A 4,000 mile Spyder ride tale in segments

[BamaJohn]

With a plan to ride “somewhere west of Wall Street”, My Spyder protested being loaded upon a trailer for the first and last legs of a 4,000+ ride.
It was a hot summer day when I headed to Springfield MO to meet up with my buddy Joe. Since I try not to do more than 300 miles a day riding, I trailered instead of riding to Springfield to save a night’s lodging going and coming, but the rest of the 4,000+ miles will be on 3 wheels.

Joe had just moved to Springfield, so we spent the next day catching up on events of the move and the list of projects Joe has in mind for the house. And a healthy list it was. I was glad it was HIS list and not mine!
I downloaded the routes we’d be taking from my GPS onto Joe’s GPS, but I later learned that Joe’s maps were not the same as my updated maps, so the routes were not the same (more on that later).

Today begins a 12 day journey that would take us from Missouri through Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, and back to Missouri. Logging miles, we headed northward through Kansas City MO and over into Nebraska, overnighting in Lincoln…chosen only because it was 300 miles from Joe’s home. Our 2nd overnight was in Kadoka SD, for the same reason...it was around 300 miles from the first night’s stop.
When I was planning/plotting this trip, the timing of it put us right in the middle of tourist season in most of the areas we’d visit. We had reservations for the Spyder event at Deadwood, in Red Lodge, and in Yellowstone. No winging it on lodging this trip.
Our plan had us arriving Deadwood on the 4th riding day, via a tour through The Badlands and the requisite visit to Wall Drugs in Wall, SD.
The Badlands seem to be an arid, scarred land with little signs of life or foliage, but Native Americans take issue with the term “Badlands”, feeling that no land is bad, it’s all good. It seems that we’re all realizing that more and more.
It’s only a short hop over to Wall SD, where we overnighted our 3rd night.