Oregon, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, etc

[pdedse]

Wonderful pictures and ride report pdedse!

I do miss the wide open spaces of the west and mid-west from time to time since I grew up in ND.

In the Northeast, panoramic views are rare and most of my riding is trees to the right and trees to the left. When I first moved here it felt claustrophobic!

I lived in AZ for 9 years before accepting a job in OR. I've thought a lot about that claustrophobic feeling...I think it's a combination of the trees swallowing up the light, the horizon is not longer flat and straight, often times it's not there because of hills and forests, and here in OR the clouds come in as a massive frontal system and it lowers the ceiling so to speak. When I go ride along the Columbia River or out on a boat on it, I feel free! Yes, the NW is beautiful and all that, mountain curves are fun of course, but it's that openness that makes me happy when I ride the states of this trip.

Your photos from outside Denver are terrific. God's Country for sure.

Thanks Inhouse Bob, some of the photos pre-Denver are flatter than KS...I'm gonna assume you mean the post-Denver photos in the mountains. Indeed, beautiful, makes you feel like taking a lot more time to "do it right".
Day 11: Green River, UT to Elko, NV: 425 miles
Woke up to skies that still showed evidence of the thunderstorms that lit up the sky throughout the night. In OR west of the Cascades, we don't get much thunder and lightening, and I miss that. Took my time getting ready for there looked to be some storms still lingering in the Price, UT area, an hour north of me.


Finally found the type of motel I should have been looking for more when I began the trip. $50 a night instead of the $75-90 I was paying while traveling east. I had thought about carrying camping gear to keep the costs down, but in the end, I thought about the type of places I like to camp and often times it's in out of the way places on forest service roads...not that a CB1100 can't, but it's not how I wanted to finish a long days ride. I go on to eastern OR on my KLR to do trips like that, but I'm only riding 100 miles a day on unpaved roads, already in the area I want to camp, much easier. So it was the charm of places like this

Hiway 191 north between Green River and Price was a gorgeous stretch. Finally off 70 for good, two lane traffic, slower, more relaxed, a very good way to start the day

In Topeka, I found a knee-pad, you can see it in the photo above, it's a 1.5" pad used for kneeling when you do house projects. It worked very well! Raised the seat higher for me which helped my knees and hips feel more loose, and my back end wasn't sore at all by the end of the day. The bungee straps used to hold down the passenger seat bag held it in place if I needed to stand on the pegs briefly. So that made 3 seat pads for the ride back home. Maybe I should buy a new seat, but the pads cost me a total of $25, more in my budget.