BRP Harley Trip - Day 1

Welcome to Ride and Rally with Fix My Hog. Charlie and I are at his place, on day one of our big 3,000 mile adventure. Endgame today, where we going? Galena. And what's gonna be cool about this, Charlie knows the roads immediately South here better than I do, he and I have been on the Great River Road in this stretch a bunch of times.

So we're gonna get on the Great River Road, but how are you getting us there? Well, we're gonna get lost to start. We do have a five hour drive, keep that in mind. Right, but that's the goal, we have to end at X. So we're gonna find our way there without the Garmin for this first little piece, because it's just windy roads.

From here to the River Road there's a lot of ways to get there, and we're gonna takes some we haven't on been before and find our way down. Once you hit the River Road, then we shoot. So our loosey-goosey goal is to get on the Great River Road, Highway 35, somewhere South of where we've already been. So maybe South of Red Wing or so. So the way we'll play this is on the Garmin, I'm gonna open up the track that's already been put in there.

That's Hammond to Galena. And then what's of course cool with the Garmin is it's just gonna follow us and it's gonna get us to the hotel in Galena, no matter what. Now, the other thing that's neat is, at least at the start here, we're not riding by ourselves. No Who's coming? My daughter, Casey and her fiance, Dave are coming to ride us out and take us South as far as, who knows?

Probably down the Red River Road and then they'll come back a different route. And this is saying a lot because Dave owns a bar and Casey works at the bar. So they were up until 3:00 AM in the morning and we're fixing to leave at nine o'clock. This is above and beyond the call for them to even get out of bed and show up. Yeah, It's pretty cool, it's pretty cool.

They're gonna ride us out and it'll be fun. All right, well, we're ready to go, we'll give you some info along the way as we start. ♪ Hey, hey ♪ ♪ Hey, hey ♪ This trip has been a long time in the making. Started talking about it in about March of this year, December now, nearly October. Went through a couple of different versions, as you might imagine.

It took a lot of planning. Charlie and I are both self-employed, so part of the challenge was finding a 14, 15 day stretch that we were both available and didn't have commitments in. So once we found that, we narrowed down the route and stumbled across this idea of getting on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I don't remember how but it's really funny, ever since we zeroed in on that, every time I mention the Blue Ridge Parkway now, somebody in the group has been on it and talks about how amazing it is. So I'm really looking forward to getting to that part of the trip.

Today our goal is to get to Galena. We're gonna get to Galena. And as Charlie mentioned, he's gonna wind us through kind of a back country, South of Menomonie, Wisconsin in order to get us on the Great River Road, Highway 35. That parallels the Mississippi River, and that is gonna take us just about all the way to Galena, once we're on the River Road. This is so cool that Charlie's daughters all came along to get us going here.

Each of their daughters, riding with their boyfriends or fiance. Charlie's way at the back there. What a fun way to start the trip. ♪ Hey, hey ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey! ♪ We got ourselves to Menomonie, Wisconsin.

And then using the Garmin, I've got a Zumo XT, we set our next spot, which is Nelson, Wisconsin. And on the Garmin there's what's called an adventure route. So using that, we said, get us to Nelson. And what's neat about that is it recognizes you wanna be on something, you don't want to be on the freeway. So it picked a route.

It's a little, prettier, a little more scenic, a little better motorcycle route. Right now, we're going South and I'm paralleling the Chippewa River just a little off to my right. We just turned onto 35 off of 25 and this is part of the River Road that's gonna get us in Nelson and then really, almost all the way to Galena. Charlie and I are spending a lot of time on two lane roads today, and part of what that means is getting into these small towns. And if this isn't for you, if you're antsy about your destination, the Great River Road is not gonna be a good road for you.

When you get in town, you're gonna have to slow down, you're gonna get in traffic, and you've gotta just enjoy that. You gotta let this be about the journey not just the destination. Take the time to look at the old houses, this town and a lot of others on the River Road have really nice historic downtown. There's this lock and dam system right here, on the right side. That's a really cool aspect of riding along the Mississippi River.

Just make sure your heads in the right spot for riding. How's it feel to get off the bike, Charlie? Feeling good, feeling good. We're at Goose Island County Park. So we're just a little bit, the river is just that way again.

We'll be on it. Which way? I think it's that way, I don't know. We curved around a little bit. GPS is telling us about 2 hours and 40 minutes from here to Galena, and I don't know so far so good, right?

Yeah, yeah It's a beautiful day, what a great start to this ride. Great ride, fantastic! Fantastic! We are in scenic Ferryville and behind us is the mighty Mississippi. Charlie was guesstimating at the width.

What do you think that is across? Two to two and a half miles. It's crazy big. So, we wanted to stop someplace where you could get just kind of the grasp of the scope of the river down here. And I've said a couple times on the bike, Charlie, on that microphone, the lay of the land is so different here from the part of Wisconsin that we are in.

The Bluffs are really pretty, the towns are old, you've been this far South before? Yeah, yeah. So it's cool. We're partway to Galena and just a little stop to stretch our legs, show you the river. Cool interesting fact, is the channel is so narrow through here it looks like a big body of water, but the actual boating channel or shipping channel is so narrow it's right here, and the rest of that is too shallow to navigate.

Cause like this stuff on the edge where they can maybe see it's green, that's like a marsh. Charlie's got a big boat so he's been on the river quite a bit. Maybe you can see a buoy that's way, way, way out there. For boating it's not a very- Right. Not much of it is usable Correct.

Relative to its width. There you go. Jump in there, you end up in the Gulf of Mexico. Could happen. We're definitely not in the River Valley anymore.

Rolling Hills of Southern Wisconsin. Lot of crop land, lot of corn, lot of soybeans, big hay field. Different from the river but still very pretty. Charlie and I are in Dickeyville, Wisconsin I'm so glad I'm traveling with Charlie 'cause he's aware of these cool spots and this is a really cool one. What's the story, dude?

This is the Grotto. A priest built this from 1925 to- You keep talking, I'm gonna pan a little bit. 1925 to 1930. And the stones that he used for this are from all over the world, precious stones, fool's gold, platters, plates, Gear shifts Gear shifters Point to a shift, I'll see if I can get it. Yeah, these are all shifters off of old cars that he used as fill.

Just got stones from all over the world and built this grotto. For five years, did nothing but place stones. Pretty cool. It's amazing, great stop. Fantastic stop Fantastic stop It's cool, crossing the Mississippi River.

Going to Illinois. Welcome to Galena. According to the Garmin that we're running, 285 miles today. Did you have a favorite part of today? Boy, just anything following the river, the Bluffs and the river, and watching the boats racing us down the river, the trains a couple times you race.

It's funny 'cause it's the river, the train tracks, and then Highway 35. And so you're racing trains you're racing boats, and racing you. And I thought it was really cool when we were riding along the river and we'd get into these low spots, and it was about 85 all day today, and you got some sun. We'd get into these crazy cold zones where I think it was dropping 20 degrees, maybe more. Just that, yeah And it felt great One of the things I think is worth talking about is this was nearly a 300 mile day you, are you 54 this year, right?

Sure. Or so. And I'm 60, so I think it's worth talking about for people, we aren't- We're not senior citizens George, don't go there. We're not senior citizens. And we're also not like, we both have jobs, not physical, but we're not fitness fanatics either.

And we survive this 300 mile day- Easy day. Without going nuts. We're both now feeling pretty good. We're gonna go get some dinner, and then dump a bunch of video data, which is always the close of the day when we're doing this kind of stuff. But it was a great day.

And I'm glad that you had us pick that other, back route South of Menomonie through Nelson and all of that stuff. Yeah, it was a great day for that kind of a ride. It broke up the monotony of it. I don't know, I enjoyed the whole trip. All the way down here the roads were great and the scenery was great.

I was surprised at the minimal amount of traffic for a Sunday. Cause often the River Road on a weekend is crazy crowded. Well yesterday was flood run. So everybody got it out of their system yesterday, which helps. Well, that probably helped us today, yeah.

It was neat and crossing the Mississippi felt cool. Our first border crossing of the trip, which we'll have like six border crossings. Well, it's kind of weird when you cross from Wisconsin into Iowa. Turn around and go back and across now you're in Illinois. It's the quad city.

Yeah you have seen that on the video. It was cool all around, good day. That was a fantastic day! A fantastic day. Never gets old.

Yes it does, it gets old.