For the last six or seven years, every summer I do a national-scale motorcycle scavenger hunt run by a motorcycle club out of Minnesota known as Team Strange. Each year it has a theme. One of my favorites was “On The Trail of the Whispering Giants.” Whispering Giants are 10-20-foot tall sculptures of Native American figures carved out of tree trunks by artist Peter Wolf Toth. I tracked down about a dozen of them back in 2015 ranging from Lincoln, Nebraska, to North Bay, Ontario.
Last year’s tour had a “Riding to Hounds” theme that called for equestrian statues as well as statues of dogs and foxes. Had great fun picking up a fairly limited number of images during the pandemic, most notably one of “Bass Reeves, Black Lawman” who was the very real first Black U.S. Marshall who was featured in the HBO Watchman series.
This year’s Grand Tour is made up of bonus locations that were intended to be a part of last year’s Butt Lite X motorcycle scavenger hunt rally. (See, it’s a shorter version of the 11-day, 11,000-mile Iron Butt Rally, so it’s Butt Lite…) And just to make it more fun, all of the bonus locations for Butt Lite IX are included as well.
So far I’ve only had one chance to get out and collect grand tour bonus sites, but I hope to be picking up the pace in the weeks to come. Here are my first two:
“In 1964, Dwight D. Eisenhower called Andrew Jackson Higgins “the man who won the war for us”. Higgins was born in Columbus, NE in 1886, and without his landing crafts the Allied strategy in World War II would have been different and winning the war more difficult.” This photo is from the Higgins memorial in Columbus, NE. (74 Columbus, NE HIG)
“George A. Wyman was the first person to cross America on a motorized vehicle. Wyman started in San Francisco, California on May 16 and arrived in New York City 50 days later on July 6, 1903. On June 14, 1903, Wyman stopped in Ogden, Iowa for repairs to his motorcycle.” (38 Ogden, IA WYM)
And finally… on my way home from this trip (which was to visit my 93-year-old father in Iowa), I stopped at Butch’s Deli and Ice Cream in Blair, NE on a cool, drizzly afternoon for a much needed Italian sub and cup of chicken noodle soup.
