Genoa Motorcycle Trip

I can't believe it's already been three years since we went on this same motorcycle trip!

M and I woke up early Friday, June 15th and rode the motorcycle over to his brother's house in River Falls, Wisconsin. We met up with 17 other people who would be joining us on the trip.  

It took a bit to get everyone going but we finally left about 11 am and slowly headed south to our destination of Genoa, WI.  We stopped at a bar called Gumby's for a drink.

We slowly took our time and rode on many country roads that were just perfect for motorcycles.  As one of our navigators said, a blind man could find the best motorcycle roads in this area because every road seemed to be perfect.  

We did take a wrong turn and ended up on one of the best roads of the weekend.  We stopped to look at a map and this was our scenery:

I had never seen a cemetery on the grounds of a church before.  Before the trip would be over, I would see this a couple more times.

Our group across from the church

Our last food/drink stop before our destination was Top Dawgs, a bar in who knows where.  It was about 45 minutes from our destination.  The bar was on County Road 108 or Hwy 108 and so it was appropriate that Top Dawgs was the home of 108 different burgers.  They had every option available.

We finally arrived to our destination around 6:30-7 pm in Genoa.  We stayed at Rudy's, which has six rooms and three bathrooms above the bar.  It's worth it for $11 a person/night.

After resting a bit in our room, we headed down to the bar for some drinks and some bar bingo for the rest of the evening and joined two more of our riders who weren't able to leave with us on Friday morning so came and met us after work.  I had to try a local beer, LaCrosse Light.  We drove by this brewery in LaCrosse on the way back to Minnesota. 

I woke up early so I could get in the shower without having to compete with the whole group of others. M and I tried to take a quick bike trip to see the Amish but it started to rain and so we came back.  One of the bikes was leaking gas so we had to ride up to the Harley dealership in LaCrosse, in the rain.  

M with part of his rain gear on.  I think he looks very sexy.

The rain was off and on and while the bike was getting fixed, we decided to eat breakfast, which it was now about noon.  It took the worst directions from the girl at the Harley dealership and the absolute worst directions from a guy at the gas station to arrive at Nutbush.  It was like a Saturday Night Live skit the way he described directions to us.  Oh yeah, and the name Nutbush? I just looked it up and Nutbush City Limits is a song by Tina Turner. We met up with another one of our riders here who came from the Twin Cities that morning.

Sexy again!

After breakfast, bike repair, rain coming and going, we were finally able to get on the road and ride.  We wouldn't be able to go as far as originally planned due to weather and the bike being fixed and us being 25-30 miles north of where we started but we still did get some good riding in along some of the country roads not far from Genoa.

We stopped at a bar south of Genoa, which I can't remember the name but had a drink there and continued south to Prairie du Chien (pronounced Sheen).

There they had their Prairie Villa Rendezvous where they had a flea market and other part was demonstrations of people living in camps and doing activities as they would have in the 1700's.  Everything looked like junk at the flea market.  The demonstrations were kind of interesting but creepy at the same time.  

I had to put the picture below in because, well, it's strange.  The "lady" smoking and in animal print truly looked like a man and was talking to us but we couldn't understand a word she was saying.  Her false teeth were rattling in her mouth, which didn't help her cause.  She seemed pretty loaded and I don't know how she could be wearing those winter clothes because it was so damn hot.  The guy she was with is in the lower left hand corner and I'm not sure what his story was either.  He had a huge tumor on the side of his face of which his eye glasses went through.  You can see it in the picture below.  I do not mean to sound rude or anything like that but the people here were very different than the people I know in Minnesota.  

This guy played beautiful music on this instrument

We headed back around 6 pm and again, relaxed, took showers and started our night up at the bar.  I may have been feeling pretty good this night.  When we come here, we take over the town.  I'm sure we spend hundreds of dollars in this tiny little town of 263 people and we as a group of 22 can get a little rowdy in the process. We increase their population by over 8% for the weekend! 

M and I got up early and took off without the rest of the group.  It was Father's Day and a gorgeous day and we wanted to get home so I could see my dad for a bit later in the afternoon.  We left and went through LaCrosse and came back up on the Minnesota side.  

We stopped in Winona for breakfast.

We stopped in Wabasha.

We stopped in Red Wing.

And then the rain came.  We rode the last 40 miles in the rain.  Not fun.  Rain was not expected until later that evening.  We saw many motorcyclists trapped in the rain like us and we had to pull over for awhile to clear the windshield and our glasses.  We finally made it home at 3 pm, partially soaked.  These were our last pictures of the trip.

The trip was really fun but after it was said and done, we spent 600 miles on a bike in a weekend.  It takes a lot out of you so it always feels good to get home.  I took a shower and went back out to my parent's house to visit with them for Father's Day.  While I only was able to see my sister and her whole family and my grandpa about 15 minutes before they left, I was able to hang with my parents for a couple of hours including a good dinner my mom made.