It's The Journey That Transforms

A few months back, a friend asked if we could possibly meet up in Rockford, IL at the end of July. While I had started my riding in the Midwest, I had never ridden from here to the Midwest, so the idea of riding there became interesting. I began to consider the route I'd take, the people and places I'd visit, and how much time it would take. My imagination ran wild!

The renowned professor of strategy at Harvard, Michael Porter famously said that the essence of strategy is in deciding what NOT to do. If I were going to keep the trip from lasting forever, some things would have to go. In the end I decided to visit college friends in Seattle, my sister in northern BC, my niece in Madison, WI, my friend in Rockford, IL, and the town of my birth, Davenport, IA as primary destinations.

*edit* Here's a video I made a few days before I departed.
[YOUTUBE]vWiE6_Ib_RE[/YOUTUBE]


Photo of the steed ready to depart, repping Cycle.



My first day would mainly be focused on getting north. The quickest was would have been to grind up I-5, but the temps near Redding were triple digits, so I was less than enthused about that. I headed up 101 instead. It was 97 degrees in Cloverdale, and didn't get much cooler than that until almost Humboldt Bay.

I really wanted to get out of California on day one, so I decided to head up to 199, and then to Oregon. I should have anticipated that camp sites might be scarce on a Saturday night, and after I hit three full campgrounds in a row, I threw in the towel, and headed to Grants Pass looking for a motel - which I found after a few attempts.

Map of Day 1

Getting up Sunday morning, and knowing that I needed to be Maple Valley, WA by the afternoon of Monday, I continued my focus on getting north. I briefly considered heading up to Crater Lake and then to 97 to get north on the east side of the Cascades. Then I remembered that I-5 up to Cottage Grove is far more interesting than 97, so I stayed west. It seemed like a good idea until about Eugene, when it dawned on me that all the traffic I was hitting was because it was Sunday, and folks were heading back to Portland at the end of the weekend. Traffic was moving in the 0 - 20 mph range, and of course, no lanesplitting allowed. I couldn't take that much longer, so at the next exit I encountered, I headed towards 99W. This got interesting. It took a bit of messing around, but I knew that if I got to 99W that I'd miss some of the worst of I-5 traffic, plus I had recently heard to an interesting town in Oregon called Vernonia, and this would put me on track to visit it.

No photos of Vernonia because I was so focused on covering ground, but the roads around it are interesting, lots of bikes in town, and across the street from the Chevron where I filled up was a body shop that had a Plymouth Superbird and a Roadrunner in the display window! This is a place worth returning to.

Map of Day 2.

From Vernonia, I crossed the Columbia at Longview, and headed north again on I-5. Traffic was much closer to the limit north of Portland. At Hwy 12 I turned east towards the Cascades, taking a picture at Riffe Lake before continuing to Packwood for gas and camping supplies, then up towards Ohanapecosh to camp for the night. I chose a spot next to a guy on 1200 Tiger, but didn't see him. Later as I was setting up my tent I heard the snores that explained why I hadn't seen him.

Riffe Lake


To be continued.

Day 3 began with a quiet breakfast, and packing up camp. The adventurer next door woke up, and we had a great chat. He lives in Portland, but is from NZ, and we had a lovely chat over coffee before I headed out.

My objective was to circle around the back side of Mt. Rainier to get to my old stomping grounds. I headed over Hwy 123 to get to the junction with 410. My thought had been to crest Cayuse Pass then head to the summit of Chinook Pass before turning around and heading down towards Enumclaw. When I got to the junction with 410 the temp on my dash was down to 41 degrees, and visibility was down to no more than 20 yards, so I turned around and headed west.

The next stop was Crystal Mountain, WA where I actively misspent many days of my youth. I had lived and worked there many years back, and even managed my most catastrophic orthopedic injury there, which is something if you know my history of breaks, tears, dislocations, and sprains. This is where the grieving part of my trip began. I knew that Crystal has changed quite a bit, but I was thinking that I might have breakfast in the same hotel where I often ate when I was a local. I'll just say that it was not at all the same.



Map of Day 3

The "not at all the same" theme continued as I rode past the high school I attended and the gas station where I worked, so I headed back out into the country where we lived, and hit up the bakery in Black Diamond (highly recommended!) for a great BLTA and a slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie.



The map of the day doesn't really capture all the messing about I did this day before heading to the home of my great friends from college, Jamie and Mary at their lakefront home. They got this place decades ago when it was way out in the boonies. Today it is surrounded by suburban sprawl, but it's still peaceful on a lake that doesn't allow any IC motors. They have a pontoon boat powered by a trolling motor, which makes for a nice tour of the lake with a beer in hand.



Even a dragonfly popped by to say hello!



To be continued.

Wait...whut...Rockford? That is my hometown. A bunch of my family is still there.

Glad you had a nice trip. We should catch up. Still need to coordinate a ride to the Castle Air Museum in Atwater.

In... We need a pie emoji.

God stuff, I don't which I like better, the pictures or the commentary

Enchanter said:

Wait...whut...Rockford? That is my hometown. A bunch of my family is still there.

Glad you had a nice trip. We should catch up. Still need to coordinate a ride to the Castle Air Museum in Atwater.

Click to expand...

You should let me know when you're going. I lived a few blocks off-base when it was still a base and remember many a sonic boom! (as well as regular air raid drills...) I haven't been in ages and hear the museum is definitely worth seeing. I believe Labor Day (and Memorial Day) is a special time when they open up exhibits normally closed to the public. I won't ride, as I'll be seeing the fam over there and they don't approve of bikes--don't want to rile the olds.

Looks like a great adventure so far, but a couple of 400+ mile days in the saddle? Man you've got a better butt than I!

Enchanter said:

Wait...whut...Rockford? That is my hometown. A bunch of my family is still there.

Glad you had a nice trip. We should catch up. Still need to coordinate a ride to the Castle Air Museum in Atwater.

Click to expand...

That would be fun!

budman said:

In... We need a pie emoji.

Click to expand...

Yes, yes we do.

greenmonster said:

God stuff, I don't which I like better, the pictures or the commentary

Click to expand...

Thank you!

GB500guy said:

Looks like a great adventure so far, but a couple of 400+ mile days in the saddle? Man you've got a better butt than I!

Click to expand...

Just wait.

If you plan a trip to Castle Air Museum, please post it.

I am sitting on what used to be Castle as I write this, about 500 yards from the museum.

They just received a F117 stealth fighter but it won't be on display until about fall 2023.

I took my time leaving Maple Valley, and swung by Renton as I headed north. I spent a number years working blue collar in Renton (first Boilermakers, then Teamsters), and I was checking out the old stomping grounds. Then I was scheduled to meet my last boss (before I quit in February) to have lunch up in Bothell. The first home I ever owned was in Bothell, so that was familiar territory too.

Day 4 map

After lunch, I put my head down to get up to the border. Canadian immigration is using an app called ArriveCAN to manage gathering Covid and other information in order to expedite the crossing. If you had to deal with all that stuff at the border, it would take forever to cross! Once the vehicle in front of me cleared (they had seven people on board), my crossing went pretty quickly.

Canada 1 was pretty slow moving, and it was frustrating to not be able to split, and once I got to Hope, I was so impatient that I didn't stop, and instead headed up 97 through the Frazier River Canyon (spectacular, and I do recommend). Here I was reminded of the joke about seasons in Montana. You know: What are the seasons in Montana? Almost winter. Winter. Still winter. Road construction. Though this turned out to be true in many places.

There was one active forest fire at Lytton, but it was high above the road, and not much of a concern for travel. Oddly, it was sort of beautiful in a destructive sort of way.

Getting to Cache Creek was another big milestone. I had stayed overnight there once before while visiting my sister in BC. This part of BC is definitely in the rock and sage brush climate area, not evergreens. It was in the 90's much of the way up the canyon. I decided to grab a fast food dinner, but afterwards it seemed too early to stop for the day, so I plunged onward. A couple of crossroads were signed for camping. On the first one, right after I turned off there was another sign saying it was something like 47 km further to get to camping. "Eff that!" At the next one there was no sign saying how far to the campground, so I assumed it would be close. I don't know how far it was, but it certainly wasn't close. IOW, I didn't find it. The good news was it was a great road!

I eventually found a private campground just off of 97 near Clinton, BC. Nice place. Flush toilets, showers, etc. The only downside being road noise from the trucks on 97 that serve the north of BC.



Too busy riding to take many photos. High point of the day may have been the many tiny backroads Google Maps put me on to get around traffic on hwy 9 to get to the border in Sumas.

The directions to my sister's place are pretty easy; head to Prince George, then turn left and go 3-ish hours and you're there! Easy-peasy!

Day 5 map

It was another day of grinding the miles/kilometers. Not much time for photos. In fact, my curse on this day was fighting drowsiness. This required lots of stops. The good news is that BC has tons of rest stops. Most of them are pretty rustic, with amenities limited to picnic tables and pit toilets, but they were there, and I took a couple of picnic bench naps. There were also way more EV chargers than I ever would have suspected way out there in the back of beyond. BC is a remarkably civilized wilderness.

Also, as 97 progresses northward it moves back into an evergreen type climate, and the temps came down to something more comfortable.

Speaking of 97, I saw lots of motorcycles coming the other way. My rough guess is that at least 75% of them were Harleys or other cruiser types, but mostly Harleys. Of the balance, by far the most commonly spotted were 650 Stroms. Yes, more Stroms than BMW's by a wide margin. This was my introduction to the not being able to swing a dead cat without hitting half a dozen Harleys that became only more prevalent. Where are the rest of you? Because I'm not seeing you on the road.

When I finally rolled into my sister's place, I was greeted, fed, plied with alcohol, my bike went in the garage, and the dog on my lap. It was good to be there. Then I got to enjoy the sunset over the lake from their patio.

*edit* Adding a video I made on day 6.

[YOUTUBE]EM4pyhBZUWo[/YOUTUBE]

Day 6 has no map. Of the 21 days gone, this was the only one I didn't ride. Instead, I did laundry, and hung out with my sister and my BIL - a very handy guy!

First, we had to see the garden, and since I have a thing about poppies....



They've had a very wet spring up there, and have not been able to get tractors into the fields until shortly before I arrived, so we went out to inspect the new mown hay. Gorgeous! Hey, I'm a farm kid!



Plus, this gives you another view of the lake. BTW, this lake is immense! More than 60 miles long.

Then the BIL showed me some of his projects. I think he goes through planes faster than I go through bikes! Oh, he also has a Harley. Because there are so many lakes up here, many planes end up on floats. It seems like everyone up here flies. Otherwise, it's hard to get anywhere.

Of course the gem here is the barn-find Cessna 140 he's restoring.







In the midst of all of this, Mike made me a trout sandwich for lunch. Then for dinner they took me several miles (10 maybe?) down the lake to some other property they own with a log cabin on it called Parrot Point for a cookout. It didn't suck.





We spotted a bear and some other wildlife there and on the way home, and visited with neighbors. It was pretty great. Followed by a great night of sleep, which I would need.

To be continued.

Did you ever have one of those days when you kept thinking, "I'll bet there's something better a little further down the road"? Yeah, this was one of those days.

Day 7 map

Just like on day 5, I had some struggles with drowsiness, and had to stop more than I'd like. Canada 16 east of Prince George has very pretty scenery, but there isn't much out there other than scenery, and the road is mostly very straight. Even pretty scenery can be tedious at times. It was a great relief just to get to McBride. My plan was to get to Jasper, then head towards Banff on the Icefields Parkway. I entered the park at about 6 PM, but that far north I knew I'd have another three hours or so of light, so I wasn't too worried.

The thing is, it was Friday night, and campers were hitting the campgrounds. I passed by a number that showed as full. I saw a few where when I got off the bike I was absolutely mobbed by mosquitos. So I just kept thinking, "Just a little further." Then I began to think about bears and whether the campgrounds would have bear boxes, and wondering how much food and food smell I had on me and in my boxes, etc., etc. This got me thinking, "Fuck it, find a motel. There's bound to be something in Banff."

Before entering the park, I passed by Mt. Robson, the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

One of my few picture spots for the day.



The most beautiful part of the day was riding down the Ice Field Parkway in diminishing light and almost no traffic. The sad part was that there was far less ice there than I remember from childhood. I got a shot of this pretty cool hanging glacier though.



I finally got to Banff well after dark, and found what I came to call the curse of skiing towns - no cheap lodging. At all. When I check on Google Maps, most of the stuff was in the range of 300 - 400 CDN. Even at a favorable exchange rate, that annoyed my inner tightwad. So, I headed down the road to Canmore for more of the same. I saw one place that wasn't so outrageously expensive, and when I pulled up they had the "Vacancy" sign lit, but when I got off the bike I got the full Easy Rider treatment, with the proprietor telling me that the vacancy sign was only for those people who already had reservations.

Fuck it! Calgary! I got to Calgary, and I don't know what was going on, but I must have visited or called at least ten places before I found one with a vacancy right downtown. It was a posh place too, though still cheaper than Banff. I got my bike unloaded just as it was starting to rain, and into my room at just after 1 AM.

This was my longest day, and the map doesn't capture all the messing about I did, so there were a few more miles than the map indicates.

To be continued.

Nothing beats a cross country road trip where several day or two stopovers with friends or family is part of the program.

Continue having fun!

GAJ said:

Nothing beats a cross country road trip where several day or two stopovers with friends or family is part of the program.

Continue having fun!

Click to expand...

Will do!

Day 8 map

Did you ever see the movie, Dust To Glory? You know, the scene where Mouse McCoy comes into the pits and tells the same story about having to scrounge a replacement front wheel about three times? One of his pit crew described him as "blowing bubbles". That's about where I was when I finally found lodging in Calgary. Despite that, I was nervous about where my bike was parked on the street in downtown, so I wasted little time getting going in the morning.

My BIL had told me about a route south of Calgary called the Cowboy Trail, so I headed out to find it. Now, riding the Cowboy Trail is not going to change your life, or make you rethink you devotion to Hwy 1 or 36 or 128 or 9 or.... But, the scenery? Oh yessss. I had no idea that area would be so gorgeous, but on this perfect July morning with the air rinsed clean by the overnight rain, it was definitely gorgeous.

I don't stop to take a lot of photos, but this one of a ranch with the Canadian Rockies in the background induced me to stop. That peak in the center is known as The Chief.



Working my way south, I was looking for a place to have breakfast since I pretty much fled the hotel earlier in the morning. I made a point of rolling through small towns looking for local cafes, but when I got to Pincher Creek I couldn't find any in the old part of town, so I succumbed to a Tim Horton's. Hey, I was going to leave Canada that day, and I hadn't been in one yet. The breakfast burrito was okay. No worse that most US fast food joints. The best part was a chat with a guy with a recently restored, and very beautifully done, 69 El Camino. Then it was on to the border.

I crossed back into the US east of Glacier NP. Yes, I know. I've ridden it before, and I needed to make time, so Going To The Sun Highway was excluded. I was thinking of visiting the brilliant Plains Indians museum in Browning, but mainly I just wanted to get going, so I did. Hwy 2 through Montana is mostly two lane. There are places where it's been rerouted around downtowns, but it's still pretty much an old school highway. I would occasionally stop for a break, and in one town's park I felt the need to capture the big sky and the puffy clouds.



Out there is was drier and flatter and hotter - though not terribly hot. It was easy, if somewhat tedious to make time. but I was enjoying it. I ended in up in a little private campground (Yay! Showers and flush toilets!) outside a town called Chinook. It seemed like a good time to document the bug carnage.



To be continued.

Thank you Kurt for the write along.

Ahhhh some.

Great looking bike, Kurt thanks for taking us along

awesome ride report is awesome!

love that Moto Guzzi …

Yes. Another thank you very much.