MotorCycle Adventures by Mark: Day-10 / 144 miles

Well we made it home. Day 10 started early for us as last night, I was tired. I was in bed by 9 and asleep by 9:01. We were up, dressed and packed and eating breakfast by 8 this morning. The trip home was uneventful. No rain, not much traffic and no road construction to deal with. It was a good feeling turning onto our street. got everything unpacked. I changed clothes, got me a beer and headed for the pool. Loray changed clothes and headed for her plants and gave them a good watering.
This trip was an awesome trip for us. To me, the best thing about it was being able to spend it with some one you love. It was a dream of mine, from many years ago to be a Long Rider. Now, we are a member of that club. As we did this time last year, now we will wait in anticipation of our ride next year about this time. For the next 4 or 5 years, we have places that we have talked about going and next years ride will either be to Colorado to see some real mountains or to California to ride the Pacific Coast Highway. Loray has been to Colorado before and says that I would really like it there. So not sure which one, but either one will not be a bad ride. There will be things that we will do different next trip, as this one was a leaning thing for us. One thing is that I will not push to make that extra mile. we will do a better job at planning the days ride and keep it at a more enjoyable ride, each day.. try not to plan so many places to see, you just cant get it all in. We missed alot of neat places to see and visit on this ride. Oh well, I guess we will just have to go back and visit some of the places that we didn't get to see.
On this ride, we averaged about 38 to 41 MPG. that's riding 2 up with a lot of luggage. We spent an average of around $87.00 a night on hotels, except the one night in Charleston, where we paid around $190.00 for the night. That guy kinda put the screws to us that night, but we didn't have much of a choice, other than getting back on the bike and riding some more, so we just sucked it up and paid. I think we estimated that we spent some where around $320.00 on gas. We saved about $800.00 from the start of this year to spend on gas and food and we spent a little over that.

I'm thinking about doing a write up/review on our 2010 Harley Davidson Ultra Classic in case any one out there is thinking about getting one, as to me, the only way you can get a good gauge on a vehicle, is on a road trip. There are some things that Harley could do different to make this a great touring bike, but in some areas, I found it to be lacking and will discuss these later on.

Mark was right about this trip, we had been planning it for a year. Now we'll start planning our next one. We started out in Texas of course, then on to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia. Then we went through West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York. That's where we turned around after seeing Woodstock and back to Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. We altered our course after that and went to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Then we headed home and rode through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and back home to Texas. That makes 13 states not counting our home state. We ended up with 3,999 miles traveled. Because on the first day we didn't take off till 3 in the afternoon and on the last day we got home by 10:30, that would have made our trip 9 days long. So we averaged about 444 miles a day. One improvement we could make for next year, would be to spend more time at places we would like to visit, instead of trying to get farther down the road. Planning our next trip is going to be awesome. I had an awesome time being that close to Mark for those 10 days, we have a great relationship and experienced all of this together. I have an awesome husband, I love dearly. Most importantly, we couldn't or wouldn't have had the opportunity if we hadn't invited God in our lives. I truly believe He put us in each others paths 3 years ago and has steered us in the right direction since. We don't ride alone, we ride with Him.