We almost rode this day's planned route exactly, until we hit a road construction detour.
We weren’t in any hurry to get up today. It was about 250 miles back to Sioux Falls and we pretty much had the whole day to get there, although I did tell my family that I’d be home in time to go out to lunch with them. During the summer they eat a late lunch, though, so that gave me a lot more cushion.
I don’t remember if we set the alarm or not. If we did, it was probably for 7:00. Alarm or not, that’s when we got up.
I got dressed, packed my bags and loaded the bike. Jon did the same. Then we went into the breakfast area and I had my usual morning feast. Actually, it’s not my usual most days. I tend to eat big breakfasts when I’m traveling, but most of the rest of the year I just have a medium-sized bowl of oatmeal. It’s not for lack of wanting a big breakfast, though.
Our pace was much more relaxed. We kicked back and sipped coffee and discussed the trip. Both of us agreed that it had been a lot of fun, and if there was one thing we would have changed it was to make it about 10 days longer. By extending the trip length we could drop our daily mileage to 3-400 miles per day and relax a bit more, but also reach destinations further away and actually have time to enjoy them more in-depth. Perhaps in the future we might be able to work that out.
I checked us out of our rooms and we pulled out of the hotel lot at 8:55 AM. We hadn’t filled up with gas the previous night, but had less than 60 miles on our tanks so we didn’t bother stopping before we left Minneapolis. Even with less than a full tank the day’s mileage was short enough that we’d only have to stop to fill up once before Sioux Falls.
When we first got off I-394 heading south on 169 there was some traffic backed up due to construction. Thankfully that was only for a couple miles and then the road cleared out. We continued south on 169 out of the metro area.
Forty five minutes south of the city in Jordan, MN there exists Minnesota’s largest candy store. It is called "Jim’s Apple Farm." I told Jon about it on our first day of the trip and he had been looking forward to stopping there ever since. In fact the cargo net Jon bought at the Green Bay Harley Dealership was precisely for the purpose of him hauling home a bunch of candy and goodies from this store. If you’re ever heading down highway 169 it is worth extending your trip to make a stop. Be warned though that the store is only open seasonally from around May through some time in October.
We spent at least a half hour browsing around. Maybe more. We weren’t under a hard deadline so I really didn’t pay attention to how long we spent. The store is huge.
I wound up buying myself six bottles of root beer (they boast that they carry 155 different kinds of root beer, plus hundreds of other flavors of pop.) Every time I visit I pick up some new kinds of root beer in the hope that eventually I can try them all. To this day my favorite brand is "Virgil's". It's got a different flavor to it which includes licorice.
I also bought my son a bottle of root beer and a bottle of bacon soda. Yes, you read that correct. Bacon soda. I tried it and it’s kind of weird. He loves it, though.
They also have fresh pies. There is a man there who’s over 90 years old and has been baking fresh pies every day for decades. They are phenomenal. I bought my wife a caramel apple nut pie that was still warm. Jon bought a bunch of stuff too, but I don’t remember the exact inventory.
They had boxes available and I placed my soda bottles and pie into one. I was a little concerned with the bottles rattling against each other, so I wedged some of my laundry into the box which tightened everything up enough that there wasn’t any vibration. I then opened up my saddlebag to pull out my cargo net, and discovered that the net must still be at home sitting on a shelf in the garage. Oops.
So I had to get creative with some bungee cords. Once I had the box strapped in place it was surprisingly solid. I probably wouldn’t want to travel for days like this, but I only had to make it a few hours home so I figured it would be sufficient. And thankfully I was correct.
Back on the road we continued south until Mankato where we stopped at the Harley dealership so Jon could pick up another poker chip. I was browsing at one of the Ultras sitting in the showroom floor, and Jon and I started discussing about whether or not the built in GPS could be programmed with preset routes. I have a GPS unit in my truck, but all I can set is the destination and it picks the route. Often times I know a different route I want to take and the GPS complains for quite a while about me making a wrong turn. On motorcycle trips the direct route is usually not the way I want to go, so having a GPS that I can program would be very important if I were going to pay extra for a bike with one built in.
A salesman came over and joined in the discussion. Pretty soon he had the GPS unit on the bike fired up and was scrolling through all the options and explaining how things worked. I felt bad for wasting the guy’s time because I had no intention of buying an Ultra on this day, and if I ever did I wouldn’t ever pay through the nose for a brand new one.
We finally were able to politely excuse ourselves and returned to the road. The wind had now picked up considerably. Before we left that morning the weather report stated there would be 30 mph winds with 50 mph gusts, and they weren’t lying. We were heading straight into it as well. Because of this our gas mileage suffered.
Highway 169 junctioned and headed south, but we stayed on the road that now became highway 60. This highway cuts diagonally down from Mankato to Worthington, MN and is (usually) a much quicker route than taking 169 down to the interstate and then heading west. Coincidentally, this is one of the routes that the GPS in my truck can't figure out.
We pulled over for gas in St. James. The wind was fierce. It was actually windy enough that some of the gas was splashing out of the tank. Crazy. Because of the wind I didn't get a picture at the gas stop. By now we were completely focused on topping off the tanks and getting home.
Just west of St. James we hit road construction. I hadn’t checked the DOT website, so this was a surprise to me. And it wasn’t just a "one lane closed for a while" kind of construction, it was full-on road closed detour type construction.
So we followed the detour which added a few miles to the trip, but in the end it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Here's a map showing the original planned route (in yellow) and the route we actually took (in blue.)
There’s not much to be said about riding through this part of Minnesota. It’s pretty dull. At Worthington we got on interstate 90 for our final leg of the trip. The Sturgis rally was scheduled to start on Saturday and the motorcycle traffic was very noticeable. In fact, on the whole trip people were asking us if we were heading to Sturgis. Our standard response was, "No, we’re from South Dakota so when the rally starts we’re heading in the opposite direction."
At some point my camera snapped a picture. I must have been fumbling with it as I rode. It's not a picture of much anything interesting, but I decided to post it because frankly it's more entertaining than this stretch of interstate.
There was more road construction on I-90 which took the interstate down to single lane traffic with a 60 mph speed limit for about 25 miles. If I have to hit construction I prefer to encounter it at the beginning of the trip. When you deal with it at the end it feels more frustrating.
I’ve made the drive from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls more times than I can count. It’s not terribly long in terms of miles, but it feels really long in terms of time. Mainly because once you’re south of Mankato there’s not much for scenery. After what seemed an eternity we finally reached our home town.
We got off the interstate and pulled over to say our goodbyes for the day. I snapped an "after" picture of Jon, and then we went our separate ways towards home.
I made one final stop for gas so my bike wouldn’t be sitting with an empty tank the next time I wanted to ride. I pulled into the garage and celebrated another successful motorcycle trip.
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This page last updated on 06/28/2018