Like any good three-act play, the trip can be broken down into three different stages. TO to Vegas was the first third which was characterized by a very deliberate planning of routes, destinations and places to stay. The second act was Vegas to Sturgis, which was more free flowing. I had a rough route that I wanted to follow, but every day while talking to people along the way, the route changed. The destinations started to form around National Parks, as we had been very impressed with what the US National Park Services had to offer. That, and we really wanted to milk that $50 National Parks Pass... I stopped reserving hotels in advance, and whenever we got tired, we looked for the next nice place to stay and just poked our head in to see if they had any rooms for the night. I found that a bit more expensive, but it made for a less stressful day trying to make it to a specific place for that night, as we could spend more time in any one place that caught our fancy.  Red Rocks Canyon, NV  Riding through Red Rocks Canyon Early morning in Vegas, we traveled just outside the city to Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area. Our Parks Pass didn't work here since it was a Conservation Area, not a National Park, and felt a bit ripped off dishing out the $4 for entrance to the Park... I mean, Area... It turned out to be well worth it, the road was a nice single lane one-way affair, and the fact that we got in right when the park opened and it was a Thursday morning, meant no traffic at all. We then made our way across I95 in the desert to Death Valley. We had debated whether to even venture into the hottest place on Earth in the middle of the summer, but since the Ontario rain gods were with us, we decided to chance it. Our hunch paid off. Death Valley regularly reaches temperatures of 50C, however on this balmy, summer day, it was struggling to top 40C. We met a fellow Canadian at the gate to Death Valley. Gary came from Vancouver, grew up in Hamilton (we didn't make fun of him right away, because we're all Canadian and we're polite people). He rode a F650GS, and Neda and him were commiserating about the lack of power, lack of wind protection, vibration of the single cylinder. Whatever... Wimps. Death Valley surprised me quite a bit. I had visions of barren wasteland, but riding through, I saw quite a diverse landscape, from sand dunes to mountain vistas, to different sorts of greenery that found ways to flourish in the heat, as well as wildlife! We didn't see them during the day, but the visitor's centre assured us they came out at night. And I bet they didn't need evaporative vests from Germany to survive...  The long, lonely road through Death Valley, CA  Death Valley Gary rode with us on and off all the way from Death Valley to Yosemite National Park, meaning that we would break off to do our thing, take pictures, have lunch, and he would do the same, but somehow we kept meeting back on the highway at several points. We said our goodbyes at the gate to Yosemite, as he was going to camp out there for the night before heading to Reno and then back home, and we were riding through to Sonora, CA. You know, we had crossed into California right before Death Valley, and it happened without any fanfare at all, overshadowed by the fact that we were going to travel through one of the hottest places on Earth (just not that day...). But when we got into Sonora, we really got a taste of California culture. How? Sportbikes. Everywhere! Whereas the Midwest love their Harleys, we now started to see R1s, GSXRs and Ninjas everywhere. It was nice for a change. Back to cruisers for a moment: Harleys probably make up 90% of the cruiser contingent. Every cruiser we passed was a Harley. In fact Harley dealerships dotted the Interstates. At every exit, you'd see a sign for the next McDonalds, the next Chevron, and... the next Harley dealership. I don't think I saw a single Virago/Vulcan/Boulevard/etc... It's as if there's a social stigma to ride around on a Japanese cruiser in the United States. Like wearing fur to a PETA meeting.  Yosemite NP, CA Yosemite NP was quite a contrast to Death Valley. I couldn't believe that in the space of a day I'd see both a desert in the morning and snow and glaciers in the afternoon. Yosemite is a traditional park, the kind that families go to for picnics, hiking and camping. Unfortunately, those same families go to Yosemite in RVs. My god, are they ever slow! There's only one thing worse than being stuck behind a lumbering RV doing 25mph in a 45 zone, and that's being stuck behind a Harley doing 25mph in a 45 zone. Good lord, man, move over! There's a line of 10 cars behind you!  Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe. There's a building on the island that Lora Knight built as a teahouse which she'd take guests out to by boat Waking up in Sonora, we took a very spirited ride up twisty Hwy 88 up to Lake Tahoe. Once again, the roads were empty in the morning, so we had a great time zooming without any interference from traffic. I had to take a short nap after lunch in Tahoe City, which is a nice touristy place, the stores are all cutesy-colour-co-ordinated to match. It's a ski resort town in the winter. Funny how we always end up in the same places, snowboarding in the winter, motorcycling in the summer. We took another twisty road, Hwy 49, which was so remote, that even during the middle of the day, the cars ahead of us pulled off to their various cottages and campsites, so 30 minutes in, we were alone to play again. It's reassuring to know that when you're leaned over in a 20mph corner, that an 18-wheeler isn't going to come around the bend and clip you in the head in the middle of the apex!  Benicia-Martinez Bridge joining Vallejo to San Francisco We hightailed it at the end of 88 at Lincoln, CA, taking the I80 all the way to San Francisco. This was rush hour now, and we were stopped a few times on the freeway in the scorching heat. At one of our stops, we heard a motorcycle revving it's engine from behind, and it suddenly zoomed past us between all the stopped cars. LANE SPLITTING IS LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA! How cool! And what dopes we must have looked like doing the clutch and go in rush hour on the Interstate. We must use this new found power for good, and not evil. Heh heh heh...  Always photogenic. No, not us, I mean the Golden Gate bridge We woke up at Fisherman's Wharf in SF, and headed down to The Presidio at the bottom of the Golden Gate bridge for some classic Cali shots. We crossed the bridge into Golden Gate National Recreation Area and were treated to an early morning jaunt along the coast. We saw a few Ducati's as well here, so we knew we had hit good roads. Some of them even waved to us. Ducati snobs... The locals don't call Hwy 1 the Pacific Coast Highway. In fact they laugh at the tourists who refer to it as the PCH, instead all the signs call it the Shoreline Highway. Hwy 1 meets up with Hwy 101 some 300kms north of San Francisco. If our trip was a sundae, riding the Shoreline Hwy was the cherry to top it off. Not the most twistiest road we rode, not even the most scenic or breathtaking, but the feeling of riding two motorcycles from Toronto up the west coast of the US was totally awesome (dude)!  View from Hwy 101, CA We stayed overnight at Eureka, CA, and woke up to temperatures in the high 40s. That's 8C for you Celcius-speaking folks. Even though we were in California, it does get quite cold along the coast, and many folks commented on the relatively fogless day we had earlier. That morning, we headed north-west in Oregon, riding the very snakelike Hwy 96 through Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation until we hit I5, where we booted up to Crater Lake National Park. The main attraction here is a huge lake at the top of mountain, created by a volcano that collapsed on itself after depleting the magma chamber underneath. The resulting caldera slowly filled with ice and rainwater over thousands of years, leaving the bluest lake you'll ever see. The island on the left is called Wizard Island because it's shaped like a Wizard's hat.  Crater Lake, OR. Panorama  Wizard Island, Crater Lake With storm clouds gathering, we rushed through US97 to get to a motel for safety. Luck was not with us and we got hailed on, which is twice as bad when you have mesh jackets on. Ah, the dilemma, 30 minutes to the closest motel: pull over and put our rain suits on, or grin and bear it? Since I was lead rider, I made the executive decision to hunker down behind my barn-door of a windshield and ride through it. To this day, Neda, with her fly-screen fairing, and bruising from the ice chips on her arms and legs, still thinks I made the wrong decision.  Storms'a brewin' in Oregon, ya can see it in my eyes The next day we rode from Bend, OR, through Boise, ID, where we stopped in to Twin Rivers BMW to check out the warez. From there, we took a great twisty road, Hwy 21 up and then down to finally rest for the night in a very affluent ski town called Sun Valley. Everyone we met went on and on about how Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Richard Dreyfuss all own property here. Blah blah, do you have a room available or not?  Chasing Neda through Idaho Moving from Pacific Time to Mountain Time in Oregon, we started to pay back all the benefits we had reaped going westwards. Time to give back an hour (pun fully intended). To make matters worse, on our way to the Craters of the Moon National Park, we encountered traffic delays on the Hwy, about 30 minutes off the bike while we waiting for construction crews moving in and out. The wait was worth it, as the Craters NP delivered stunning views of fields of black basaltic lava rock that had flowed up from volcanoes in the Idaho Pioneer Mountain range.  Craters of the Moon, NP. Tourists flow out of a tour bus and flock up the side of a basaltic hill, like cult members waiting for their spaceship  Craters of the Sun? Our next destination were the twin National Parks, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. The Grand Teton National Park is based around the Teton mountain range. If you are going to make a bawdy joke about the name, you'll be surprised to know that that's where it came from. Teton, from the French slang for breasts. Bewbies. Jugs. So named for the shape of the mountain range. I guess Grand Gazongas National Park just doesn't have the same ring...  Neda chasing me to Yellowstone. I think she's giving me the finger  Never traveled through a NP so late. One marked difference is that late afternoon is when all the wildlife come out to play. We rode through the east gate of Yellowstone into the Wyoming mountain range, through some canyons and running brooks. We had to move quickly through this terrain, because as you might have guessed, thundershowers were predicted for this area. We pulled into Cody and saw a stadium packed to the gills with people watching a rodeo. We had arrived in Cowboy Country. With pellets of rain starting to hit us, I frantically searched for an available room at any hotel. Everything on the main drag flashed, No Vacancy. When I asked the receptionist at one of the motels whether the rooms were all filled because of the rodeo that night, she looked at me with puzzlement and remarked, "Huh? There's a rodeo *EVERY* night"... Welcome to Cowboy Country!  Neda riding through Cowboy Country (east of Yellowstone into Cody, WY) It turns out that Cody is the first town east of Yellowstone, so almost every night, they get weary tourists who have traveled out of the National Park looking for a place to stay. In a panic, I made a phone reservation, sight unseen, with an Inn that advertised "clean beds". Never good when you have to advertise that your beds are clean. It turned out to be an excellent boutique hotel called the Chamberlin Inn right downtown. Which is where I'm sitting right now on our 2nd rest day. It's Wed July 12th and I'm taking the opportunity to jot down some notes before I forget all the places we've been to and the sights we've seen. Later on today, we'll do some laundry and have lunch in downtown Cody, WY. No doubt like dinner last night, our lunch will be beef, grown right here in Cattle Country. We're set to ride through Bighorn Canyon and Sturgis, SD tomorrow and we'll do some of the roads in the Black Hills that the Sturgis Rally is so famous for. From there, our third and final act of the play will consist of superslab all the way through to Wisconsin where we'll stay on Saturday night in Sault Ste-Marie. Then ride through Manitoulin on Sunday morning to take the ferry back home in the afternoon.  Bike has bugs in his teeth from smiling so much
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