In early June 2009, two buddies and I took a 13 state journey on our Harley’s. It took us 14 days and we covered 5900 miles. We left our home base of Kentucky at 5:00 AM on our first day. The states we covered were: Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas.
Some of the memorials, sites, highways, and state/federal parks we visited were: St. Louis Arch, Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, Route 66, Meteor Crater, South and North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Zion, Death Valley, Yosemite, Travertine Hot Springs, HWY 50 – The Loneliest Road in America, Canyon Lands, Rocky Mountains, Great Sand Dunes, etc…
In Colorado, one of our buddies headed north to Yellow Stone while the two of us transverse down through southern Colorado.
When we left town we thought we would camp 50% of the time. As it worked out we camped every night except for one. Our daily routine was that broke camp at day break and we would ride out a tank of gas, then we would stop for breakfast. After breakfast we would gas up and head off to our next destination.
We met a lot of interesting people on our trip. And I’ll share one: On our last night, my buddy and I pulled into the camp ground at dusk and as we were getting off our bikes an older gentlemen scurried up to us and asked us “what took you so long”. He was eager to share his riding experience with us. As it turns out, this gentleman was 92 years old. And he was riding alone. He rode a Honda Goldwing with training wheels and he was pulling a camper/trailer. He lived in Georgia, close to Atlanta, and he was traveling out west to Montana and neighboring states to see his children and 11 grandchildren. He was making this trip because he didn’t’ know how many more opportunities he would have to see what means the most to him. To say the least, this 92 year old young man was inspiring.
Between the three of us we took about 1000 photos, the following link is a sampling of them.
http://picasaweb.google.com/drmcreynolds/2009HarleyTripWest?feat=directlink
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Topic: 13 states, 14 days, 5900 miles (Read 2711 times)