klb1122
0
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2006
- Messages
- 2,531
- Reaction score
- 94
- Location
- Houston, TX
- First Name
- Kory
- Last Name
- Burleson
I’m way behind on getting this year’s report out. I blame life.
There wasn’t much debate on which direction we were headed this year. Twelve states remained for Dad, the Connies, and I to check off within the Contiguous United States. Those states all reside in the Northeast. While we’re up there, we might as well see Niagara Falls, Mount Washington, and Acadia National Park. And to add an extra twist this year, 1,000 of the miles this year would include riding two-up with the ladies… my mom and wife. As always, I spend a ton of time planning the yearly ride, but it felt like this year was doubled with the twist.
The original plan was to leave the Tuesday after Father’s Day. A couple days prior to leaving, my wife asked me why we were leaving on Tuesday instead of Monday. I sat there for a second not knowing how to respond, but explained how I was already going to be gone for 11 days, I didn’t want to push it for more days away from the home front. The plan was to make it to Buffalo, NY in two days, splitting the mileage per day right down the middle at about 770 miles a day. She said why not leave on Monday and take 3 days to get there instead of 2. That was music to my ears. I gave Dad a call and he was perfectly fine with that, but he also knew I would be able to help myself with making it a little bit more difficult than that. Original plan was all Interstate miles, but with having an extra day I tried to mix it up a bit on days 2 and 3 with getting off the beaten path.
Day 1 – 6/20/2016 – Houston, TX to Jackson, TN – 657 Miles
Houston, TX to Jackson, TN – 657 Miles – MAP LINK
My bike began this year’s trip with 50,094 miles on it, just starting to get broken in. GPS data was cleared.
Instead of leaving super early on Monday morning, I wanted to see my wife and daughters off for the day before meeting up with Dad and heading out. They left the house at 7 am and I finished loading up the bike and took off shortly after, getting to Dad’s house around 7:45 am. Shortly after we began the journey getting to US 59 and heading north. It was going to be a long, hot day of chewing up miles.
The first stop for the day was just shy of 200 miles in Carthage, TX. We filled up on gas and took a little break. It wasn’t even the heat of the day yet, but it was still plenty hot.
Just before suiting up to leave, a 2015 Chevy 2500 diesel pulled up on the opposite side of the pump from us. This was only interesting because dad was in the market for a new truck. He’d been doing a lot of research and the new Chevy diesel was at the top of his list. I had an interest in his new truck purchase because I wanted his old one, a ’99 Ford F-250 diesel with a hair shy of 100k miles and in excellent shape. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that bad boy. But back to the Chevy, Dad asked the guy what he thought it. After a 10 minute conversation, the guy was giving off mixed vibes about it. His company owned 16 of them and all of them had injector problems at the 80-90k mark. He said you might as well start saving $8,000 for the replacement. The best part of the whole conversation was when dad mentioned his current truck. The guy said he actually still has his ’03 Ford F-250 diesel and referred to it as “the best diesel ever made.” Music to my ears of course, and nothing dad hadn’t heard before. The chat with the guy gave us plenty of conversation for the upcoming miles.
In between Marshall and Atlanta we rode through intermittent rain. After we went through the rain it got really hot, especially on dad’s bike. I had given him some Baker hand wings for Father’s Day and he realized there were still in the “closed” position. The little ambient temperature gauge on his bike got all the way up to 133 degrees! He opened them up and said it was like he turned the A/C on. The hand wings work. I’ve had mine for years and love them. US 59 took us to Texarkana where we met up with I-30 and headed northeast. Another 200 mile stretch put us in Malvern, AR for the next stop. This is where my road trip love affair with beef jerky began.
In Little Rock I-30 intersects with I-40, which we continued east on. Everything was going great until Memphis. We crossed over the Mississippi River to enter the city and everything was fine. As we were passing the skyline there were solid brake lights ahead of us. I noticed on one of the traffic boards that there was a reported accident ahead and two lanes were closed. We quickly made our way into the right lane and took the I-69 exit. I wasn’t 100% certain where we were going, but I do remember a southern route around Memphis when I was making the routes. As we now headed south we received a call from Mom, aka Mission Control. She was watching our Glympse at the time and was curious as to why we headed south. She was able to route us on the southern loop around Memphis using I-240. Unfortunately this route was not only a bit longer, but was also littered with traffic and light rain. In the end, the detour to avoid the wreck probably took more time than if we would have just stayed on I-40. As we cleared Memphis I was getting dangerously low on gas. I was able to stretch it out to 225 miles and we stopped in Mason, TN. The place was pretty disgusting with some interesting people there.
This beauty has been worked to the bone, but fit right in at this station.
Continuing on I-40, the good news was we were only 50 miles away from our destination of Jackson, TN. We made it to the Quality Inn without a problem and got checked in. Across the road was a restaurant named Redbone’s Grill and Bar. It sounded good so we walked across and gave it a try. The beer was good and cold and the food was delicious. As for the beer, dad had some popular domestic while I like to go the local route. This time it was a Ghost River – River Bank Red. For food, dad had beef tips while I had bacon wrapped shrimp and veggies.
Back at the hotel it was time for a shower and bed, we were asleep before 10 p.m.
There wasn’t much debate on which direction we were headed this year. Twelve states remained for Dad, the Connies, and I to check off within the Contiguous United States. Those states all reside in the Northeast. While we’re up there, we might as well see Niagara Falls, Mount Washington, and Acadia National Park. And to add an extra twist this year, 1,000 of the miles this year would include riding two-up with the ladies… my mom and wife. As always, I spend a ton of time planning the yearly ride, but it felt like this year was doubled with the twist.
The original plan was to leave the Tuesday after Father’s Day. A couple days prior to leaving, my wife asked me why we were leaving on Tuesday instead of Monday. I sat there for a second not knowing how to respond, but explained how I was already going to be gone for 11 days, I didn’t want to push it for more days away from the home front. The plan was to make it to Buffalo, NY in two days, splitting the mileage per day right down the middle at about 770 miles a day. She said why not leave on Monday and take 3 days to get there instead of 2. That was music to my ears. I gave Dad a call and he was perfectly fine with that, but he also knew I would be able to help myself with making it a little bit more difficult than that. Original plan was all Interstate miles, but with having an extra day I tried to mix it up a bit on days 2 and 3 with getting off the beaten path.
Day 1 – 6/20/2016 – Houston, TX to Jackson, TN – 657 Miles
Houston, TX to Jackson, TN – 657 Miles – MAP LINK
My bike began this year’s trip with 50,094 miles on it, just starting to get broken in. GPS data was cleared.
Instead of leaving super early on Monday morning, I wanted to see my wife and daughters off for the day before meeting up with Dad and heading out. They left the house at 7 am and I finished loading up the bike and took off shortly after, getting to Dad’s house around 7:45 am. Shortly after we began the journey getting to US 59 and heading north. It was going to be a long, hot day of chewing up miles.
The first stop for the day was just shy of 200 miles in Carthage, TX. We filled up on gas and took a little break. It wasn’t even the heat of the day yet, but it was still plenty hot.
Just before suiting up to leave, a 2015 Chevy 2500 diesel pulled up on the opposite side of the pump from us. This was only interesting because dad was in the market for a new truck. He’d been doing a lot of research and the new Chevy diesel was at the top of his list. I had an interest in his new truck purchase because I wanted his old one, a ’99 Ford F-250 diesel with a hair shy of 100k miles and in excellent shape. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that bad boy. But back to the Chevy, Dad asked the guy what he thought it. After a 10 minute conversation, the guy was giving off mixed vibes about it. His company owned 16 of them and all of them had injector problems at the 80-90k mark. He said you might as well start saving $8,000 for the replacement. The best part of the whole conversation was when dad mentioned his current truck. The guy said he actually still has his ’03 Ford F-250 diesel and referred to it as “the best diesel ever made.” Music to my ears of course, and nothing dad hadn’t heard before. The chat with the guy gave us plenty of conversation for the upcoming miles.
In between Marshall and Atlanta we rode through intermittent rain. After we went through the rain it got really hot, especially on dad’s bike. I had given him some Baker hand wings for Father’s Day and he realized there were still in the “closed” position. The little ambient temperature gauge on his bike got all the way up to 133 degrees! He opened them up and said it was like he turned the A/C on. The hand wings work. I’ve had mine for years and love them. US 59 took us to Texarkana where we met up with I-30 and headed northeast. Another 200 mile stretch put us in Malvern, AR for the next stop. This is where my road trip love affair with beef jerky began.
In Little Rock I-30 intersects with I-40, which we continued east on. Everything was going great until Memphis. We crossed over the Mississippi River to enter the city and everything was fine. As we were passing the skyline there were solid brake lights ahead of us. I noticed on one of the traffic boards that there was a reported accident ahead and two lanes were closed. We quickly made our way into the right lane and took the I-69 exit. I wasn’t 100% certain where we were going, but I do remember a southern route around Memphis when I was making the routes. As we now headed south we received a call from Mom, aka Mission Control. She was watching our Glympse at the time and was curious as to why we headed south. She was able to route us on the southern loop around Memphis using I-240. Unfortunately this route was not only a bit longer, but was also littered with traffic and light rain. In the end, the detour to avoid the wreck probably took more time than if we would have just stayed on I-40. As we cleared Memphis I was getting dangerously low on gas. I was able to stretch it out to 225 miles and we stopped in Mason, TN. The place was pretty disgusting with some interesting people there.
This beauty has been worked to the bone, but fit right in at this station.
Continuing on I-40, the good news was we were only 50 miles away from our destination of Jackson, TN. We made it to the Quality Inn without a problem and got checked in. Across the road was a restaurant named Redbone’s Grill and Bar. It sounded good so we walked across and gave it a try. The beer was good and cold and the food was delicious. As for the beer, dad had some popular domestic while I like to go the local route. This time it was a Ghost River – River Bank Red. For food, dad had beef tips while I had bacon wrapped shrimp and veggies.
Back at the hotel it was time for a shower and bed, we were asleep before 10 p.m.