Today we woke up expect­ing some rain on our final day of the trip. We were pleas­antly sur­prised when we were greeted with clear, sunny skies instead! We hit the road between 8 and 9 am, headed for Beloit, Wisconsin and home.

It was a gor­geous day, bright and sunny, on the warm side. Probably the nicest weather day we’d had the entire trip. We stuck to mostly coun­try roads and county high­ways as we worked our way south through cen­tral Wisconsin, only stop­ping for gas.

We saw ten times as many bik­ers on the road today as we had the entire rest of the trip. Not too sur­pris­ing, really, con­sid­er­ing it was a Saturday. As we got closer to Beloit, Dean split off, headed east towards his home, since he lives just north of the Illinois/Wisconsin bor­der in Wisconsin. We waved bye as he took the exit home, and con­tin­ued on our way.

We wan­dered into Beloit, and then South Beloit, where Tim con­tin­ued on home, Mike and I split­ting off in the direc­tion of his house. We arrived around 1 pm and I took the chance to take a long break, relax with Mike and his wife, April, and eat some lunch.

After check­ing out Mike’s other bike, a Yamaha dual sport, I put my bug splat­tered hel­met on and headed East through beau­ti­ful Northern Illinois coun­try­side, towards my home. A ton of bik­ers were out for their week­end rides. With my pack on the back and mud and bug cov­ered bike, I didn’t quite fit in and caught quite a few looks from the bik­ers I passed.

The closer I got to home, the more famil­iar the roads became; this was home ground and I’d rid­den these coun­try roads a lot over the past three years. Lots of trees and pow­er­lines were down, remain­ders of the storms that had rolled through the area the day and night before. Seeing them made me real­ize we’d made the right deci­sion in stay­ing an extra night in Appleton, Wisconsin. Still, I was anx­ious to get home.

When I finally pulled into the drive way, it was with a mix­ture of relief and a lit­tle bit of depres­sion. I was happy to have com­pleted the trip with­out any mishaps, but a part of me didn’t want it to be over either. I had got­ten used to the feel of the open road and the wind in my face, not really think­ing about any­thing except what I was doing at that moment. It’s the “free­dom of the open road” cliche I’d heard so many bik­ers talk about before; it’s a pow­er­ful feel­ing that just makes you want to keep on riding!

According to my odome­ter, I’d rid­den a total of 1,317 miles in a com­plete cir­cle around Lake Michigan. We rode through four states and got to see three of the Great Lakes on our trip. I really enjoyed rid­ing through Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, since so much of it I’d never seen before.

Taking a long trip by motor­cy­cle is some­thing I’d been dream­ing of ever since get­ting my bike. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, lit­er­ally, doing the trip on a Sportster, but it’s some­thing I can brag about now. It wasn’t the eas­i­est bike to go that far on, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as every­one made it out to be before we left either.

I learned quite a few things along the way (my next post will be about these lessons learned) that I’ll be mak­ing use of when plan­ning my next long motor­cy­cle trip. Hopefully you enjoyed fol­low­ing along!

Related posts:

1. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: An Idea is Born
2. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: The Bike
3. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: Day Four
4. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: The Luggage Problem
5. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: Day One