denver by mid afternoon on our third day so Eddie could see his cousin and we could visit our friend from home. So, I was getting a little bored and started to get truckers to honk. I giving them the signal and all of them did it. One guy didn’t have an air horn so he just used the steering wheel one. We finished the second day with about 715 miles.
On the third day we left the hotel knowing there would be a chance of thunderstorms. When we left it was very overcast and the radar showed possibility of storms, so we suited up before leaving. Shortly after leaving we hit some rain and then it turned into mist. It was like this for 300 miles, until we reached Big Springs, Nebraska. This is the very close to the northeast corner of Colorado. We were checking the weather and decided to take the rain gear off, and good thing we did. Colorado was 7 miles away and it immediately got hot and sunny. The weather prior to this was about 58 degrees, and shortly after arriving in Colorado it was in the mid 70’s.
There was nothing really interesting to see along the highway until we reached Colorado, but we did see a bunch of wind turbines and we also saw a handful of wind turbine blades being transported. It’s impressive how large they fan blades are when you’re up close to them. And we also saw corn, LOTS AND LOTS of corn! haha Basically corn and soy is what we could see.
When we finally split off I-80 onto I-76, there was a break from corn and soy. We could see a bunch of rolling hills for open range cattle. The scenery changed from very green with corn and soy, to a lot of golden brown. Eastern Colorado is desert-like, but technically, it’s the high plains.
We continued towards downtown Denver and visited Eddie’s cousin. We hung out there for a bit then went to see our friend Eric in Westminster, CO. We ended up hanging out there, going out to dinner, and spending the night
We finished the third day with about 400 miles which was a nice little break from two 700 mile days. The buns needed some rest!
Google photo album: Days 2 & 3
Adventures of Matty Q 