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California Trip 8-04 |
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Navigate
using the bars above or below |
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The Great Adventure of 2004 |
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Over the next few months I started researching every curvy back road I could find. There were plenty of National parks to hit in between as well. More and more of the trips focus turned to Northern California after finding Pashnit's website. I certainly wished that I could work every road from that site into the trip but it wasn't going to happen. We would have 10days total, so no more than 2 days could be spent there. Highway 36 was going to be included even though it mean crossing a portion of the state which didn't make much sense to do. Unless you're a motorcyclist. We started recruiting the usual suspects and any other friends that might have liked to go along. This had the makings of a memorable trip. Of course Kerry would join us. We've hardly been anywhere without his trusty companionship. Others had too little vacation left or prior commitments. But our friend Paul, who really got us into motorcycling to begin with 4yrs ago, would go along. After years of listening to our trip stories he would finally share in them. August 21st, was the planned day of departure. The route ended up being refined up until the day we departed. There were so many things to see, the mileage requirements started getting fairly steep. We've done many Ironbutt rides but this was supposed to be a vacation. It's not exactly relaxing getting by on minimal sleep eating Powerbars for 10days. Doing back roads. stopping for nice meals, and getting 6-8hrs of sleep usually means about a 400mile day in flower sniffing mode for us. (We like nice meals and good beer *wink*) This trip would require more than that but we didn't want to feel rushed either. We settled on a power sniffing 600mile day average while planning. We
wanted to keep
the route open and avoid having to maintain schedules and reservations so
we really only planned highlights that we wanted to see/do. The first day
wasn't hard to plan. We would burn across North Dakota and Montana to get
to the Rocky Mountains. We'd turn into tourist's in Glacier National Park
then back to motorcyclists for Lolo Pass in Idaho. Spending a full evening
in Seattle was a priority, but we wouldn't do any super slabs to get
there. After Seattle we'd check out Mt. St. Helens and the Columbia River
Gorge before proceeding to the Oregon Coast. 5 states in 5days to start,
but we'd try to spend a couple of days in California soaking up their
wonderful roads before piling on miles across the desert to get closer to
home. Yellowstone and Beartooth Pass were on the way, so we'd need to take
a day there before streaking home. A loosely planned 5500mile route, 10
days, 100's of gallons of gas, 4 friends, no reservations. |
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Actual
Overall Route: 5300miles The entire Streets and Trips 2004 file can be downloaded here. |
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