Dave & Diane's Cross Country Harley Ride: July 2012

Here's our recap and summary of our cross country motorcycle ride. We left on July 5th, 2012 at 8:00 a.m. on our 2010 Harley Davidson Ultra Classic odometer set at 0. We journeyed 7649.2 miles in 23 days. We visited 22 states. We stayed at 21 hotels. Our home was the furthest east. Furthest south was Tucson, AZ, furthest west was Monterey, CA and furthest north was West Yellowstone, MT. We spent around $660 for gasoline and used approx 170 gallons averaging around 45 MPG. Hotel costs were $0 since we used points/miles. Dining costs were approx $1100 which include all food and beverages. We also used some reward cards and OpenTable checks for dinners. Some hotels had concierge lounges which included dinners, drinks and breakfast. We mostly lived during the day on protein bars and water/Gatorade. Our new favorite chain restaurant is Buffalo Wild Wings. The nicest hotel we stayed at was the Beverly Hilton while the Cleveland Marriott East was a very close second. The least favorite hotel was the Hampton Inn Rapid City due to their lack of food and TV channels. We liked to be within walking distance of restaurants/bars and they weren't very close. We each exercised and ran a total of 30 miles during the trip (10 miles per week). We did 3 laundries at the hotels and 1 at my Mom's house during the 23 days. The highest temperature was 110F in La Quinta, CA while the lowest temperature was 52F in Monterey, CA. Our lowest elevation was in La Quinta, CA at 56 ft. while the highest elevation was Cody Peak in Wyoming at 10267 ft. The longest distance we rode in one day was 527 miles from Memphis to Oklahoma City. The shortest ride was 114 miles from Sturgis to Rapid City, SD. We passed the USA's smallest post office in Wheeler Springs, CA. We went through Emblem, Wyoming----population 10. We only visited 10 Harley dealers on our quest for the ring. We never did find it, but we know where to get it (online or thru Brian's). The nicest dealership was in Gillette, Wyoming while the smallest was in Charles City, IA which looked like part of a farm. It was actually on a farm. We didn't hit any major thunderstorms while riding nor did we ride in rain. We had a few times where we got caught for no more than 15 minutes. We visited 2 major disaster sites to pay our respects at their associated memorials---- Oklahoma City (Federal Building Memorial) and Shanksville, PA (Flight 93 Memorial). We returned home on Friday, July 27th at 1:12 p.m.