Day 17: Home Sweet Home

Another annual Short Family Reunion has come and gone. We made it home at about 7:00 PM EST. We had another rainy day but made it home safe and sound. As with every trip of this sort, it is good to be home, but we miss all of our loved ones that we were able to spend time with. It is so hard having family spread all around the world because it is so hard to see them as often as we would like. I am thankful that we live in the day that we do so that we can stay connected so much easier.

I must admit, I have a real trooper for a wife. She was an awesome passenger and partner for 5,202 miles on the back of a motorcycle. This trip was a little bit more challenging than some of our others because our communications system between the helmets started acting up and we were not able to communicate as much as we would have liked. By the end of the trip, we had no connectivity at all. We are already talking about some of our next trips on the bike and one of the first things that we will replace will be this system.

Final results of the trip!

This year we traveled through 12 states.

For those of you, who followed our journey...Thank You! Remember, life is about the journey and not the destination. Enjoy the journey and share as much of it as you can with your loved ones.

Day 16: Rainy Day

Today was another long day, running about 530 miles. Fairly uneventful except for about 400 of those miles being in the rain, sometimes misty and sometimes hard. As with every long distance ride, we have to always plan to be flexible. On our first full day headed East we had 104 degrees most of the way and today mid-60's and rain. We live in such an awesome country with so much variability. I love so much being able to freely travel around at will.

A beautiful rainy summer day in Nebraska.

Laura took a picture of my view during the ride.

Ah, the joy of finishing up a long ride at dinner with your lovely wife...and of course she has the camera!

We ended up dropping back down to 80 so that we would miss the storms.

Day 15: The Adventure Home

Today was quite the adventure as we started our main push for home. We rested in a little longer than normal, which was probably a good thing. The route we chose was a little more direct so that we could optimize our time. That too seems to have been a good choice. The weather was beautiful in Cody and for most of our drive across Wyoming. The fun started as we entered into Nebraska.



See that red hook by Gering? We followed the edge of that storm as the GPS vectored us through the countryside. Laura kept wondering if it was going to drop into a funnel cloud. We only encountered a few sprinkles along the way, but apparently the core of the storm dropped 3-4 inches of rain along its path.



Laura's snapshot of the storm.




We made it to our destination, North Platte, Nebraska, about 11:00 PM just to find out that all of the hotels in the entire town were booked. Traveling on a motorcycle in this kind of variable weather makes it a little difficult to book ahead because you never know when you might have to stop early. Fortunately we found a hotel in the next town and put in a little over 600 miles. It looks like the adventure will continue as bad weather continues to settle in on the way home.