And Finally...the Fiftieth

QG50SMA Total Miles: 18,957 

Though we didn't start recording miles until July, 2012, so we missed an entire year of mileage.

As always, if you want to read this blog from the beginning, start here. You can catch up on past adventures using the navigation at the right.

If you go back and count the number of state pictures in this blog (and some people have) you'll notice there are only 49 states. We didn't miss one of the tiny states out East or one of the big ones out West. This was by design.

We planned long ago to celebrate the completion of our adventure at home in Minnesota - our golden, 50th, state.

We've been home a week now, and couldn't have picked a better morning to ride east to the Minnesota/Wisconsin border and do this:

With champagne in hand and smiles on our faces, we took our 50th state picture.

It's a wonderful thing to celebrate - going from a spark of an idea conceived while we sat in the chemotherapy room at the local hospital to reaching the end of the adventure.

There is, of course, the melancholy "What Now?".

The adventure will go on.  Next year we will finish up Canada by visiting the Maritime Provinces, and the year after that, who knows. There's a whole big world out there accessible by motorcycle, and we plan to see as much of it as we can.

There are so very many places we want to go back to and spend more time. A day here and a day there was simply not enough to really absorb all the history, culture, fantastic food, wonderful people, sights, smells and sounds of the places we traveled to.

One thing we did learn on this great quest: this country of ours is amazing. The vast beauty of the land and diversity of one road to another is incredible and we loved it all - admittedly some places more than others - but there isn't a single road we traveled, or a single stop we made that we wouldn't do again in a heartbeat.

We are asked all the time what our favorite part of QG50SMA was - and we simply cannot answer. Each trip was unique and offered its own beauty and challenges. Each trip showed us and taught us something we hadn't seen or known before we got on the bike.

Thank you all for taking this journey with us. We were so happy to have been able to share so much of it with you.


Anne and Sean

Day 12 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Amana IA to Home
Miles: 275
Total Miles: 3,511

We were only a few hours from home and luckily the early morning roads were clear and dry.

We rolled in before noon and were greeted by Remy the Rescue Mutt,

very long grass and a pile of mail to go through.


It seemed like our adventure was just starting, instead of just ending, but within a matter of days we were ready for our next trip and a new adventure...

Day 11 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 11 Auburn IN to Amana IA
Miles:

It's a funny feeling when you cross a state line and know you are back home... and I'm sure an Iowa Girl at heart that my first thought when we entered my home state was "Wow. The corn really looks good this year".

Before we hit the Iowa state line though, it rained. and poured and stormed. We finally decided to just stop and not even try to ride through all that water.

The first town we came to was Buda, IL.

We couldn't see through the rain enough to tell what all made up the town, but we did find an open bar where we could peel off our rain suits and sit for a while. As the very helpful bartender, Dena, said:

"It's 5 o'clock somewhere!"

When the rain let up and we got ready to leave, Tracy mentioned that there was a brand new establishment just down the road that we had to stop at - we'd be very impressed...and we were.

The Psycho Silo Saloon had just opened the week before. Apparently, some locals had purchased land just off I-80 in Langley, Illinois, with an old silo on it and turned it into a bar that was more like an event center.

The people were nice, the beer was cold, the music was fantastic and a drink called an oatmeal cookie was very tasty. But we knew we couldn't stay long, since we'd already spent most of the day inside rather than on the road.

Finally we made it to Amana, IA and the home of our friends Larry and Kathy. Sean's known them since they met in Milwaukee during the Harley Davidson 100th anniversary party back in 2003. When Sean and I started dating, they were just another wonderful part of the package deal.

They fed us another fantastic homemade meal and sent us off to bed for the night and then back on the road early the next morning.

Day 10 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 10 - Danville PA to Auburn IN
Miles: 504

It was time to head home and we only had two days to get there. We made it as far Indiana and made a detour to Auburn, Indiana before we stopped for the evening.


If you haven't been there, Auburn is a nice little town with one incredible attraction, the Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg Museum.

This incredible art deco building used to house the Auburn Company, that made rolling works of art back in the early part of the 20th century.

The museum was open late, so we got in and spent hours roaming around, looking at the vintage cars, absorbing their history and pointing out incredible details to one another.

I am in awe of these machines, and always have been. How someone could manage to drive such a stunning (and big) automobile is beyond me.

How someone could manage to keep all that chrome clean is an even bigger mystery.

Day 9 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 9 - Pound Ridge NY to Danville, PA
Miles:

This is THE DAY we'd been looking forward to, planning for and dreaming about for more than 4 years. Today we will visit our 50th state on our motorcycle and complete the Quinlans' Great 50-States-by-Motorcycle Adventure.

...and this was the day it chose to rain for the first time on this leg of the trip. We made it an hour or so before the storms started, but had to stop and put on the rain gear.

Luckily the rain subsided enough to get our picture - a very bittersweet picture - of our final state, New Jersey.

We congratulated ourselves and each other on making this quest, then as the storms started to break up, continued on into Pennsylvania, where our Sturgis friend Tommy and his girlfriend, Linette were waiting for us.

They showed us around the area and we rode some great, scenic roads through coal country on our way to Tommy's hometown of Danville.

Tommy belongs to a motorcycle club (of which we are honorary members). He's talked about the club and the work they've done on the clubhouse for years - and we finally got to see it.

We were impressed. The Susquehanna Motorcycle Club is a great place where we sat and easily chatted with new friends from the club.

We moved on to a couple more establishments and then said good-bye to our host and hostess for the day, knowing that we'd see them again in a few weeks in South Dakota.

Day 8 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 8 - New York City and Pound Ridge, NY
Miles: 0

One of the wonderful things about having friends in any city is that they know all the best ways to get somewhere, or see something, that you wouldn't normally think to do. Today, we appreciated Rosa the cruise director. even more. We knew what we wanted to see and where we were going and she was able to just fill in the details.

Our first stop was the 9/11 Memorial and the new Freedom Tower, built on the site of the World Trade Center.

I was at Ground Zero years ago with Rosa and her daughter Maia, when they were still cleaning the debris from the area. There was an incredible difference in how the grounds look this visit - but the feel and the heaviness in the air were the same.

We walked around for a couple hours, randomly reading names of those who died off the memorial,

and noting number tags in the trees planted for throughout the plaza. The tags help locate memorial cobblestones beneath them...

it was hard to take it all in, and hard to imagine the terror of that day in such a now-peaceful spot.

After a last moment of silence, we headed toward Battery Park

and to the pier that housed the Staten Island Ferries.

We'd thought about heading to Ellis Island and to the Statue of Liberty, but were reminded by Rosa that that trip alone would take all day. Instead, she'd said, just get on the Staten Island Ferry, ride out and back and you'll be almost as close to both attractions as if you'd been on a tour. Plus the Staten Island Ferry is free.

So that's what we did, and we are so very glad.

Ellis Island showed up first, and we thought of all our relatives and the people who landed on its shores and first set foot in our country through this place.

Then we glided by Lady Liberty, so close and at such a spectacular angle you felt like you could reach out and touch her, or at least get some very decent pictures.

We arrive on Staten Island and had lunch, then headed back to the ferry for the return trip.

One thing we noted in the City that was different for both of us was the amount of security everywhere we went. There were police officers, police dogs

and security officers everywhere we went. We wondered if they were there to fend off actual threats, or more for just a sense of being safe. We figured it's probably some of both.

After a quick dash to Wall Street

we headed back to Grand Central Station to catch our train to Westchester County. On the way, Sean stopped in his tracks and pointed to the name of the tavern we were just passing.

We unknowingly were walking by the pub that his parents used to frequent when they were first married. In fact, they liked the place so much that they named their first child after the bartender...whose name was Sean. So, of course we had to stop in for a beer.


We were exhausted as we took our seats on the train, but managed to rest up enough to have a spectacular dinner with Rosa and Lou before we called it an evening.

Day 7 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 7 - Boston MA to New York, New York
Miles: 210

We hated to leave Vince and his wonderful hospitality,

but the road called.

We checked off Rhode Island

and Connecticut

on our way to New York.

Our first stop was in Pound Ridge, New York where my long-time friend Rosa, and her husband, Lou, live. We stopped long enough to shower, have a bite to eat, a chauffeured ride to the train station (thank you, Rosa) and then a relaxing hour's train ride into Grand Central Station.

Anyone who has spent time in Manhattan knows how easy it is to be overwhelmed when you first arrive. Unless you live there, of course, then you realize what a vibrant, wonderful place it is. For us, it took a while to get our bearings, but we just looked up, saw the Chrysler Building and headed that direction.

It had never occurred to me to actually go into the Chrysler Building, but we did and found the inside lobby of the building shadows the gorgeous outside.

Art Deco is everywhere and leant itself to a totally different time and a very different world that we both love.

We eventually made our way to the hotel, dropped off our bag and started walking.

First order of business was to the top of Rockefeller Center

 for a fantastic, but hazy view of the city.

Then a wonderful dinner of New York Pizza.

We ended up in Times Square (along with every other tourist in town) as it began to get dark and the neon began to light up the town.

We finally made it back to the hotel,

relaxed and ready to continue this part of our adventure the next day.

Day 6 - Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Finally...

Day 6 - Boston, MA
Miles: 0

A great diner breakfast filled us up fast before we headed into Boston for the day.

In our minds, we know that Boston is full of history, but when even the parking lot window gave us a window into the past, I couldn't help but be in awe - and take pictures.

Our first stop was the Bell in Hand, America's oldest tavern.

The next stop was just across the cobblestone alley at the Green Dragon Tavern, known as the Headquarters of the American Revolution, where the Sons of Liberty conspired and strategized over details of some of the most significant even of the revolution. Lots of relics from the era hang on the walls.

Next was Ye Olde Union Oyster House.

Being from the upper Midwest, we aren't exposed to oysters on a routine basis, or at least not 'fresh out of the ocean' oysters. So this was our opportunity to see what the oyster craze was all about.

Our friendly bartender, Billy, served us up a dozen to split between the three of us.

ummm....not sure.....

looks slimy....

Here goes....

YES! Success! and they really were pretty good. The first dozen turned into several dozen. We left satisfied and proud of our oyster-eating accomplishment.

All that eating led to an opportunity to walk around a little bit. We visited the very touching Holocaust Memorial

and several other historic establishments.

Before heading back to the car for more sight-seeing. We drove by plenty of beautiful buildings, and tourist sites

and even took a few minutes to pay our respects at the infamous Boston Marathon finish line.

We topped off the tour with a very delicious barbecue dinner at Redbones in Somerville, and all too soon the day was over.  All that was left to do was pack up for the next day's departure.