In June 2017 I drove a nice loop through to Minnesota for a mini-long weekend. The main purpose was to get to the BMW Motorcycle Club of Minnesota's 41st Annual Hiawatha Rally near Houston, Minnesota at the Money Creek Haven Campground.
Not exactly an exotic location, but I left mid-day Friday and took a motorcycle ride to Minnesota for this small rally. It was only about 300 miles to get there, and a couple hundred people showed up. I guess a rally wouldn't exist for 41 years if people didn't show up. I arrived early evening on Friday night and that allowed me to setup camp, get some food, and walk around and look at the other BMWs that were there.
For Saturday, most of the day, I had beautiful weather. That allowed me to test ride a much newer version of my bike, an R1200RS. We were located in a nice rural setting, the roads were nice, no crowds or traffic, and I had about 30 minutes to test ride it. It was nice and had some new technology, but I think I'll stick with my current ride. I also took some time Saturday to wander on some of the back roads on my own motorcycle, since they had provided us a map of some scenic rides to take. For Saturday, they provided breakfast and also dinner and entertainment that night. However, before the night ended, it drizzled a little. Just enough to get the grass wet and the tent wet. It didn't soak through initially or have torrential rains, but it made it real damp and eventually the inside of my tent got wet when I went to bed that night.
On Sunday, I enjoyed a quick hot breakfast at the rally before the return trip home. I tried to take as many back roads and drive along as much of the Mississippi River as I could for a scenic drive home. Surprisingly, there are not that many crossings of the Mississippi River from Minnesota into Wisconsin, so I ended up driving into Iowa to get a crossing. That also kept me on some more scenic roads in southern Wisconsin for the return drive home. Round trip to the rally and back was only 725 miles.
top