Teton Adventure-Day 8-The End Of Our Journey

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Today is Thursday Aug. 7th

Broke camp, and left Indian Trees Campground about 7:30a.m.
It looks like the day will be a hot one.

Chuck is still in alot of pain, and just wants to get home @ this point.
He had a bad night, and had to keep taking tylenol and ibuprofen over and over to try and cut the pain.
I think he must have raised the river level with as many times as he had to pee during the night.

Corrie is pretty sick this morning too. He must be getting the flu or something. He looks and sounds awful. I gave him a box of DayQuil in hopes it will help him feel better.

We hit the road again, and stopped in Hamilton Montana for fuel and food. Everyone got something to munch. Chuck and I shared a mini deli pizza, and he got a drink. I got a cappucino to go. It definitely hit the spot.

Rode to Lolo Montana and made a snack and potty stop.
Just outside of Lolo my bike was making a funny noise, so I told Chuck about it.
We pulled to the side of the road, and he took a look at my bike. We discovered my tire was rubbing the A arm. He said it would be okay, but we would change the tire when we got home. While checking the bike out though he discovered my foot brake had lost the cotter pin, and was just dangling there.
We all searched around for something to use in it's place, and I finally found a twist-tie that he shoved through the hole and made work. Right On. As long as it held, I didn't care.

Jetting down the road again Chuck lost one of his good gloves. He had taken them off when we pulled over to look at my bike, and had forgotten they were on his sissy bar bag.
Pat saw me stopping, and he took off after the glove and saved the day.

Once everything was okay, we took off again. Ended up hitting miles and miles of road construction.

From there we rode to a place Chuck referred to as "in-bred rip-off Idaho". We were at a place called Lowell where we HAD to fuel. We paid over $5.00 a gallon for fuel.

It started getting really hot out as we were heading through the mountains of Idaho along the Lochsa River. It was beautiful country, and the river was gorgeous, but the traffic was slow as all get out. We were getting pretty hot and frustrated, so we pulled over at a little campground to cool off.
A little boy struck up a conversation with us. He liked our motorcycles, and told us him and his family were going to the ocean. It sounded like they had a long trip ahead of them. He was a cool little kid.

Once we were back on the road, we were ready to jet for home.
Stopped just outside Lewiston to make a game plan. We decided to eat and cool off in Lewiston, then head for home hopefully at a faster pace than we'd been going.
Had lunch and cooled off @ DQ. Talked to a lady who said anyplace had to be cooler than the valley we were in. It was 103 out, but it felt more like 203. Talked to several people in the restaurant, and then went back out to the bikes. Some people stopped and talked to us out there too.

Everyone put their helmets back on, and we rode from there to Pomeroy Washington. Where we fueled and got a cold drink.
A man came and started talking to us at the fuel pumps, and said that hopefully next year when we all came through the fair grounds would be available for use. We thought that was cool.

From there we rode on into Dayton where Pat's bike vapor-locked again. We guess it just needed to rest it's little tongue. We were all proud of that little 500 Kawasaki Vulcan. Pat had been making it really rock and roll down the road.

It started to rain as we were coming into Dayton. It wasn't a bad rain, just enough to wash off the heat and dust from the road.
We could see a storm just out of range of us, but it looked like it was heading our way. Lightening was flashing all through the sky, and it was beautiful to see.
The farmers in the area didn't think so though because they were all scrambling to get their hay in.

Heading to Walla Walla, we got into the passing lane and started passing a car, and the car ahead of it pulled into our lane, slowed down, and wouldn't move over.
I could see Chuck getting pissed. He was already in pain, and didn't need the stupidity of this person on top of it.
The guy driving the car just kept slowing down, so Chuck pulled into the oncoming lane to pass him. The guy started speeding up, so Chuck rode up beside him and gave him one of his Grizzly looks, and the guy pulled over. As I was passing him I looked over and the guy had a creepy looking smile on his face. I wanted knock his smile into next week. What a puke.

After blasting past the idiot, we made sure Corrie and Pat got past him too, then torqued it on up the road toward home.
As we came into Oregon, we stopped @ the Hat Rock weigh station to weigh our bikes. Chuck weighed 1750, I weighed 1000 even, Corrie and Tammi weighed 1250, and Pat and his bad Kawasaki weighed 750.

We stopped again in McNary at Corrie's house, and unloaded his stuff from the trailer. Pat got his stuff from the trailer too. BS'd a little and said our goodbyes to Corrie, then headed out on the last leg of the trip home.

Rode straight through Umatilla, and stopped in Irrigon @ the gas station so Pat could fuel again, and kiss his honey. We told her hello too, and BS'd there awhile.
We could see the storm closing in on us, so we said our goodbyes to Pat, and headed on around the corner to the house.

The end of our journey had come. We were glad to be home, but will miss the comraderie of our friends on our adventurous ride.
The experiences we had together, and the country we got to see is something we'll cherish forever.
It was awesome, breathtaking, heartwrenching, and pretty freakin cool. 1600 miles in all. What a ride.

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