Day 5 of our 35th Anniversary HOG Ride. From Kearney, Nebraska to Rapid City, South Dakota.
We rode 436 miles today.
The projected storm ended up delayed so we made it all the way to Rapid City where we will stay three or four nights. We road the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway for a couple hundred miles, following the Middle Loup River and a railroad most of the way. Ruins and cemeteries decorated the path, making us wonder if there were any unique tombstones or gravesites of famous locals. This is a pretty cool ride, actually. We saw three out of the 10 “must sees” on the link above. In the spring, sandhill cranes migrate through this area, and the prairie chickens put on a show (apparently). We’ve seen the cranes in Florida, but they are here in abundance so we want to go back in some future spring.
We took the scenic byway all the way to Alliance, which has brick roads downtown for a super cool ride. Tim said he saw some old guy checking me out as I passed by 😂. You can hear me commenting on it in this brief video.
Before leaving Alliance, we stopped at a unique art exhibit called Carhenge (cars painted and put in the ground patterned after Stonehenge) 😂😂, then rode through the Nebraska National Forest and two more scenic byways and on to Rapid City (through miles of construction).
We decided to give our legs a break for a few days. We have seen some of the sights from the road on a previous bike trip, so now we plan to get closer. They only had two options…a 1500 Dodge Ram or a minivan. You can guess which one we picked 😂. We didn’t realize it was missing running boards until Tim had to hoist me in, laughable for sure.
Found a fabulous pizza place before heading back to the hotel. It rivals our favorite pizza joint in Florida. I had the Wisconsin Cheese soup and garlic knots, but Tim’s pizza was some of the best we have tasted. The weather was perfect for outside dining, and again no one seemed too concerned about the coronavirus. Few if any masks out in public. We steered clear of people and kept our faces covered, but it was nice to feel a sense of normal again.
As we were heading to bed the sky lit up and gave us a beautiful show. What a storm!
Á la prochaine…until next time!
. They were open at 100% capacity. We felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in days. The whole town did not appear to care about social distancing or wearing masks. In fact, much of Nebraska is that way. I guess when you live in a town of about 200 you don’t care about coronavirus coming to meet you. 
We walked around the Ord town square (the museum is closed this year – no help from Yelp on that one 
) then headed back toward the hotel with at least two other stops for construction zones.
Actually, I received radiation for my 50th birthday…kinda forgot about that until just now. 
or something. 