It's time to leave the hustle and bustle of Chicago and head a little further north. Today we are off to Milwaukee, just 100 miles up the road. We were a little slow in starting this morning, those Doubletree beds are really comfortable. I also hadn't finished uploading the blog pictures from the night before, so I had to do it this morning. By the time we left it was getting close to 9:00. It takes a little while to escape the confines of Chicago, even if you are staying 20 miles west of downtown. The first part of the ride was through industrial areas, eventually leading to middle class suburban homes and finally to a really nice upper middle class bedroom community. It was about 30 minutes before we could really call Chicago behind us ... read more

Today is our first foray into a major metropolitan area on this trip with a journey into downtown Chicago. We are staying at a Doubletree hotel about 20 miles west of the city as the in town hotel rates were astronomical. The hotel is awesome - thanks again Maureen! - but does not come with a free breakfast so we decided to try the place we saw at dinner last night called the Honey Jam Cafe for breakfast. The breakfast was delicious, but the portions were larger than either of us could eat. So after our hearty breakfast we headed into town. Now we usually avoid Interstates when we're traveling on the bike, but when heading in and out of major metropolitan areas, it's always better to take the interstates if possible. Sure enough, by taking ... read more

After a great night's sleep and a good breakfast we were ready to hit the road heading north about 7:30 this morning. We're trying to escape the South today and head north to Indianapolis. We will make a stop along the way at our last cave for a while in Bedford, IN. So we cranked up Credence Clearwater Revival on the stereo and headed up KY-185. Ky-85 became KY-79 and they were both just wonderful roads. Two lane country roads between farms with just enough twists and turns, ups and downs to keep ut interesting. The scenery was beautiful, and we passed through all sorts of small towns along the way. There was mostly very little traffic, though we did follow a good old boy in a pickup truck who seemed to know the roads pretty ... read more

Today was a nice quiet day of cave exploration. We bought the tickets for an 8:30 and a 12:45 tour of Mammoth Cave yesterday, so our only obligation of the day was to show up. For some reason, we both slept well last night, in spite of the bed being a little hard. After a quick breakfast, we headed over to Mammoth Cave National Park around 7:30. We stopped at the entrance to take the obligatory picture, unfortunately we were the only ones around so we couldn't get a picture of both of us together. We had plenty of time, so we did a little hiking over to the Sand Cave on a path right next to the entrance. Then we headed over to the Visitors Center, but it was still a little early as they ... read more

Today was destined to be a busy day. With Memorial Day weekend behind us, everyone, but us of course, was back to work and the world was resuming its normal course of events. Again, no big rush to get out of here this morning, as the first item on the agenda was to head over to Southern Powersports and see about replacing the rear tire. We pumped up the tire and hit the road at about 8:30 as the dealer was only about 6 miles away. Southern Powersports turned out to be one of the largest Honda dealers in the southeast. They had lots of Goldwings and even do trike conversions on-site. When the service guy arrived at 9:00, I told him the problem and told me he had the tire in stock and would get ... read more