Day 3 Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Oak Grove, Missouri to North Sioux City, South Dakota
Miles Traveled Today: 397.0
Total Miles: 1148.6

Today was about detours and diesel fuel. The day started out beautifully.The weather was not a factor at all. Sunny and high 70s to low 80s with no humidity. Unfortunately when we filled up with gas first thing in the morning, somebody chose to put diesel in two of the bikes. Now everyone needs a little grease in them from from time to time, but a Harley-Davidson motorcycle would disagree. Smoke just poured out of the exhaust. Think how grease burns and you will understand what placing diesel fuel in a Harley will do. We will let you decide who made that mistake. It's not who you think. Then again, it might be. Fortunately Blue Springs Harley-Davidson was just down the road, so we had the tanks drained and refueled, and away we went.

Made it to Nebraska City, where a Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center was waiting. This one was completely different from the other sites, but it did have a keel boat out front. We were actually able to walk aboard this one.

The LCIC focused on the plant and animal discoveries made by Lewis and Clark, 300 to be exact. The center was very children friendly, including the entire downstairs. As you can see, we enjoyed the children's area...maybe a little too much. Those are prairie dog holes for you that are wondering.

We were also able to go on our first hike down to an overlook. Could not believe the flooding of the Missouri. In the foreground of the one picture is the main channel of the river, and the other zooms in on a semi on I-29, miles away. Incredible. It was an omen of things to come.

From that point on it seemed we were on detours. We went 75 miles more than anticipated and saw many area where the floodwaters almost reached the roads we were running. Highway 75 along the west bank was the main road for most of the journey, but we ended up much farther west a couple of times. At least one of the detours had some great roller coaster hills, but the detours seemed to go on forever. It was late when we pulled in to camp about 8:00. That's a long day on a bike, especially when a little diesel fuel is mixed in.