Day 24
A very long day today but we made it back to Omaha.
First up it was breakfast in Sturgis which is clearly gearing up for the August Rally - the welcome banners across main street are mostly up and cafes are advertising for staff. Also 2010 T shirts are available in gas stations. You can get lasts years ones 3 for $10. There are quite a large number of bikes around as well, most notably BMW's so I suspects they have an event organised.
Entering Nebraska I was pleasently surprised to see rolling hills of grassland much the same as you see in NZ. Turns out they are sand dunes left behind when the sea receded a million or so years ago.
A couple of hundred miles before reaching Omaha we got rained on big time - thunder, lightening, the lot. As impressive as the forked lightening was against the gray sky, it was not until dark that the show really started. There were two lightening storms. The closer one, which light the whole area up like daylight, was actually behind us and not so easy to see but there was one ahead of us way way in the distance and which had a cloud bank between us and the storm. Constant flashes silhouetted the clouds in a most spectacular way and to add to the awesome display of power was the occasional exchange between the clouds of bolts of lightening. I tried videoing the display and take the occasional picture but they did not come out.
We pulled into Franks place at around 1 in the morning for a 550 mile (880 km) day. My speedo says we had traveled 8,200 miles and to misquote Ed Hillary - 'we knocked the bastard off'.
In the remaining few days I think I will pop up Wisconsin and have a look over the Harley Davidson museum.