Day One and Two - Getting There
Home to Kearney NE - 883 Miles
Kearney to Pinedale - 703 Miles
We hit the road a little before 5:00 having loaded everything the night before. Steve had purchased a new trailer and added some wheel holders so it was smooth sailing the entire trip getting there and back not having to continually check the straps. We didn’t have to worry about tires turning during transportation or straps coming loose or anything like that, we just drove. Other than a couple of stops for gas our first extended stop was in Iowa City where we stopped at Back Pocket Brewing. It was about 11:30 and we had driven 475 miles, so were pretty happy with our progress, and we each had a pint of beer named ‘Another’ along with a small pizza for lunch. The brewery was less than a year old was set up very nicely. We weren’t there very long, having quickly eaten and gotten back in the truck. We stopped at the Walnut IA rest stop to stretch our legs and kept moving. It was about 5:00 and we were coming into Lincoln having put another 300 miles on the clock since Iowa City, so we decided to stop at ZipLine Brewing. This place was right off of I-80 and had a very nice set-up. The beer was good but nothing that knocked our socks off. It wasn’t long until we reached Kearney. We pulled in at about 7:30. We had a couple of places we wanted to go to in Kearney, so we deiced to eat the Liverwurst sandwiches we had packed. I’m not sure what possessed us to pack this type of sandwich but they were good, and we were quickly headed out for the evening. We first went to Platte Valley Brewery where they had a number of guest taps but we had their Adams Pale Ale which sounded better than it tasted, but it was really ok. They had a corn hole tournament going on that we would have loved to play in but there was no opportunity. After one beer we went to Thunderhead Brewing Co. for one which was just around the corner. We tried the Cropduster IPA and the Grapefruit IPA neither of which was all that great, but not bad either. We were back to the hotel by a little after 9:00 where we caught up on e-mail and called it a night.
We were on the road by 7:00 and making our way. We were going to have to take a small detour up towards Lander where we would strategically place a couple of gas cans to get us over the hump on the day we go to Lander. Steve just kept driving not wanting the passenger seat which was fine for me. We exited at Rawlins and headed north towards Lander. We stopped at Split Rock around 2:00 for a quick break and headed on toward Farson on WY28 where we stopped at two different locations to place some gas. Before we knew it we were in Pinedale and unloading our bikes. We rode up to Fremont Lake and cruised around the lake like we did in 2004. Not much had changed, at least relative to the lake. It stayed light well past 9:00 so we rode all we could before coming back and stopping at Wind River Brewing for ‘Last One’.
