Considering a motorcycle trip around Lake Michigan for next summer. Thoughts, input, insight?

Just make sure your crash is figurative.

 

Well Stan, you'll have to tell me what your thoughts are on this. We have been talking about the trip the last few weeks, and both of us couples sat down tonight with a map and started sketching things out. I'm not sure how much of this ground you've covered, or maybe others have traveled through it, but I'd be interested on your thoughts.

It's a little less than 1000 miles from us to Cheyenne. We will leave late at night on a Wed, or wee hours of Thurs, and drive straight through, arriving Thurs evening. We'll hop on the bikes Friday AM and head down through Estes Park, ending Friday in Steamboat Springs, CO. Depending on routes, this is about 250 miles. From there, on Sat we'll head west towards Flaming Gorge near Vernal, UT. Then we'll cut north towards the Grand Tetons and end up around Idaho Falls by Sunday night. So those two days will probably be 200-300 miles each, depending on where we stay on Sat night. On Monday we'll ride up to Yellowstone (100 miles or so), maybe stay Monday night in West Yellowstone so we have most of Mon and some Tues AM in and around the park. End up Tuesday maybe in Billings, Montana, covering 250 miles that day. Wednesday head down through Sheridan and towards Sturgis, covering maybe 320-350 miles on Wed, spending the night in Sturgis. Thursday we could ride down through Rapid City and maybe over to the Badlands, staying the night in Rapid City on Thursday night. Friday we would ride about 300 miles back down to Cheyenne, load up the bikes and stay the night. Saturday we could make the drive home, maybe breaking this drive into a day and a half just so we aren't exhausted getting home.

Any thoughts or opinions on the reasonableness of this schedule? Anything major we are missing?
I'm assuming if we hit this in early-mid July we shouldn't have too much of a chance of weather closing roads?
I know we aren't giving a ton of time to stop at any of the places we will be riding through, but I think our mileages are reasonable enough that we can take an hour or two to stretch our legs and see some of the parks. Am I discounting how slow we'll have to go through the mountains and some points?

Obviously we'd hope for little or no rain, but if we get a day or two of really bad weather we can either cut our route short towards the end of the week, do a long day to catch up, or adjust on the fly. I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to planning everything ahead, but I don't mind adjusting it during the trip if there is a reason we need to.

 

Yeah, I've read on another forum many stories of members there doing it. One of the guys I occasionally ride with doesn't go through the effort to submit and verify his, but regularly does rides that long. I've given it some thought, but I can't think of any better reason than "to say I did it". I honestly believe I could pull it off, but I guess you never know until you try.

 

Somehow I missed this post, or I would've replied earlier. Thanks for the insight and advice. We are trying to determine if we are being overly ambitious with our schedule and routes or not. We will just have to be flexible if we get a couple days in and realize we are pushing too hard.