A Tale of the Trans-American Trail

This site is a blog about two fellows riding the Trans-American Trail on a pair of Honda Africa Twins. It should be a work in progress as we travel. It also has an extensive list of what we used, tips we have, and how we did it.

NOTICE: This is the original page of the site. I do not update this page to the modern format as to keep the history of the site intact. Navigating this page in particular may be more difficult than the rest of the site.

From here down begins the TAT log. You have two options. You can click on the document below and read it there. I find this way easier to read. If your device does not support viewing the document (as in it shows up blank or the link does nothing) then you can scroll past the link and see all of the text from it right here on the website.

Why did I have to make this story a separate link to begin with? Click the link below to find out.

The Trans-American Trail Adventure Log

With Brady G. and Randy G.

Updated 07/25/18

TRIP DAYS: 26

Day 1:

So we rode from home to Coopers Rock and we are stopped for a snack and because my butt hurts.We had some teriyaki beef jerky and some of the Omega-3 Trail mix. Turns out I have all of the food and I am therefore a chuck wagon. Dad must be the tool crib as I don’t have any of the tools. Dad is also having a problem where it feels like “a hairy spider is crawling around on his head.” It has something to do with his helmet.

We stopped again because we had to get some gas. (Gas stops: 2) Turns out this gas station has an entire grill. The food was decent. I would eat here again. When we went to leave the gas station, I just sat on my bike and fell over. It turns out that the parking spot we were in was slightly sloped and my foot didn’t reach the ground for a second. (Only my toes reach the ground to begin with while Dad can sit with his feet flat on the ground.) I ended up dropping the bike pretty lightly on it’s right side. Sometime later on in the day we stopped at this overlook rest stop to check it out. Dad adjusted the bike so that it is as short as it can be. I can still only reach the ground with my toes but it is better than it was.

So we got stuck in gridlock for about one and a half hours today. It was miserable. I was wearing this pair of shorts that had a thin orange stripe. I was wearing a white shirt. The shirt was stained pink in places because I sweat so much. It was like the Devil’s armpit. We were doing fine until we got stuck in that traffic. After that we were dying. It was so hot that it literally hurt to breath. Good news is we both got really good at starting and stopping. Then we went over the Chesapeake Bay bridge, which was cool (both temperature and amazement) and a very welcome change to the traffic. After that we filled our camel paks up with some ice from a gas station (Gas stop: 3). That fellow in the gas station was a life saver. He gave us some water with a huge cup of ice we bought after I told him about the traffic. Then we just got to the campground as soon as we could. We discovered that there is a drag strip somewhere nearby with cars periodically driving on it. So that is noisy, but we will manage. Shortly after that we order pizza, showered, and went to sleep.

Total miles: 421.4

Day 2:

Good news is the drag cars stopped somewhere into late last night. They started to fizzle out at about 9 PM. We assume they had made it to the finals since the runs were much less frequent. Eventually it cooled off a little and we both fell asleep pretty quickly. Now we are headed to the east coast. After that we will turn around and head for the west coast.

So we tried to sync the communications to the GPS as I can’t hear the GPS instructions at all and the instructions were blasting Dad’s ears out. Instead of GPS stuff, the song “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” started playing. We will get it right eventually.

We made it to the east coast at Ocean City! There are Peewee Herman (spelling) bicycles everywhere in every color. It’s hot. We only got stuck in traffic for a short period of time just to get to the beach. Time to take a swim.

Before we took a swim we decided we were hungry and ate at a place on the beach that had some decent hamburgers and fries. We then discovered that there were no trash cans anywhere on the entire beach.

The swim was great. The last time I was at a beach was before I could remember it. This was basically a new experience for me. I can see why people take their whole vacations here. After the beach swimming, we took a very cold shower in some showers they had provided. (They provide showers but not trash cans.) Now we are on the road again toward the west coast.

We have now crossed back across the Chesapeake Bay bridge. We figured it was going to be a terribly long wait, but it was the only way back off the island that we were on. (Yes, the entire time after we crossed the Chesapeake Bay bridge yesterday we were in fact on a huge island.) Dad had 8 bucks ready in his left glove to pay for both of us. I was prepared to wait a bit until the gate reset and the fellow put my half of the money in. It turns out that we didn’t even have to pay, let alone stop. There were not even any tolls to stop at. So we just rolled through and went to this BBQ joint called Red Hot and Blue.

The food was good. Really the sauce was good. It destroyed our stomachs though. After eating we headed out and went back up the interstate. We made it past Washington DC. We are now sitting somewhere in Virginia m at a gas station (Gas stops: 6) on some grass that is surprisingly comfortable to our sore hind ends. I still find some sand in my hair from the beach.

We made it over to Skyline Drive. We are done for the day. We just need to find a campground. The weather is noticeably cooler now.

We found a campground that was a KOA but is now not. It still showed up as a KOA on GPS and some KOA signs are painted over with yellow paint. We stuck some laundry in the washer and went swimming for the second time today. Then we put some stuff in the dryer and took some showers. My light was a motion sensor and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on. I spent a while in the dark during my shower. I eventually cracked the door for some light and suddenly the light turned on. So my solution was to just crack the door periodically. This whole place is filled with people who speak Spanish. It is quiet though. We should sleep well.

Total Miles: 679.1

Day 3:

Last night was a pretty good nights sleep for the both of us. Dad wanted another shower this morning but discovered that we cannot find his poof (sponge). We might find it, we might not. Day 3 is supposedly the last day that our butts should hurt. My guess is we will be generally sore throughout the trip, especially if it is hot and we sweat. We did some running stretching purely to stretch out. We should be headed out to Skyline Drive soon.

Alright so the Skyline Drive is not happening. Turns out that it isn’t part of the TAT, it is just close to it. In fact, the TAT may eventually hop onto Skyline Drive. Either way we will be on the TAT soon.

We got hungry before we got to the TAT and stopped in Front Royal at a pancake house. We met Sugar (pronounced Sue Gar) and Rom. Sugar and Rom were riders who were interested in our trip. They are pretty cool guys.

We are on the TAT now. We already made it to our first creek crossing. It was a wide one and running swift. There was a fellow there collecting rocks for a fish pond who showed us a good way through. It got knee deep at the opposite end and had a lot of slippery rocks between the size of a softball and a bowling ball. Dad struggled with it and stalled twice but did not fall. I made it about halfway and dumped the bike. It’s all good, though. Everything still works and the creek was a nice refresher honestly.

So Dad stopped in a turn on a hill on a gravel road. He asked me if I could make the stop. I thought I could. I pull up behind him and stop. The bike started to lean to the left. I held it there for awhile. Eventually my leg gave and the bike spilled over. It smacked the left bark buster pretty hard. The bark buster popped off the handlebar and the clutch handle broke off on the end. The bark buster simply popped back into place. The handle is just going to be broken off now. I honestly like it better that way.

Somewhere today there was this pine branch that was hanging down over the right side of the trail. It nearly reached the ground. There was a path around the left. There was also a huge gravel mound in the middle that we think is a foot tall on this entire part of the trail. That is not a hyperbole. A foot tall. So this mound is slippery and not something you want to go across. I am on the right side of this mound. But remember, that tree is also on the right side. Dad managed to get across the mound in the middle before the tree branch came around. I really did not want to cross the deep gravel mound. I noticed that there was a hole on the right side on the path that I might perfectly fit through. I took it. It turns out I did in fact perfectly fit. I did a nice duck and went right through without a scratch.

We went on a really neat single lane trail up through the hills and trees. It was steep in places. Basically gravel the entire time with patches of dirt. We guess something like 45 degrees. It is essentially 76 miles of Sugar Creek road back home. It was a lot of ups and downs with sharp 180 turns in the valleys and ridges. On this path we hit 5 creek crossing (Creek Crossings: 6). All 5 together did not add up to the first one I dropped the bike in. The first of the five crossings on this trail was a good one. The creek was a bumpy one with similar size rocks to the big one from before. Dad goes across pretty nicely. Now it is my turn. I roll in smoothly. Then the bike dips. I proceed to swerve three times while nearly falling over. I recovered from the falling but was headed for a big bush. I swerved the bush and ended up right back in the middle of the trail on the other side of the creek. It was the ugliest creek crossing possible, but it worked.

We have now pulled into another gas station (Gas stops: 8) and we met 3 people. One was from Pennsylvania. He was on a trip around the area and likes driving the roads in West Virginia. The other two had apparently ridden the TAT or part of it and said that Oklahoma is terrible. He then said that there are sections of it that are beautiful, but if it has rain recently then just go around. This confirms many posts on the internet.

On the ride Dad spotted a black bear on the road. I could not spot it as I was trying to ride down the bumpy gravel without biffing it and I could only take some quick glances. Dad said it was cool though and I’m going to take his word for it.

We made it to a campground just out of the town of Brandywine. It’s a cool place. There is a little creek nearby and we are camped in this cool spot. It looks like a giant kitty litter box. Like it has all the small rocks and has a border all the way around but one entrance side.

When we were back at the gas station earlier we went in to the store they have. It was one of those “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it” places. They had everything. So we bought some Chef Boyaredee Beef Ravioli to cook over our small camp cooker. That idea sounded pretty good really. I was happy with some Chef Boyaredee. We cooked it in our Stanley cooking set. When we ate the stuff it had an incredible burnt taste. It was like a saucy burnt popcorn. Dad did not enjoy this whatsoever. He ended up eating some stuff out of the motorcycles. I was fine with it. I mean it wasn’t great but I didn’t really mind it that much. I ate my cup and about half of Dad’s. It turns out that the bottom of the pot did in fact burn a whole layer of ravioli despite our frequent stirring. We tried blasting it out with this wickedly powerful water spigot. It didn’t work. We ended up throwing the poor pot away.

Total Miles: 814.8

Day 4:

We had a good nights sleep. There was a knucklehead who honked his horn around 12 times in a row last night. (Not the car alarm either. Sporadic honks.) Other than that it went well. We are headed out soon.

We went back to that gas station (no gas, not a gas stop) and met some of the guys we met yesterday. We had a nice wrap from the deli there. After that we went across the street to a dollar store and bought a replacement pot for the one we had to trash last night.

We have been riding now for awhile and have found 4 little creek crossing (Creek Crossings:10). One of them had a decent bank on the far side. It gave Dad and I a good shake, but we both made it. I dropped the bike once while sitting still. I went to get off and had the bike on it’s side stand. When I got off the suspension expanded and it was just enough to toss the bike over the fulcrum so that it would fall over on the opposite side. I saw it coming, so I jumped back over the seat and laid it down slowly. The only damage was a tiny scratch on the windshield.

We are now eating lunch at a restaurant that serves a little bit of it all. We are having spaghetti. The spaghetti is good and we even have a whole loaf of bread for later.

We still haven’t been able to figure these communication intercoms out. Today around this point in the day they would beep one time very loudly. Around a minute or two later they would beep again. This was supposedly a low battery warning. The batteries were fully charged. We fiddled with them thinking it was something to do with the GPS or our phone Bluetooth. Nothing worked. Eventually we decided to factory reset the things. That last resort was mainly prompted by very persistent bugs. The problem was we didn’t have any way to push the tiny button because it required a paperclip size item to reach down into a tiny hole. After a few minutes I remember that I had one attached to a bunch of receipts in my wallet. I had forgotten about taking them before the trip. Turns out I needed that paperclip after all. The headsets seem to be working now that we have reset them.

The rest of the ride today went well. There were some technical spots that were only for short periods. We got rained on some, but only lightly. We actually chickened out along the trail somewhere and started to set up tent. The rain stopped so we abandoned setting up the tent and started riding again. We saw a bunch of deer, fat squirrels, a turtle, a frog (toad?), and an exceptionally long black snake. One time I was right at the end of a fence, as if you are looking at the thin side of a piece of paper, and saw a deer jump the fence. I could see the whole jump. It was pretty neat. I have started wearing my goggles instead of sunglasses and have not found any reason to wear anything besides the goggles. The both of us have switched from our riding pants to jeans due to heat reasons. It works well for the heat, but it makes out butts even more raw than they were due to the lack of padding.

At the end of the day we went to four different hotels. The first two were right next to each other and pretty rough. We didn’t even slow down. The next one was way out in a really nice housing community. The road out to it was beautiful and part of it was completely surrounded by vines. It was like $250 a night and no one was there besides some of the residents. We left there and hunted down a Holiday Inn Express, which is where we ended up staying. It is in Blacksburg Virginia. Just before we went into the Holiday Inn, we got some gas (Gas Stops: 9). The reason we need a hotel is not because we are tired of the tent. We actually sleep well in the tent. It is just that we cannot get anything dry, especially our boots. We have to go into a hotel just to reset. This way we can continue to camp more comfortably.

We went for about a 30 minute swim while some laundry was washing, took the clean clothes out when they finished, ordered a pizza, and went to bed.

Total Miles: 1050.0 (Over 1000!)

Day 5:

The bed last night went well. It was mainly a good sleep because of how quiet it is inside a hotel. We are up and rolling to get things back out of here and onto the bikes.

While eating breakfast in the hotel I discovered an automatic pancake maker. It makes pancakes in a minute flat and spits them off a conveyor into your plate. It’s great. The pancakes are pretty decent.

During breakfast I saw an entertaining event. There was a kid who wanted to go outside. Despite his dad not wanting him to, he went out the automatic sliding door. He then discovered he could not get back in. He was too short for the motion sensor. Another kid of the same height ran over and both are trying to pry the door open. The dad eventually got tired of this, stood up, and walked over. The door opened when the dad got closer due to the motion sensor. The door opened. The kids were amazed. The dad was unamused.

We rode on a real curvy road. It was called Robinson Tract. It wasn’t even part of the TAT. We just used it to get back to the TAT. It is narrow and paved. You really get to lean on them. The sharpness of the turns combined with the high frequency of them results in having to whip the bike up from one lean and drop it right into the opposite lean. It is a neat feeling. There is another paved road just west of here that is on the TAT that is similar to Robinson Tract. However, it is wider and the turns are longer. This same wider road leads right up to a lookout tower.

So we came across this giant lookout tower and store called Big Walker Lookout Tower near Wytheville, Virginia. It was apparently much more grand in an older day with all kinds of stuff like a tram and such. We got to go up a big lookout tower, which is one of the only things still here. It was 201 steps up, but one was at floor level, so technically it is 200 steps. You get up there and look around and for quite a ways. Then we went back into the store for some hot dogs, chips, and ice cream. It turns out that this exact order was a special. The whole restaurant is self served and there is country bumpkin music throughout. It is worth a stop if you are driving by.

As we geared up to leave Big Walker lookout tower I found my helmet full of bees. They had practically moved in. There was no way I was sticking my head into a bee’s nest. Dad took his gloves and swatted them out.

We rode through a hollow today that had more cabins than anywhere else so far. They were bunched right next to each other like a suburban district. It was actually impressive to see how many of them there were. After that we went up a hill on another gravel road. When we got to the top there was a right U-turn up a slight hill. There was a truck parked in the far end of the turn. Dad made it around the turn. I went in a little sharp and was not going to make the turn without falling into the ditch between the road and the steep hillside. I didn’t really have any options. I just gave the bike a little goose and hopped the front end up on the hill. I waited a second for the back end to catch up and hopped the back tire up on the hillside as well. Then I just turned and hopped the bike over the ditch right back onto the road. I mean that maneuver can be done on a dirt bike (which I have never ridden), but I don’t think a 800 pound Africa Twin is supposed to be able to do that. Right after all this happened Dad was looking at me with a rather surprised look. All I could say was “Good” to get it across that everything was fine. Dad just laughed and continued on. I told him I saw that on YouTube, which is true. Pro guys in enduro races actually use that strategy to get around stuff on much lighter bikes. I just didn’t know what else to do so I just went for that and it worked. Just down the road we turned onto a pretty curvy and skinny paved road that lead up, around, and down a hillside. Dad was just about to round a point (a turn on the end of a hill, not in the valley) when a pickup truck came flying around the turn. Dad didn’t have anywhere to go. If he went right, it was falling of a cliff. If he went left, it was the grill of a truck. So he just stopped. He didn’t put his feet down or anything. He just balanced himself right there. The truck got back on its own side of the road and missed Dad. It scared me, Dad, and the truck. After that Dad and I were a little gun shy for a bit until we got off the hill. I would say it’s been an eventful day.

We are now at a gas station in Atkins, Virginia (Gas Stops: 10). We were just going to fill up, sit in the AC for a bit, and have a coke. That turned into having dinner at 4 PM. It was good stuff. We had some hamburger steaks with apple sauce, fried okra (which is usually only a southern thing), cottage cheese, and course the Pepsi (Coke wasn’t available). We are headed out to Tennessee now.

We haven’t made it to Tennessee yet, but we did find our first closed road. There is a really obvious way around the gate that closes it. The road behind it is not maintained but it definitely doable. We are turning around anyway since we are so close to a paved road that will take us around. We figure it is probably closed for a reason.

We are now in a campground for the night. After setting up camp in another giant kitty litter box, we swam in a creek nearby. It was bitterly cold and I wasn’t having it. Little finger sized fish kept nibbling at my toes (which was kind of funny since they are about the size of my toe). It cleaned us off, though. Then we went and saw fireworks in the nearby town of Damascus. We went in thinking it was going to be a pretty mediocre thing. It turns out the whole town was there. It really cleaned out the hollows. The local Walmart should close because all their strange people are here. Everyone was just having a good time. They had two drones running around taking footage and a band playing the best they could. The fireworks were put off and set up by a man who owns the local fireworks store. The show was long and well spaced. The fireworks man is in the right profession. Once the fireworks were over we came back to the tent to sleep.

Total Miles: 1262.6

Day 6:

Happy Fourth of July!

The first stop today was at a general store. We got some apple pies for breakfast that were out of date by a long shot. We got our money back and I had a honey bun and Dad had a pecan pie. We met a friendly cat outside.

It is now lunchtime. We have finally made it to the intersection between the New York (upper) section and the lower section of the TAT. The majority of the country is one trail to the split near the west coast. We are sitting in a place called Helen’s Restaurant. It serves burgers and such. We are getting some of those burgers. Between the general store and now we have been in 3 states. We started in Virginia, we clipped Tennessee, and then rode in North Carolina for awhile.We are about to head into Tennessee again when we leave the restaurant. We also had a gas stop (Gas stops: 11).

To catch up on things that I seemed to have left hanging in previous days the spider on Dad’s head seems to have abandoned ship. We did in fact find Dad’s sponge and even on the same day we lost it. It was inside his camelbak (water carrier). We did attempt to fix the clutch handle with JB Weld and it just broke off again upon the first use, although the JB did fix the plastic bark buster.

We stopped for a short break in a church parking lot. It’s a nice lot, too. All black pavement and sharp lines. The church is called the Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church. What’s funny is the creek next to it is not that big. The reason we stopped is to try to find a way to charge the big battery. It turns out there is not a way to do that on the fly. We are now headed out again.

We stopped to top off on gas (Gas stops: 12). Nothing eventful.

We are back in Tennessee riding the Blue Ridge Parkway just outside of Maggie Valley. There are lots of tunnel (Tunnel count: 3). We honked at each other and listened to the echo. It is cool up here above 5000 feet in elevation. It’s a welcome change to the heat we have been in. We have seen a lot of wildlife. There have been many deer and a few turkey. Just a few minutes ago we passed a turkey so close that I could have kicked it.

We have been riding around on the Blue Ridge Parkway for awhile. We went through some more tunnels (Tunnel count: 5). The cars in these tunnels also honked and listened to the echo. We are not alone. We also discovered our tire pressures was low on both our bikes. We hooked up the buzz box (portable tire inflator) and fixed them up. We may be due for new tires soon. We are now trying to get a reservation at a campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is doubtful since it is the Fourth of July and we are in a very popular area. I guess we will find out.

The campground was a no go. We went to Gatlinburg to find a hotel or something. We have tried two different places so far with no gain. We went into a parking garage for the third attempt. I had never driven a motorcycle in a parking garage and I have driven a car in one only a few times. The thing about parking garages is they are dark, tight, and off camber everywhere. That might have been alright if there wasn’t also a very slow moving car in front of us. The slowness makes it harder to balance. We found a spot that Dad was able to get into next to a thick concrete post. I was fine with the post but not with the nice car parked right on the other side of the spot we were going into. I stopped in the street of sorts and Dad had to work my bike in by hand.

We got a room in the third hotel. We also found a flat parking spot. Dad moved the bikes around to the flat parking spot as the one we were on had a heavy slope.

After taking a shower (we stunk) we attempted to escape the hotel. We never did find the proper exit we just left out of the parking garage we road in to originally. Once we got out on the main street we started searching for a restaurant. Allow me to explain that this town is a HUGE tourist trap. It might be the biggest and most obvious tourist trip I have been to. That means there are ice cream stores, fudge shops, t-shirt stores, burger joints, and a whole lot of bars with assorted drinks. That narrows down your choices pretty quickly. We ended up with a place called Blaine’s Grill and Bar. They had some nice food and our waiter was quick with drinks and food. Once we left, we caught the tail end of an impressive fireworks show that stopped most of the town and blocked traffic with crowds of people. We just went into a nearly empty parking lot and watched from there instead of fighting the crowd. Then we headed back into the confusing hotel. The reason the hotel is so odd is because the elevator is strangely placed. The elevator itself is in the middle while the stairs wrap around the outside of it. You have to go around the thick elevator shaft between each set of stairs. As a result, each flight of steps dumps you into a room without really hinting where the next flight up is. On top of that, the stairs end before getting up to the floors that have the guest rooms. You have to take the elevator to get up there as far as we can tell. No one else seems to have any ideas either. The only reason we are in here is so we can charge some stuff for the CPAP Dad has. We found our way into our room eventually. I’m going to hit the hay.

Total Miles: 1533.0

Day 7:

We are up and at it again. We are headed to get breakfast at the bottom of the hotel if we can find it.

When we went down to get some hotel breakfast they had this thing that looked like a hushpuppy. After talking with Dad awhile it turned out to be a donut. Who knew? We’re off to Mississippi now.

We went back through part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Forest that we went through yesterday to get to Gatlinburg. We got to see a black bear right next to the road. We didn’t get to stop but it was within about 6 feet of the road. It was a big one. It took off into the woods as soon as we got close.

We are now stuck on a wildlife loop. There are bumper to bumper cars on a one way single lane road for the next few miles. Welcome back to the sweat bucket.

We found out that the trail led off of the wildlife loop. (It is the “Scenic Loop” by the way.) It turns out that the road that we needed is closed. We stopped in a thermometer loop to figure out where we were going. There was a whole swarm of butterflies there. After that we continued on without really knowing where we were going. As we went around the wildlife loop we discovered a road that might get us out of the traffic. It was a one way gravel road up over the mountain and it was 12 miles long. I know that 12 miles doesn’t sound like a lot, but 12 miles on a curvy gravel road takes a while. The fastest you go is 30 mph and you stay at about 15 most of the time. We took it despite the distance. It was better than the alternative in the traffic.

While going up the hillside to get away from traffic we got to see another black bear. It was on the skinny gravel road so we had to stop. The bear approached us and just curiously looked at the bikes. It eventually got about 5 feet away and that is when we got the opportunity to drive past. It was cool.

We stopped to eat at Dragon Pitt Inn & BBQ. I had a pulled chicken sandwich. It was decent. Dad ordered a pulled pork thinking it was a sandwich. He ended up with a literal plate of pulled pork. We have also figured out that we will get to ride the Tail of the Dragon.

The Tail of the Dragon is a very curvy section of US 129. It is on the Tennessee and North Carolina line. It’s a well known section of road that is 11 miles long. It is famous for having 318 curves within this 11 mile span. Now that this has been defined, remember that we are still in the Dragon Pitt restaurant. We have just left. The ride started out dry, but very shortly turned into some pretty heavy rain. We stopped for a second to get some clear sunglasses for the rain. Then we rode on. As we rode through the rain we constantly spotted Harley riders sitting alongside the road. When we did see a Harley moving we were stuck behind it. The Harley riders weren’t having it. Let it be known that there were some guys out there getting after it on their Harleys. Those dudes know what they were doing. As for the rest, I would think for as hard as they work to get a bike that they would be a bit more hardy. Like every time I go into a Harley Davidson store all I can find is t-shirts and hats. I can’t find a bike anywhere. They must have worked pretty hard to find a Harley store that actually sells motorcycles. (Harley diss track over.) The Tail of the Dragon was actually not that curvy. I mean it was a pretty curvy road as far as paved roads go, but we have been on some local roads that are far curvier than this. We have been on some roads that are so curvy that you can’t get up speed. I remember I banked into a turn so steeply that my left foot scraped the ground while still on the foot peg. Dad about hit a guardrail with his windshield once. This road was cool, but it just wasn’t as curvy as they make it out, you know? I mean don’t get me wrong. Go ahead and hit this road up by all means. It’s just if you have ridden backroads you might be a little too spoiled for this one.

After riding the Tail of the Dragon (which put us in North Carolina) we stopped in a little area that has a whole bunch of motorcycles and a few stores to shop in. We bought a sticker to take with us. After that we headed out onto the TAT again.

We stopped in the bottom of a valley next to a creek for a swim. We already had our trunks on when the skies started booming and lightning struck about. We decided that it wasn’t a good idea to swim. We packed up camp (as we had planned on stopping today) and ran for the hills to avoid the rain.

After riding out a gravel road at about 35-40 mph (which actually worked better), we hit a paved road that took us across the hill a ways and dropped us into a town. When we stopped, we discovered that Dad has left his underwear hanging on the side of his bike at the creek earlier. Luckily for Dad they were on the right side of the bike so no one saw them as he went down the road (at least until we got to town). We got a good laugh and found it amazing that they actually stayed on the bike on the way down the road.

The place we stopped at when we found the underwear was a restaurant called Tellicafe in Tellico Plains, Tennessee. It was pretty average on the outside. When you walked into the door you were struck by an inviting household feel instead of a busy restaurant. They did not have someone waiting to seat you. Someone would notice you were there and come to get you when they could. They seat you in a room that looks like a house with all the floor furniture being replaced with seats and tables. The room feels very open, yet the seats feel secluded so you can have a conversation. The food we ordered was great. We had some deep fried banana peppers for an appetizer that were good. I had a triple turkey sandwich (which was far larger than expected) and Dad had shrimp and crab stuffed trout. Both were great. We even went for dessert. Dad had a banana bread pudding and I had an apple pie (a la mode). Both were still wonderful. I don’t really think it matters what you get. It is probably all great food. On top of that, the price is fair. If you are headed into the town of Tellico Plains be sure to try it out. Remember that it may have some odd hours as well.

After leaving the restaurant we got some gas (Gas stops: 14) and are looking for a place to stay.

We found a small place only about 2 miles from the campground. It’s called Hunt’s Lodge. It says it’s for motorcycle camping and cabins. It is simple, but it has what we need. I mean there are lots of frogs (good noise for sleeping), some good grass, and showers. We met a couple who used to race motorcycles on dirt tracks where we used to race late models (Late models are fancy dirt track race cars that slide around turns.) They are pretty neat people. Now we are just taking a hot roomy shower and headed off to bed.

So I found out that those showers are hot and really roomy. I mean you could have a square dance in those things. I also discovered that the building is under 24 hour camera surveillance. This isn’t an issue accept for the fact that I really wanted my shorts to be clean in the dryer so I ran around the small building from the laundry room to the showers in nothing but my underwear and flip flops. I thought I had made it without anyone seeing until Dad told me about the cameras. I checked those camera out, too. I’m pretty sure they are Infrared and have a good quality picture. So somewhere there is a high quality picture of me scooting to the bathroom in my underwear. Go figure. Dad and I both had an unintentional issue with showing off our underwear.

Total Miles: 1692.2

Day 8:

Well it turns out that our tent will in fact withstand a storm. We had a pretty heavy rain last night and only a few drops of rain got it. The spot I chose for the tent was good and high so we didn’t wake up in a puddle. We now have clean clothes from the washer and dryer. There was also a huge metal closet that you can stick your suits and boots into. The whole closet is a boot dryer. Boot dryers just put out a little bit of dry heat and over time they completely dry out your stuff. That thing is great. We use tiny boot dryers out the house but nothing of this size. Hunt’s Lodge really has everything we need. I mean it was “built for riders, by riders” so for them to have what we need makes sense. We are packing up and headed out soon.

As a little note I do not think I have used my sleeping bag correctly once this trip. It’s hot. To avoid the heat I just sleep on top. When it gets cold, I just use it as a blanket instead of getting inside it. Maybe one of these days it will be cold enough for me to use it right.

We started into the TAT trail today on some nice roads. Then we went onto a road named Wit Road. It started out with some decent gravel. After that it turned into loose, small gravel. Then is went to dirt. Then it went to greasy dirt. Then it went to roots and rocks and greasy dirt. Then it finally settled on ruts and roots and rocks and greasy dirt. So we were in a run for our money and we knew it. We crossed two small creeks that were easy and flat. After that we found a much wider creek that appeared to have a muddy bottom. That creek really sent us for a whirl when we saw it. It turns out that the bottom was like rock if you followed the edge. Dad and I both made it without any problems. The next two creek crossings were both skinny and flat. No problem. Then the sixth creek crossing came. Dad and I both recognized this particular creek crossing from YouTube. It has these rock fins that stick up jaggedly under the water. You run parallel to these fins, which sounds easy but is in fact hard since the fins are really slippery and the creek is trying to shove you over them. There is also a pair fin that sticks up above the water that you do not dare ride on. So this created a split in the path across the creek. You can ride to the left of the above water fins or to the right. Dad and I talked it over and he went for the left since it seemed flatter and had more space to work with. It turns out the fins are much taller than we thought and much more slick. He had his first drop of the trip here. He told me to keep my feet dry and stood the bike up. He on and managed to get the rest of the way out of the creek. The water nearly caught his seat at one point. Then it was my turn. He wanted me to go to the right of the middle fin as the left was bad. The right had shorter fins but was a much skinnier path. I was doing alright until my front tire caught part of the middle fin. I ended up flopping onto the left side of the bike when I ran out of momentum. By this point both Dad and I were wet, so we both stood my bike up and Dad got it out of the creek. We thought the worst was over. We went just up the trail to this greasy hill. It had two nice ruts and a lot of mud. Dad went for it first. He seemed alright so I started up too. That’s when Dad spun the back tire and the bike tried to dump him. He took an incredibly sharp 90 degree turn and saved it. Then he bumped over the edge of the road, went into the ditch, and dropped the bike on it’s right side. I was still coming up the hill and I wasn’t stopping. I went around him and somehow managed to get to the top of this hill without biffing it. I went back to help Dad. His bike was laying so that the front tire was in the ditch and the back was on the road. This made the middle skid plate sit on the bump at the edge of the ditch. The tires were facing up the hill and the bike was completely on it side. In order to stand it up we would have to move it not 90 degrees like on flat ground but something like 135 degrees due to the slope of the hill. It was going to be a lot of work to get it up. We struggled and wrestled with that bike until we were fairly worn thin. We eventually got the thing up by having Dad push the bike while I pushed on the front tire to stand it up on the crash bar, having Dad hold it still temporarily while I ran around the bike, and having both of us push until we got the thing upright. It did us a number. Then we had to get the bike up the slippery hill without a run on it since it was not an option to get the bike going back down the hill. So we wrestled the bike some more to get it pointed generally up the hill. We eventually got it positioned by picking up the rear tire and letting it slip down the hill a ways while the front tire remained still in the ditch. The allowed us to swivel the back end around the front. Then Dad got on the bike and rocked it for a bit until the front end came out of the ditch. He then very carefully slipped the clutch until he got going without spinning. After that the bike was finally at the top of the hill and we stopped for a quick break. I’ll tell you what, Dad doesn’t fall a lot but when he does he makes it a real whopper. When we started moving again we discovered that Dad’s clutch was messed up. It wasn’t responding correctly. So we stopped and looked at it. While we worked on the clutch a few people checked on us. One was a fellow in a black Dodge Charger who asked if the road we just came off of was passable. I said “You don’t wanna do that.” He threw me a confused look. I said “Because that thing is a four wheeler path.” He nodded and said “Yea I ain’t doing that.” I laughed as he thanked us and left. Another fellow was a person who lived nearby. He had two friendly dogs with him and shortly left once he realized we had our problem covered. Then a fellow who lived in a house we were parked in front of came out to get his mail. When he spotted us he came over to check things out. It turns out that his name is Mike and he sees a lot of people like us ride by. He didn’t know why there were so many of these bikes riding through. We explained the TAt trail to him. He said the bikes often go into his neighbor's driveway by accident. We told him to put a little sign that said “TAT” with an arrow pointing the right way. Then everyone would know where to go and leave his neighbor alone. Then Mike told us about how he used to ride and race bikes in the dirt, but now he sticks to the road as the dirt is to hard on the body. We understood at this point. He said to have a good trip, got his mail, and went back to his house.

We discovered earlier while talking to Mike that Dad had messed up his bike bad enough that we might want to get it looked at. It would make it without it, but we don’t want more issues down the road. So we searched in Chattanooga nearby for a Honda Dealership. We found one. On the way there we stopped at a Huddle House for some breakfast/lunch. We had missed breakfast due to the bike wrestling match. We went in and ordered a meal that only a hungry man could finish. It had a huge pancake, 3 long strips of bacon, 2 eggs, a bowl of grits, 4 triangles (2 slices) of toast, and a pile of hashbrowns. Dad ate everything and I ate everything but a little bit of pancake and the grits. (The grits weren’t my kind of thing and I was full anyway.) After that stomach blast we went out and hit the road again.

On the way down the road Dad found that his butt was still wet. This didn’t make sense as his butt did not get wet in the creeks or bike wrestling match. He discovered a small hole in his camelbak (water container) that was slowly leaking water onto his pants. He tied it to the top bag in a way that would let it drip without soaking anything. He said we would have to fix it later.

We made it to the Honda dealership is Chattanooga. No, we are not here for a new bike. We just need some oil and chain lubes since the shop doesn’t have any availability soon. There was a fellow working the cash register who struck up a conversation. It turns out that he was friends with a huge fellow that we had just met at the end of the Tail of the Dragon. We met the huge fellow because he had the same bike as us. We met the register man by sheer chance of stopping in the dealership. What are the chances we would meet a pair of friends?

After we left the Honda dealership, we headed into a Walmart. It turns out that Walmart owns a gas station here. So we went to a Walmart gas station (Gas stops: 15). After that we went into Walmart and got the highly needed fingernail clippers. We forgot them at home. We have needed the fingernail clippers this whole trip. We finally took the time to get them. Now our fingernails feel much better. We also got some super glue for Dad’s Camelbak (water container). We took a little bit of the glue and patched up the hole. It seems to hold water now. Time will tell if it works or not.

After we left Walmart we got dumped right into the Chattanooga traffic. Don’t worry. This wasn’t near as bad as the time we were headed to the east coast. We just had to wait for a turn that a red light was clogging up.

After making it past the light we rode a short ways through some graffiti covered tunnels. There were three in total. Two of them were fairly long.

We made it a little ways down the road but there is a real nasty storm coming. It is bad enough that it would be unsafe to ride in at all. We pulled over in a lot just so we could set up the rain fly of the tent and stay dry. (We might as well stay dry if we are stopping since it seems to be impossible to keep our stuff dry.) We stopped next to this abandoned building and decided to just use it as a quick shelter instead of the tent since the rain was already getting us. When we walked into this place there were litteral piles of glass where the windows used to be. There was one lone recliner sitting in the middle of the far end of the room in its reclined position. It was in terrible shape. The cloth was literally peeling off of it. There was a junk wood table that was laying on its side to our right. Dad went over to a door and kicked it open to make sure we weren’t getting set up. Then we went over and set the table up on its feet to put our stuff down. We didn’t move any farther into the building. We just stood there for a bit until the rain passed and left. Chances are there was someone or something further in the building that we wanted no part of. At one point there was a shift of glass sliding down a pile followed by a shuffle. Dad did not hear the shuffle, but I saw something dart behind the door across the room. It was probably just a rat, but we left shortly anyway. The rain had stopped and we needed to get moving.

When we left the abandoned building we hopped on the interstate to ride a short distance. We then hopped off the interstate and onto a rode that would take us up over a steep hill so we could get back to the TAT. It turns out that staying in the abandoned building was a wise decision. The rain had really done a number on the town. When we started up the hill a few people flashed their lights at us. We didn’t really know what they were worried about. We came to a big block of traffic in the road and had to stop on the hillside. As we creeped up the hill it became apparent that the reason for the traffic was a bunch of water running across the road. It was coming from a waterfall that was shooting off of the rocky cliff above. The cars seemed rather concerned with this inch deep water. Little did they know that this was the shortest water we had been in all day. We just rode across the water without much thought. This process repeated two more times at two more water crossings. After that the road had a decently sized ditch that the water was shooting down. The rocky cliff to our left had waterfalls falling from everywhere. We continued up the hill normally while everyone else thought this was total chaos.

After the crazy rain drainage things got a little quite for awhile. We just rode along and enjoyed the route. Then we came across the dog neighborhood. There were dogs at every house and they really like to chase motorcycles. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just odd that all of the dogs chased us. We apparently produce some annoying thing that the dogs like or don’t like.

We got hungry after riding for awhile longer and decided to find some grub. We ended up going to a Chinese place called China Super Buffet. It is a standard buffet. They had some normal buffet stuff. They even had hibachi if you wanted it. We both got a smorgasbord of stuff and dove in. I will note they have a sweet and sour chicken that goes with a sweet and sour sauce. It was pretty good. I went back for seconds on it. I also got some fried fish. I actually don’t mind a crispy fried fish once in awhile if I can find some. I didn’t know what fried fish and sweet and sour sauce would taste like together. It turns out that they taste pretty decent together. I wasn’t expecting anything great. So there you have it. At the end of the meal we received our fortune cookies that they typically give out at these Chinese restaurant. I found them quite comical. Mine said “Now is the time to try something new.” Dad’s said “You will do well to expand your horizons.” Being that I haven’t really ridden a motorcycle or tried fried fish with sweet and sour sauce and that Dad is literally traveling across the country in a way that he hasn’t before then I think we have got those fortunes covered. When we left the Chinese restaurant I noticed that there sign says “China Super Buffet” as per the restaurant name. The funny thing was the phrase “Chin” was burnt out of the sign so that it only said “A Super Buffet.”

After the Chinese we continued riding until dark and past it a ways. It is neat to ride in the dark but it isn’t really that great to talk about since there are not many visual cues. I’ll give you what I can. We stopped behind a police car at one point who redirected us back the way we came due to a car crash. We went all the way around a huge lake since the road we were on was a bridge across this lake. We realized that we had gone through a time zone somewhere and gained an hour of time (and hence another hour of butt pain). We got confused on where we were at a few times. We rode behind a cow manure truck for a short while (that had dandy smells). We also got rained on for a bit until we arrived at a hotel we were looking for.

We are now at a Best Western hotel that has decent rooms. The reason for being in a hotel is because it is rainy, dark, and we cannot find a campground to stay at.

Total Miles: 1952.1

Day 9:

We got up this morning later to get some rest from yesterday’s later ride. When we got everything on the bikes it was just past 9:30 AM. Breakfast closed at 9:30 AM. We jumped into action to get our breakfast. We rolled in the room and immediately started to build our plates from the complimentary breakfast. They had already picked up some of the food and taken to the kitchen. We got some fruit, biscuits and gravy, and scrambled eggs. They picked up the eggs right after I got my plate of them. We ate breakfast, which was surprisingly good, and headed out ride.

We got a short ways into the trail and found our first low water bridge crossing. (I’m counting these as creek crossings as there is water flowing on our tires.) It was a longer bridge with about an inch or two of water on it. We had heard that these bridges were incredibly slippery due to some algae or moss. Like you can’t even stand on it slippery. Dad went across very cautiously. He never slipped. It was like he was riding on the dirt still. I went across in a similar fashion. The both of us were surprised to how easy it was. We guess that it has to do with the season to how slick the bridge is. A short time later we crossed another short version of this bridge without any issues there either (Creek crossings: 18)

A while down the path we found this short tunnel. It is there to support a railroad that goes on top of it like an overpass. I am still considering it a tunnel as it is just long enough to make it in my book (Tunnel Count: 9). There was graffiti all over it. What I found interesting about it was the puddle in the middle of it. We couldn’t tell how deep it was and there was no way around. We just barged into it to find that it was very shallow and easy.

As we rode today we continued seeing these plants alongside the path that we were not familiar with. We knew they were crops that stayed below about knee height. We also knew that they could flower. My guess was they were peanut plants. It is warm enough here to support peanut growth, but I was unsure of weather this was an area where peanut growth was popular. We even stopped to look at (but not bother) one of the plants and still concluded that it might be peanuts. Shortly after this point we spotted a gas station and pulled in to fill up (Gas stops: 17). We asked a fellow who appeared to be a local what they were. He said they were beans. Soybeans. Dad and I both looked at him for a second without saying anything and then he asked about our motorcycles some. We went with the conversation. I found it odd that they were soybeans since we had already seen soybean plants that looked different than this. It must have been a different type of bean.

During our gas stop Dad and I both went in for a sweet of some kind. Dad ended up with a Zebra Cake and I had a Zero bar. We went back outside and sat on a bench while we watched an old beat up white lifted Jeep and a small yellow fourwheeeler get gas. The fourwheeler had to get started by being pushed. The pusher let go right as the rider sat, dumped the clutch, and kicked the starter in the same motion. I’ll give them credit. They got it going the first go.

A short ways down the road we found another 4 creek crossings (Creek crossings: 22)All of them were easy and flat. No concerns were found.

We came across this section of land that had been designated to riding four wheelers and other types of off-road vehicles. It is one of those pay-for-permit places where you are allowed to ride the main road free but all of the off road places require a permit to use. The permit can be purchased for some fee. It raises money and allows people to have some fun. We stopped at the end of a trail for a short break. Suddenly four side by sides filled with people came barreling out of the path. They then took off while spinning their tires and throwing rocks everywhere. I don’t blame them. I would have done the same.

We were wondering about a cloud in the sky for awhile. It was pretty dark and angry looking. We knew that it was headed away from us but it was still getting closer. That is when the rain started. We had actually ridden fast enough to catch up to the storm. Neither of us wanted to get wet as we cannot get anything dry. We decided to stop at a restaurant as this would give the storm time to float away again and we were hungry anyway. After a short ride in the rain we found a place called Chad’s Restaurant. It was a simple one room restaurant with a salad bar. I am fairly certain there was only one person running the whole place. She was an older lady of many hats. She took your order, cooked it, served it, filled your drinks, and collected your payment herself. She told us she usually had some people to help out but she had sent them home since Saturdays seem to be rather slow. She said she regretted it as she had to make 12 omelettes in a row today and 7 of them were for one group. (You realize 12 omlettes is like 36 eggs.) When she told us about this two or three cars pulled in at once. She shook her head and went to seat them. Now that the situation has been covered, let’s go back to the beginning when we walked into Chad’s Restaurant. The same lady seated us and gave us the menus. We both ordered a fried porkchop. I had a salad, a roll, and a baked potato with mine. Dad had a salad, Texas toast, and French fries with his. So you see what kind of food we are getting. It could be bad. It could be great. It turns out the salad was surprisingly good. I feel like the salad quality might change by the day, but we got a good one. The pork chops and sides were all good as well. We were rather impressed by the end of the meal. After that we payed the lady (who we never got the name of for certain) and headed out to ride the bikes.

During our meal the rain clouds had moved away from us as planned. We continued riding uneventfully until we got to one road in particular. It lead us down this narrow path that looked like we were getting into something gnarly. When we got to the end we crossed this sketchy little wooden arc bridge. At the end of the bridge was a small hole cut in the trees on the left with the the path suggesting we should go over a dirt mound and through the hole. When we came out of the trees and bushes we were caught off guard by an immense field of soybeans. The road we were on was mostly an orange dirt with a bit of loose gravel here and there. It was stunning and fascinating. We felt like we were on someone’s private property as we swerved the puddles on this road surrounded in crops. It was neat to be able to ride right through the middle of the fields we had been looking at. It turns out that the road is public or at least allows public traffic.

After the cool field we took a quick ride on the pavement to a huge water dam. It was the Pickwick dam. This thing is absolutely massive. We took some pictures and watch one particular fisherman catching catfish left and right. He must have been filling his freezer.

After seeing Pickwick dam, we decided to head back through the cool field a second time since my onboard camera was pointed down too at to see anything. A short ride to the road it was on allowed me to test and fix the camera angle. When we started down in the road we were quite surprised to find an entire tree down across the road. It had just falling in the time it took us to make it back from the dam. We checked for a way around. We left shortly after using the same way we came in since there was no way around. I guess we will not have a nice video of the field.

After discovering the tree we went back out the road to Pickwick dam and followed the TAT across it. We continued down a road that had a big sign that said “Stop! You’re GPS is wrong…” or something like that. We figured it just meant the road was bad for cars. So we go on down this road and across some railroad tracks. We went under another railroad and through a skinny gap between to support poles. After all that we came across a guardrail across the entire road with purple graffiti on it. A big pile of dirt had been placed behind the guard rail. Behind the dirt was a very decrepit bridge. I had to look at it for a bit to make sure it was a bridge at one point. That threw a wrench into our plans as we would have to find a way around and a bridge to cross the creek the decrepit one used to span.

While we hunted for a way around we took a wrong turn and found a gas station. We pulled in and filled our tanks back up. (Gas stops: 18) For the record at most of these stops we actually have about half a tank left. We just fill up when we can or when our butts hurt and we want a break anyway. While at this particular gas station we pulled into a pump that seemed normal. We noticed it was making an annoying beeping sound. I can still remember the pattern. Beep beeeep beep beep beeeep. It was an ear splitting, headache inducing beep. The screen wouldn’t respond to anything. Dad went inside and came back out later with no advise. Some fellow came out briefly and showed Dad how to use the contrary pump. The pump functions, but the screen does not respond. The fellow memorized the steps to use it. I still do not know if the fellow worker at the gas station or if he was there as a customer. Either way, he acted like showing us how to use the pump wasn’t really his job. He seemed to think it was someone else’s priority and he was having to cover for them. However, he may have been justified in his attitude, especially if he didn’t work there.

We have made it to Mississippi! We have already found two more shallow creek crossings (Creek crossings: 24). Neither of them gave us any issues.

Mississippi has treated us to a sprinkling rain. It starts up once in a while and leaves again. The good news is the short rains caused a massive double rainbow. It even got us to stop and take pictures. A little later the rainbow turned to be even more vivid. We got pictures of this as well.

We followed the TAT down the road some more and found another tree in the road. These trees are becoming a nuisance. This one had a fourwheeler path blasted through what used to be the top of the tree. Dad and I took to breaking off some of the limbs to make it more navigable for motorcycles. We then took bikes out around the widened path. The ground there was incredibly soft. You could feel the bike sinking. I couldn’t reach the ground in a lot of places without having the tires sink. Dad had to assist me around the branches.

After the getting around the second fallen tree of the day we came across another old bridge. This one was also closed but had a very obvious path around the signs that was specifically wide enough for motorcycles. We went out and checked out the bridge. It is actually in decent shape for a closed bridge and was strong enough to hold our bikes. There was a dirt slope leaded up to the bridge that proved to be a slippery challenge. Dad struggled with it, but made it over. This was the first time I have had to slip my clutch for a period of time to keep the bike running. I did rather poorly with slipping the clutch and stalled it many times trying to get up the slope. Once we got my bike over the slope getting across the bridge was easy. On the other side there was a skinny exit with a dip that lead into a bump. This meant you had to creep up to it and then go without stopping. My creeping went well. As soon as I hit the throttle to go the traction control on the bike cut the engine and stalled it. I had just enough momentum to roll over the bump to where my feet would touch. After a little more struggling we had both made it over the closed bridge.

After riding for a bit longer we decided we had best be looking for a place to stay the night. The GPS said the nearest campground was 30 or 40 miles in the wrong direction. That wasn’t happening. We ended up going to a hotel for lack of better options. We had a choice between and Econolodge and a Holiday Inn Express. Believe it or not we took the lesser quality Econolodge since we weren’t really looking for something nice. Now listen to this. Both hotels share the same parking lot, which is the only thing we knew before buying the room. We didn’t know that we were going to get the last available room in the Econolodge, which was a very spacious and nice room on the first floor with a window looking right at our motorcycles. We also didn’t know that the Holiday Inn Express and the Econolodge share the same fancy heated swimming pool. I’d say we made out pretty well being that we paid way less money for essentially the same thing we would have gotten across the parking lot. We used the pool for a bit and ordered a pizza from Dominoes before heading to bed.

It is now 5 minutes past midnight. I have finally finished today’s (yesterday’s) writing. I couldn’t sleep anyway. The pizza would keep me up.

Total Miles: 2235.0

Day 10:

(This technically started with the last paragraph from yesterday. Go figure.)

We got up and headed straight to breakfast before it closed today. The Econolodge menu was a little slim. We ended up with some Raisin Bran cereal and a bagel with cream cheese for the both of us. They also had grape juice to drink. After breakfast we packed our stuff into the bikes, filled out camelbaks (water carriers) with ice, and rolled out.

The first stop today was only about 6 miles away at Walmart. We needed to get deodorant, ziplock bags, some shoe deodorant, and a new pack for Dad. The deodorant was to resupply before we ran out. The ziplock bags were needed for storage. We have found they are incredibly useful for storing clothes and things that cannot get wet. The 2 gallon ziplocs with the slider are the best. You can fit plenty of clothes in them and they stack nicely. The shoe deodorant was not for our boots. It was actually for my flip flops. The flops are made of a cloth that has memory foam in it. It’s what I had before the trip started. The foam and cloth collect some pretty nasty smells. We put them in a ziplock earlier and we are going to put the shoe deodorant to the ultimate test. Do yourself a favor if you travel and get a pair of flip flops that can get completely submerged in water and are not made of a material that can hold a smell. We got Dad a new pack because of how his old water pack sprung a leak. (We did try to fix the old one with super glue since the leak is only a pinhole, but that didn’t work.) The new one is lesser quality than his original, but it is better than nothing.

After we left Walmart, we went back up to the trail we stopped on yesterday to continue on the TAT. We took the turns that we thought were right. Instead we made a loop right back to the start. This would be three times we have seen this same road. Once yesterday and twice today. After a very careful observation we made the correct turn and continued on. During the search I had quite a slide on some gravel and nearly biffed it. I somehow stomped the ground and got the bike up again before it fell over. No addition to the drop count here.

We found a really skinny and shallow creek crossing (Creek crossings: 25). It gave us no trouble. It was pretty well made with some larger gravel placed on the bottom. This gave it a solid feel for an easy crossing.

We came across our first sandy road today. It has a smooth wobbly feeling that is different from the jerky wobble of gravel. If you don’t closely monitor how far your bike leans then you might find yourself in a predicament. The bike will very slowly lean until you cannot stand it back up. The sand also has a tendency to suddenly dump the bike instead. Basically you have to constantly be on your toes or get comfortable with hugging some hot sand.

We stopped in a town called Ripley in Mississippi to get something to eat. We found a Mexican place that was open and went in. We discovered the only thing this places served was ice cream. Ice cream is great and all, but we were looking for a meal. The lady working the store directed us to two other Mexican restaurants. It turns out that both of these were closed permanently and one of them was completely torn down. We are unsure how the lady was unaware of this. After discovering the absence of the Mexican food we found a gas station. We needed to fill up anyway (Gas stop: 19). We wondered for a bit after getting gas and ended up eating at a Sonic. For those of you who don’t know, a Sonic is a fast food style restaurant with burgers and milkshakes on the menu. You pull into a parking spot and push a button on a large menu board to order. Someone talks through a speaker and you reply your order the same way, similar to radios. After the food is prepared they bring it right out to your parked car and you eat right at your parking spot. I ordered a cheeseburger and Dad got a deluxe cheeseburger (more toppings). We shared some fries and onion rings. Afterwards we got some hot fudge milkshakes. All of it was pretty good food for fast food. I would eat there again.

When we left the Sonic and found the TAT we ended up on a squirrelly gravel road through a whole bunch of pine trees. It had some long patches of deep gravel that could really give you some fear if you weren’t paying attention. The rocks were between golf ball and pea sized rocks. Both of us made it through without any major problems.

The gravel road lead to an intersection with a gas station named Paris General Store. We didn’t need gas, but Dad had managed to drink his new water pack completely dry. He wanted to refill it. We went into the store and got two waters and two king sized Caramello bars. We went outside and ate them in the shade. I managed to get all of mine down. Dad got about halfway through his. We should have bought one and split it. Just as we were about to leave a fellow who was 77 years old came up to us and asked if we were riding the trail. We told him yes. I noticed that this was the first person that we have talked to who actually knew what the TAT was. The fellow told us about how the TAT goes around the community. He pointed out all the pine trees we had been seeing. He explained that the pines were all planted on farmland instead of crops so that the land could be used for timber instead. Shortly after the planting the price of pine lumber per acre dropped drastically due to large companies flooding the markets with lumber to get the prices down. This destroyed the small company as they cannot compete with the low prices. Hence, a lot of the forest still stands around the trail since logging companies do not timber it any longer or the trees are between harvests performed by large companies. After explaining this history the fellow wished us a good trip and headed for his pickup truck.

When we left the gas station and found the TAT we were on a gravel road that seemed to be one of the ones that was going to get harder. (You get a knack for knowing when things are about to get bad. For the examle, seeing a turtle on the road used to be a surefire sign in Kentucky and Virginia since turtles like water and water meant creek crossings.) The road turned into sand. Nearly the whole road was sand. If that wasn’t difficult enough, the sand had formed into deep ruts due to the rain. So you have very slippery and structurally unsound ridges that have very twisty and bumpy ruts next to them. We both struggled with this section. I dropped my bike twice. The first time was due to traction control cutting and stalling my engine at a very inopportune time. The second was because I went into a sandy rut a little too hot and caught the right edge with the front tire. The sudden change in momentum dumped me ever to a soft sandy bank. Dad made it through the sand without dropping his bike. Being able to put his feet flat on the ground came in really handy here since his feet had more surface area on the sand. This larger area prevented him from sinking as far into the sand when planting his foot. My toes would poke right into the sand if I tried to stop the bike.

After escaping the sandbox we drove into a gas stop for a quick fuel up (Gas stops: 20) There was nothing eventful here.

We left the gas station and went straight to a campground called Frog Hollow Campground. We set up shop right near the entrance. The ground was hard to stick tent spikes into the gravel spot we were on. Nearly as soon as we got the tent up it started raining. We went to the showers. They proved to be very temperamental as both showers used the same hot and cold water. This meant one shower could rob the hot water from the other. We eventually found a balance between the two that we were happy with. The rain had stopped while we were in the showers. We threw some laundry into the washer and started cooking up a meal. This is when we discovered that a tube of cream had exploded inside the cooking bag. This meant everything was covered in a greasy slime. We took some paper towels from the bathroom and cleaned everything off. At this point we were finally read to cook our first MRE (Meal Ready to Eat). We honestly just wanted to try one since we haven’t gotten to use one yet. We decided on the Beef Stroganoff. We had just gotten the camp heat to begin boiling the water when it started a toad strangling rain. For those that are not familiar, a toad strangling rain is a rainstorm so fierce that it “strangles the toads” with rainwater. We let the pot and camp heat go to see if the rain would stop. The rain continued on and even got worse.

We waited a bit and the rain stopped. We are trying again to cook the MRE.

Success! We have the MRE cooked. It tastes salty but it is decent. Dad and I both ate and drank our entire cups. Dads exact opinion is “I am not hungry anymore.” Follow the instructions on the packaging as closely as possible.

As a final note for today our butts still hurt. Although, they hurt much less than when we started. They also leave the lights on in this campground all night long.

Total Miles: 2427.4

Day 11:

We are up and at it again. Both of us are hungry. To the Waffle House!

Before we got to leave the campground, I put my foot in my right boot. We started walking and my foot started having a burning sensation. I thought it just needed stretched. After walking a few steps further I noticed the burning was getting worse. I stopped on a bench to take my boot off while Dad filled the water paks up. I took my foot out to discover a stinging caterpillar had taking residence in my boot and was evicted by getting stuck to my sock. (Stinging caterpillars are those hairy worm-like things. They may also be known as Wooly boogers, Wooly buggers, or Wooly bears.) It had stung the top of my foot right up next to the toes. We got rid of the caterpillar and I put the boot back on. We started back to the bikes. The stinging came back in the same place as before but it was worse. I immediately sat and took the boot off. Dad investigated the case and discovered another stinging caterpillar in the toe of the boot. That means I stuck my foot into a boot with two stinging caterpillars in it.

After the caterpillar incident, we headed off to a Waffle House for breakfast. We like Waffle Houses. They consistently have pretty decent breakfast no matter where you are or how dirty they look on the outside. Dad and I both had the steak breakfast. It came with the steak, some scrambled eggs, and some toast. The waitress was interested in my camera. She was impressed that the camera was so small.

When we left the Waffle House with our bellies full we found the TAT to be another round of some slippery gravel. It was deep in some spot. It could throw you off balance and send you into the bushes if you weren’t careful. Just a little ways down the road we found some pavement and missed a turn. The road we ended up on promptly dumped us into some very crusty and deep dirt. We had to do a U-turn on this stuff to get back to the trail. U-turns are usually fine. This time we couldn’t make the turn in one go. We ended up turning as far as we could (which wasn’t very far), stopping, backing until we had enough space to turn some more, and repeating the process. It was fine and dandy until the ground crunched beneath my right foot a bit farther than I could hold. Hence, the bike went for a spill. I have noticed about 9 out of every 10 falls for me are caused by my feet not being able to touch the ground properly.

After a bit we came across yet another closed bridge. These people have more closed bridges than they do open ones. We found a path and had to waddle the bikes across a dirt mound. Other than that the bridge caused no issues.

We had been riding on some pavement for a while and Dad suddenly hit his brakes and whipped off the paved road to a dirt and gravel road on the right side. This happens frequently as the GPS updates late and Dad doesn’t want to miss the turn. This turn in particular caught me off guard and I didn’t quite make the turn. I ended up stopped just next to the ditch. Dad came over and gave me a slight push and I was good to go. We went ahead and stopped for a bit alongside the dirt and gravel road to munch on some jerky and take a butt break. (A “butt break” is when we just want to stop for a second and hopefully let our butts stop hurting.) Dad had noticed on his way up to help me that there was an incredible amount of frogs in the ditch I was close to. We walked up and down the road for a bit watching hundreds of frogs go flying into the weeds. It was amazing how many of them were there. We stepped about 5 steps off the road once and caused a whole swarm of them to dive into new hiding holes.

After we watched the frogs we hopped on the bikes and continued riding. We came across some of the biggest continuous farm fields we have seen yet. You could drive on a road for minutes at a time and still find the same farm on the side of the road. We also noticed that the temperature had risen up to between 95 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We roasted in the sun due to the lack of trees. We were able to keep moving to avoid the heat most of the time.

We have successfully crossed the Mississippi River and made it into Arkansas. There are still farms here. If anything they are even bigger than before. It is getting to the point that there is far more farmland than anything else here.

We stopped for a quick fill up at a station called Shortstop (Gas stops: 21). Dad wanted to refill the water paks, so I went inside and hunted for the biggest bottle of water I could find. I came up with a liter sized bottle (very large) but I needed something like a gallon. I went up to the cashier and asked if she had a gallon of water. She looked at me and replied “No that is the biggest one we have.” I nodded and told her it would work. She eyeballed me for a minute and asked “Wat chu going to do with a gallon of water anyway?” I laughed and explained the water paks to her. She asked me if I was going to be able to drink a whole gallon. I told her we probably would and that we would sweat the most of it back out. I guess we just have to wash our suits a lot. She laughed and I went back out to fill up the paks.

After fueling up we headed onto a part of the TAT that was a bunch of gravel roads around extensive farmland. Part of it was on a tall water levy and other parts were on flat gravel roads. During this time Dad got stung by two bees. Both stung his forehead. They would smack into his forehead and get stuck there due to the helmet and sunglasses he was wearing. Annoyed, they would sting the crack of skin not covered up by the helmet or glasses. Dad was not impressed.

After a longer ride in the fields we came into a town called Helena. We wondered around the town looking for something to eat. We got sent by a local to a Mexican restaurant that was closed. Apparently misdirection is a theme in the towns here. We then came across a place called Rosie’s Diner. It is a mom and pop kind of place. The outside is a little rough and in need of a power wash and a fresh coat of paint. The inside is clean and has bright colors. They welcome you in and seat you quickly. They give you sodas in the can with a cup of ice to pour it in if you want. We had the buffet. They had chicken, some noodle and beef stuff, cooked cabbage with pork, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and a few other things. To be honest you couldn’t predict the flavor by looking at any of it. It turns out that everything we could get ahold of was delicious. We downed the whole plate and went back for more. It was probably the best meal we have had since we left on the trip. We told the waitress this and she seemed pleased. She told us about how she knows most of her customers orders before they even tell them to her because they get the same thing each time. She talked about how the menu and buffet change daily but always seem to be a success. It was an interesting conversation. After a while she asked where we were traveling to. We gave her the scoop. She seemed amazed that I basically got my motorcycle license about 4 weeks ago (included the days of this trip) just for the trip. After that we got to tell the cook that our meals were great. She took it to heart and thanked us. Then we headed out for the dusty trail again.

We came across a place called Robert Heidelberger & Company in Trenton, Arkansas. We had heard of this place through the vast internet base that is focused on the TAT. You get to go inside for some water and sign a book with your names, bikes, hometowns, and finishing points. The fellows running the place have been collecting these names for years as well as taking pictures with each person who stops. They have whole books of photos with people. We talked to them for awhile about our plans and listened to some stats they had. It is pretty neat and worth your time.

We have been riding on dry gravel roads for a long time, but nothing like these gravel roads. The gravel was deep and very difficult to ride it. It would jerk the bike from side to side without warning. There were lines that had been smashed into the gravel by other vehicles. If we rode right in these lines we could ride with only minor struggles. The issues came when your tires would grab one side or the other. Let me explain with some text pictures. The road has a rut that looks like this:

\__/

The tire ideally sits in the center of the rut like this:

\_()_/

What happens is the tire gets to one side like this:

\()__/

This causes the bike to quickly change direction or start falling over. To save the bike you whip the steering. Then you end up on the other side like this:

\__()/

This causes the bike to repeat the direction change and falling process again. If you whip the steering you will just end up on the other side of the rut to repeat this process. This causes the bike to fishtail something fierce or forces you out of the rut into the uncomfortably deep gravel on either side of the rut. You have to force yourself to gently fix the steering even though you have this overwhelming feeling that you are going to drop the bike. We rode in gravel like this for a good while. We were happy to see the pavement when we finally got to the end of it.

We burned the pavement (mainly to avoid the bad gravel) and got to the town of Beebe. We pulled into a gas station for fuel (Gas stops: 22). It was called a VP Racing Fuels station. I didn’t see any racing fuels. It is just gas. I also noticed that the station used to be a Baskin Robins. The station shows the sign still if you catch the sunlight on it at the right angle. While we filled up we saw a small trailer with a shredded tire being noisily drug down the road. We thought that was strange until it came back through again shortly after with the trucks hazard lights on. We shrugged, fueled up, and headed out.

We had planned to stay in Beebe for the night, but the fellows back at Robert Heidelberger & Company told us that there was a place off the TAT a bit that could replace motorcycle tires. Our tires are past due. We need replacements if we are going to make the trip. So we took their offer and are headed out to get to a hotel nearby the tire place.

We stopped because we saw a Mexican restaurant that we know is open and exists. We did it. We found the elusive Mexican restaurant. It was called Casa Mojitos. The food was good and the service was speedy. We are now headed to a Best Western hotel.

We arrived at the Best Western. The reason for a hotel is because it would cost just as much to camp and the hotel is more comfy. There was a Rubiks Cube sitting on the counter. I picked it up and solved it before heading to the room.

I discovered that my caterpillar sting from earlier had left tiny bumps similar to poison ivy wherever the caterpillar touched my foot. They itch badly, but will hopefully heal by morning.

Total Miles: 2734.5

Day 12:

We got up a little earlier than normal today. We wanted to get to the dealer that the fellows at Robert Heidelberger & Company told us about. It is a place called Sunrise Motorsports. We are headed to get replacement tires as planned.

We got some breakfast. It was a surprisingly good breakfast for as far as hotel breakfasts go. We are headed out shortly for the dealership.

We have made it to Sunrise Motorsports. This place is huge. They have a full service area in the back. We are getting the tires replaced now.

We have been walking around for awhile and discovered that this place is huge. It has like every dealer of motorcycle around. If you can think of it then you can probably find it here.

We have the replacement tires. We have Motoz Tractionator Adventure both front and back on Dad’s back and a TKC80 on the front with a Motoz Tractionator Adventure on the back of my bike. They did not have two front Tractionators, so we put a similar front tire on mine since my tire wears out at a slower rate anyway due to my lighter weight and the lighter weight of my bike. (I cannot edit the main site from my phone. I’ll put this on the gear page later. Link to Tractionator tire: http://motoz.com.au/product/tractionator-adventure/) (Link to TKC80 tire: https://www.continental-tires.com/motorcycle/tires/motorcycle-tires/off-road-enduro/tkc-80)

The new tires are surprisingly different. They have much more responsive turning and seem to be generally more tight than the old tires. These are a different compound that are supposed to last a lot longer but still have decent traction. Dad and I got used to hem pretty quickly.

We also got a windsock thing for my microphone. It is like a giant foam tube that is closed off on one end. You stick it on the microphone to eliminate some of the background noise from the audio. Dad had been complaining about the wind noise from my mic for some time. We had already tried a similar sock that provided no results. It turns out the foam sock we got this time eliminated almost all of the wind noise.

Just after finally getting our bikes back we rolled into a Which Wich for lunch. A Which Wich is a sandwich place where you can order off the menu or build your own sandwich. It’s like a Subway if you are familiar with those. Dad got an Italian sandwich that he wasn’t happy with. It had some stuff that he thought he would like but ended up not enjoying. I had an oddly tasty sandwich. It was called a Thank You Turkey. It was a whole lot of turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce mixed in on a big Italian bun. It’s basically a Thanksgiving meal on a bun. I know that sounds very strange, but it ended up being really good. I enjoyed it.

When we left the Which Wich we burned some paved roads to get back to the TAT ended up on some more gravel roads. There were signs everywhere protesting oil trucks and prohibiting the trucks from going on certain roads. Apparently the community does not like the oil truck traffic at all.

We were driving on a slippery gravel road when some rain clouds began hovering overhead. We dodged the rain for awhile. It did catch us for about 15 or 30 minutes of the day. We spent this time under our blue tent tarp. We had stung it up between our bikes for a temporary shelter. We really didn’t want to get our stuff wet as we finally got it dry. Plus we struggled with gravel when it was dry, let alone wet. We met the owner of the driveway we were sitting next to. He asked if we were doing the TAT and was cool with us sitting there for a bit. After the rain stopped, we geared up and took off. It turns out that the gravel was way easier to ride after the rain. It made a night and day difference. The rain had packed the gravel down and made it much less squirrely to ride on.

A ways down the new easy gravel we found a creek crossing (Creek crossings: 26). There were a whole slew of kids playing in a deep water hole downstream from the crossing. They looked at us with just as much confusion as we gave them. After observing the creek we concluded with a good path across. Dad went first and had no issues besides a minor slip right at the close edge of the creek. I took a slightly different route and had no problems at all. At least we didn’t dump the bikes in front of an audience.

We rolled into a small town and found a gas station called The Store. We fueled up and went in to pay (Gas stops: 23). We went ahead and bought some ice cream and a pair of cokes to drink when we payed for the gas. The ice cream was good stuff. It was called Ben & Jerry’s Pint Slices Chocolate Chip Cookies Dough. We saw they had a grill and decided to go ahead and eat there too. They fixed us up some weird but good burgers. They cooked the beef patty just like you would break a chicken sandwich. The result was a crunchy beef sandwich. It was unique. While we ate we had a few old guys come up and inquire us about our trip. They were cool to talk to and seemed like they had seen a lot of riders like us recently.

We have made it to the Ozark Mountains. This is a welcome change in scenery to the repetitive fields of Arkansas. The roads are squiggly again and there is some shade.

The Ozark Mountains have some really neat views. We have seen quite a few very pretty sites already.

While riding on these gravel roads in the Ozarks the sun was absolutely blinding us. It was just about to set and was beaming right down the road we were on. I was completely blind at one point and when I started to be able to see again there was a rut in the middle of the road. The back tire abruptly shot out from underneath me. The bike dropped hard to the left side, which I caught with a foot stomp and a steering turn. (I could reach the ground because the bike had dumped so far over.) The bike stood and flew right over the fulcrum to the right side. I caught it again. The bike chucked me for a final whirl to the the left side where I caught it with less force. This allows me to straighten the bike and keep it standing. Dad thought I was going down for sure. He was nearly correct. He said I did a really good job saving that one.

As we continued alone the mountains we found an animal that we are unsure of. It was just a small black as night blob that darted into the bushes on our right. A little bit after that we say an armadillo! I had never gotten to see a living armadillo. They are kind of ugly honestly. And slow. And apparently not very smart. They are like a possum back home.

While we searched for a campground to stay at Dad missed a turn. He directed me in the right direction so I wouldn’t have to find a place to turn around. I continued down the road while he found a place to turn. When he came back up the road after me he asked “How do you see anything when you are behind me?” He was referring to the dust I had been eating the whole trip. I laughed and told him “I don’t.” That wasn’t a lie. Sometimes I have no idea what is on the ground in front of me but I know that Dad’s bike remained smooth so there are not any obstructions. When things get hairy I back off so that I can see.

We found a camping place but it turned out to be a church camp. A fellow asked us to leave. We understood. He gave us directions to another place called Ozone just about 3 miles away.

We found the place the guy from the church camp was talking about and set up the tent. It was very dark at this point. It is good that we had an idea of what we were doing since we used the motorcycle headlights and some battery lights to set the whole tent up. The spot was $3 a night per vehicle. It only provides a toilet somewhere. We will hopefully be taking some really good showers wherever we sleep next as we won’t be able to here. We did use some bath wipes (like hand wipes but for your whole body) so we aren’t completely dirty. I have found the my caterpillar sting has not gotten any better. We are trying to put some Desitin on it. It does feel better now.

That pretty well sums up the day. I’m going to go to sleep and listen to the incredibly loud bugs around our tent. I write you more tomorrow.

Total Miles: 2921.3

Day 13:

We are up and at it. The tent is packed and we are headed for breakfast wherever that may be.

After squiggling around on a road that was nothing but dead ends we ended up at a place called Oark General Store. This place is cool. It’s not at all what you would expect from the outside. I mean sure it has old wood floors and whatnot but the whole place is mainly a restaurant with very few items to actually purchase. They play some true country music. Everything from the old kind when the recording devices weren’t very clear to current digital music. You are going to get biscuit and gravy with anything you order except grits and pancakes. Do you get the picture? Dad had two eggs, ham, and of course biscuits and gravy. I had a stack of 3 pancakes. (They were the big flat pancakes. No small pancakes here.) Both were good. I recommend stopping here if it’s open when your around.

We were riding down a big gravel road. Things were going fine. Then a huge tree skidder came creeping up the hill. It took up most of the road, so we had to stop. The stopping went a little rough but we were alright. Once the skidder has past Dad started down the hill again. I followed suit but my bike stalled. I found this strange. I was pointed downhill. It should be a really easy start. I tried again. The bike stalled again. This time it jerked me with enough force to tip the bike. I deployed a foot in protest of falling. It turns out the bank on the right was soft. Hence, the bike overcame my strength and plopped onto the right side. We stood it up, waited a bit, and started it up. It seems fine. We are confused but headed off again.

Well we missed a turn and we had to do another U-turn on a skinny gravel ridge. I dropped of the road just slightly to get some more space. It turns out that the top of this hill holds water and I dropped the bike on the mud. There is no damage. It was just a gentle plop.

Somewhere in this area of the day we crossed 3 creeks (Creek crossings: 29). The first two creeks were very skinny and had barely any water flowing in them. The third creek was wider but still very shallow. None of them gave us any trouble.

We are in the middle of nowhere on a fourwheeler path. We just went down some pretty hairy stuff. Big rocks and builders. Muddy, rocky soil. Ruts and roots. It was kinda dark under the trees. It started raining on us at the bottom of it. It basically covered everything that motorcycles don’t like except sand. Neither one of us dropped our bikes despite it being one of the most difficult sections we have ridden on.

We rode some more of the same road as before but the rest was much better than the first bit of the road. As we rode we watched as the clouds disappeared, the sun came out, and the rain stopped. There was a point on the road that changed from soaking wet to completely dry. The rain had never touched the part of the road we crossed on to. It was pretty neat.

After riding for a while longer we began to wonder about a gas station. We were running low on gas and we weren’t sure if we were going to find a gas stop in time. We noticed that there was a town coming up called Lincoln. We figured we could make it. It turns out that we did make it with a comfortable cushion of gas still available. Before we found gas we noticed a farm store. We pulled into a farm store and bought some paracord rope. We have been needing it to tie up the tents and tarps. We also got some bungee cords for holding the tent on the outside of a bag. It will dry it and make sure the top bag has enough space. We discovered a gas station just up and across the road called Phillips 66. When we pulled into the gas station we noticed a restaurant called Simple Simon’s Pizza. This place was recommended on the TAT map, so we went ahead and ate there after filling up (Gas stops: 24). It was good. We got a thin crust. It had crunch crust, decent cheese, and only a little grease. I would recommend it.

While at Simple Simon’s Pizza, Dad asked if I wanted to find a place to stay. We wanted a hotel since we didn’t get to shower yesterday and we really wanted to. I told Dad to pick an average number of miles that we would ride in a day. If it was over it we would ride for a while longer. If it was under it we would look for a place to stay. He said 250 miles. We had ridden 268.9 miles. That means we start searching for place to stay.

We apparently hit Oklahoma just a little while after we left Simple Simon’s Pizza. The roads here are mostly gravel. Some of it is chunky and hard to ride in and others are light and fast gravel. The are tons of hog farms here. None of them smell good. All have had a smell.

We rode on the straightest roads we have seen on the trip for most of the day today. They were mostly easy gravel with patches of pavement here and there. The weird thing is some of the four way intersections have absolutely no stop signs. This means you can fly through and intersection at 50 mph. It’s amazing people do not wrecked with this system. Maybe they do and are just careful to avoid other vehicles. The dust was everywhere. Dad had me ride up next to him so I didn’t have to eat so much dust. I still ended up covered in dust from head to toe. Oh well.

We went into the town of Bartlesville. We stopped here to look for a hotel for the night. We found one pretty quickly. It was a Holiday Inn. I don’t think we even went inside. We just wanted to find a cheap place to stay and not worry about trying to get a room in the Holiday Inn. Chances are they were booked anyway at the Holiday. We found a Quality Inn after some searching on the GPS. It took us forever to actually find the entrance to the hotel. We wandered around for awhile until we finally found the hotel parking lot.

When we got into the hotel the first thing we did was take a quick spray off and hop into the pool. It was a chilly indoor poor. There were a lot of people there by the time we left.

After the pool we both took some more serious showers. The shower made us both feel better. We threw on some clothes and headed out to the nearby IHOP. The IHOP is actually connected to the hotel but you go outside to get there. Pretty nifty. The food was good, too. The waiter even cracked a joke at Dad since he had downed 3 glasses of water.

Alright. I’m going to bed. We might be up periodically just to get some laundry back. Otherwise today’s work is done. I will write more tomorrow.

Total Miles: 3216.4

Day 14:

We have got up a little late today as yesterday’s ride was pretty lengthy. You see, that’s the thing about riding really far in one day. You can’t ride as far the next day because you are so tired. Unless you plan to stop riding the next day then there really isn’t a way to get ahead of the pace. We find that trying to ride until we are to a certain point of exertion seem to be the key.

So we went down and strapped all our stuff back into the motorcycles. Then we waltzed in to the complimentary breakfast. It was decent. I had a waffle and Dad had some grits with raisins and brown sugar.

Once we left the Quality Inn, we discovered the temperate was going to be in the high 80’s or low 90’s today. It feels like it is going to be much hotter than that.

We came across this part of Oklahoma that is actually a little interesting. There are thousands of acres of grass out here. We got up on top some hills and could see for miles. It’s a neat sight.

We came across a very easy creek crossing. We had no problems with it. It was actually a comfortable temperature right across that creek (Creek crossings: 30).

We have come across another creek crossing. This time it is on a low water bridge. Remember we have already crossed some of these before. Dad didn’t even stop. He just rolled up to it, gave it a quick gander, and started on. He seemed fine. I started on. That’s when Dad’s bike had a pretty wicked fishtail. He managed to make it across somehow. I didn’t even have time to think about what Dad just did. I was busy trying to get across. I made it a good ways across and was feeling fine. Then the bike slammed me. It was a good one. It didn’t hurt me, but it gave me a spook. I made it the rest of the way across the bridge by sliding along with the bike on it’s side. It was like a huge muddy slip n slide. When the bike hit the much stickier pavement on the other side it skittered to a stop. I did the same. (This technically means I made it across the bridge despite my bad methods.) I laid on the ground for a second to see if the ground was still slippery. It was, but it was manageable. I sat up. Right in front of me was a tiny frog just watching me roll around in the mud. I said “Hey frog” to Dad’s amusement. Dad said “You making a friend back there?” Dad turned and came down to help me stand the bike up. (More or less I help him stand the bike up. That things heavy and he provides a lot of the strength.) We struggled with the bike for awhile and eventually got the thing up. Dad moved it to the side of the road and we checked it out. It had some pretty nasty scrapes on the crash bars but is otherwise fine. We are both glad we have the crash bars. Our bikes would be destroyed without them. Then Dad and I decided this was a good place for a break since we were stopped and there was a cool creek nearby. (It was still roasting, but the creek was cooler than elsewhere.) We checked out the bridge. It was covered in the same slime that my entire right side was now covered in. It is like mud, but mix it with algae and slime. You end up with some very slippery stuff that feels like well used truck oil. I don’t think you could walk across it normally. We hopped across some big rocks to get to some shade on the other side of the creek. We took a seat on some similar rocks and looked around. It turns out that bridge is absolutely polluted with tiny frogs like the one I saw earlier. They jump around everywhere. Each one can make quite a lot of noise for as small as it is. There are also a lot of dragonflies and other insects. I saw a crawdad making its way upstream across the low water bridge. The creeks here must be the most friendly place for critters like these. After that we went back across the rocks to the side where the bikes where. Upon a final observation we noted that the sticky mud on the side where the creek is coming from seems to be our best option for crossing it. That is surprising to us. The both of us tried to cross using the two black stripes created by vehicles on the middle of the road since they look like they have the least slime on them. It turns out these black stripes are the most slippery surface on the bridge. Now we know that the mud will at least give you some fighting chance to get across these slimy bridges. If we find another opportunity to try thee theory out I will let you know. We are both hoping that opportunity doesn’t arrive.

Shortly after the low water bridge we found another decent size creek. It was much easier than the first. It was a little deep but it the bikes had a solid hold on the bottom. Neither one of us had any issue with crossing it (Creek crossings: 32).

Just a little ways after crossing the slimy bridge we came up to an intersection. Dad missed a turn but told me to take the correct turn. This happens frequently. I started into the turn to find a bunch of sand. At first I struggled with scrubbing speed before I went into the turn. Then the sand gave a me the real task of making the turn. I made it around the turn on a very close margin to the outside bushes. That’s when I found a particularly deep spot of sand. The bike started over and I couldn’t get the throttle going in time. I stuck my foot out and got the bike to stand for a second. I got it to scoot forward just a bit by shoving with my foot. Then my footing fell out a little and my knee gave. One thing went to another and I ended up dropping the bike in the deep sand. It would have been easier to stand up than the first drop on the bridge but we were tired from the first drop. We usually at least get a short recovery before I plop over again.

So we have been riding for awhile now and we have decided that riding motorcycles in Oklahoma isn’t really that great. To start with it is roasting here. It seems to have the odd spells of heat. Like the sun is roasting you like a piece of bacon or the sun is behind a cloud and it drops a comfy four degrees to about 96 degrees Fahrenheit. Remember you are wearing protective coats and jeans. But it is hot in a lot of places. We can deal with that. The terrain is what gets us. It seems that you have two extremes. You are either really bored because the ground is firm, flat, fast, and lacking in anything that resembles a turn. It’s hardpack. 50+ mph nonstop. Any other time you are on this baby powder that can get over a foot deep. The particles of this powder slightly bigger than sand but not even close to dirt clumps. I’ll go with the definition of thick sand. It is terrifying to ride on since it is entirely unpredictable. Sometimes you ride right through it and other times you get thrown for a whirl. The whole time the landscape is pretty barren in comparison to what we have come through since a large majority of it is grassland. It’s actually impressive how much grass there is for the first 4 or 5 hours. If we were riding on anything with four wheels then this place would be fantastic. It’s just not meant for motorcycles like ours. Despite this description I would still recommend riding through a little bit of this area on the dirt (sand) just so you can see the grass and landscape on something besides the highway. It is a unique place after all. It’s just not exactly exotic or anything.

Somewhere in the riding around this period we missed a turn of the TAT. We figured we could just go up the road a bit and take the next turn and it would put us right back on the TAT. We did find the next turn. We did go out it. Then it turned into a very squirrely section of the baby powder. It was awful. We both about went down several times in the course of about two miles. I went over so far at one point that I was about to brace for impact when the bike just popped right back up. It seemed impossible for this to happen at the angle I was at in the fall but I wasn’t going to put it past the baby powder stuff. We finally got all the way out to the end of this road to discover that it stopped short of the trail by dead ending at an oil rig. We were pretty distraught as this meant we had to go all the way back out the baby powder trail. I figure out on the way back that if you held the motorcycle at exactly 18 mph while in first gear, grip the tank with your knees, and lock your arms so the steering can’t jerk then you can roll along with some low confidence. It winds the motor up a bit and works just barely well enough to seem effective but it was the only strategy we had. We rode on like that whenever the powder came along that we were unsure about. It beat our arms and the rest of our body with it.

We finally made it to a town with pavement and we are very happy about it. We pulled in for a quick gas stop (Gas stops: 25). We bought a whole gallon of water for our water paks. We filled the paks and drank the rest right from the jug. (That gets you some real classy looks from the other gas station customers.) After that we chucked the water carton in the trash and rolled out

We went to a Subway for lunch that was at a different gas station than the one we fueled up at. (A Subway is a sandwich store similar to a Which Wich where you tell a worker what you want and they build the sub and cook it right in front of you. It’s basically hibachi for sandwiches. No we didn’t eat at an underground train station.) Dad apparently doesn’t like Subway food very much. I was unaware of this before the trip. We didn’t really have any choice so this is where we ate. We both had BMT sandwiches (bigger, meatier, tastier) along with some chips and a cookie. I looked like a real winner when I rolled into this place with my bridge slime jeans and t-shirt. I mean the mud has dried to dirt but it was still there. We tried to dust it off. That wasn’t happening.

After eating subway I checked the temperature. It was 96 degrees right then. A short ways down the road the motorcycle said it was 100. At point it said 102 degrees. It was roasting according to any source.

We were riding on some more baby power/hardpack roads when we found a big storm off in the distance. You have to know that you can see forever out here. Who knows how far that storm was away from us. We rode clear past the storm and discovered that the storm was going to chase us. We couldn’t go over (or under) 18 mph in places due to the powder technique from before. The storm was going to get us. The last thing we wanted was to have to ride in the powder when it was wet. It would turn into a terrible, unforgiving mud. We would speed up where we could to get ahead again. We eventually got decently far ahead and took a wrong turn. We took a quick break. We put some water (that we may or may not have produced ourselves) onto the dirt just to see what would happen. It soaked the water up instantly. It would even puddle. This meant the mud was inevitable if we got in the rain. Then some winds reminded us that the storm was coming. We threw our stuff on, rolled the bikes around by hand (no u-turns on this stuff), and rode on.

We managed to outrun the storm. We lost it by so far that we couldn’t see it anymore. Right as we lost eyesight with the storm another storm formed right in front of us. We figured we could outrun that one too if we hurried. It turns out that storms can move wicked fast here. You could literally see the storm clouds crawling along the ground. We thought it was a tornado for awhile until we noticed it wasn’t turning. We made it to a paved road before it hit us. The road quickly went under construction and turned into tar and chip surface. (Tar and chip is a road creation and fixing method. You lay down a fresh coat of solid tar pavement and coat the entire surface with chip. Chip is like gravel. You end up with a solid gravel crust on top of the tar. They called this crust a wear coat since the gravel takes the beating from the tires for the tar base.) This tar and chip road is a little slippery at times but nothing like what we were riding in the powder. You could hold 40 mph easy on it. We made it a small distance on this road before the storm seemed like it was going to get us. It had one entire view covered. It had to be close. We found refuge by pulling up a tiny slope where a road grader was sitting. (A road grader is a big construction machine for flattening roads and banks. They can move the blade they use in an incredible amount of angels and directions.) The plan was to get up close to the road grader and tie up a tarp to the bikes so that the grader would break the wind while the tarp acted as a roof from the rain. Then the storm started really dishing out the wind. It was scary strong. Dad discovered that the cab on the road grader was unlocked. We clambered in. There we sat while the storm continued blowing around and acting angry. We made sure not to touch or toggle anything. We literally didn’t move anything besides a water bottle. Eventually the storm passed over us without a single drop of rain. We got out and put the water bottle back where it was. Once we started to gear up to ride the rain started a slight sprinkle. We discussed and concluded it probably wasn’t going to get any worse or last very long since the storm had already rampaged past us somewhere up the road. We pulled the bikes around and took off.

As we continued riding up the tar and chip road we saw obvious signs that the storm had been there. We would have been drenched and blown away had we continued riding. We were glad we stopped, but now we had another pair of issues. The first was that the baby powder here would have to be mud by now. The second and most urgent issue is the semi trucks might throw sticky gravel from the tar and chip at us as they fly by. That would sting and be unpleasant in the least. As the first few trucks past we noticed that they were not throwing rocks. The surface must have stuck well enough to not let any rocks be thrown by vehicle tires. We were relieved by this new information.

We hopped off the tar and chip onto a road that took us straight into the town of Buffalo in Oklahoma. We went ahead and stopped for gas (Gas stops: 26). We bought another entire gallon of water as we had already drank the first gallon from this morning. We did the same routine of filling the water paks and drinking the rest. This still provides never ending glances from other customers. It’s funny to watch the other people honestly. We don’t care and they think we are hooligans. They scowl and stare. Little do they know that we are taking an awesome trip across the country that happens to make you thirsty. Some people ask us where are from. When we say West Virginia their eyeballs get real big and suddenly it makes sense to why we are chugging water from a gallon jug. Other people don’t have any idea what are bikes are. Like they have seen dirt bikes and crotch rocket street bikes before but these things are some weirdly tall street bikes with all kinds of big yellow bags stuck on it and off road tires. They must see this contraption and then see some dusty dudes drinking water from a gallon jug and have their train of thoughts rolling on 10 different tracks at once.

Once we fueled up we headed for dinner. We found a place called the Buffalo Diner. It isn’t much but they served American and Mexican food. (I find it funny how hard it is for Americans to place what American food really is when they first think about it.) Dad and I both wanted to know what this thing on the Mexican menu was. The waiter said she had no idea since she had only been working there for about a week and no one had gotten it. We told her we would be the first to try it for her. The meal was got was called the Chile Relleno Plate. It turns out to be a big green pepper that has been filled with nacho cheese and then deep fried. I know that sounds disgusting but it actually wasn’t that bad. Dad and I both ate it without any complaints. It wasn’t just because we were hungry either. We had to debate if we were hungry enough to stop or not. That means this food was truly decent despite how it looks.

We talked to some fellows in the restaurant about places to stay the night. They directed us to a multitude a places. We went to one called the Red Rock Inn. I have to say that this place needs to be recognized much more than it is. There are only two rooms to stay in the whole place. The entire building is decorated with cool stuff. You could walk around for an hour or two just to look at all. The furniture as all nice and the showers have really high pressure and temperature. (The shower actually hurt a little if it catches you right. It’ll take your hide off.) There are two people who own the building. You just call there number and they come let you in and show you around. The number can be found on a sign right outside the building. Plus, they give a discount to TAT riders since they claim you take enough of a beating on the trail. It’s great. I highly recommend staying here if you stop in Buffalo.

Total Miles: 3480.3 (Above 3000!)

Day 15:

So we started to get things organized and the owners of the Red Rock Inn showed up. This is a good thing. They are good people to talk to. They were doing some work around the outside of the inn. We talked to them for a bit and headed out for some breakfast.

We ended up eating breakfast at the same place we ate dinner yesterday as it seems to be the only place in town. We both had a plate with two eggs and bacon. Mine had hashbrowns and Dad had biscuits and gravy. We found the owners of the Red Rock Inn at the restaurant as well. This was an odd coincidence that all of us found amusing. We talked for a bit at the restaurant before heading out to hit the trail.

We started out on more of that sandy stuff that we rode a lot of yesterday. It still isn’t fun, but I have noticed a pattern to riding in the side. It is more or less a flow. The bike constantly wants to fall over. I basically got tired of fighting it all the time. Don’t think that I just let the bike do it’s thing. That would lead to an instant business meeting with the sand. Instead I remained stiff and steady on the throttle but allowed the bike to wander the width of the road as it pleased. The bike has a tendency to wander towards firm ground. The firm ground must pull more on one side of the tire than the sand on the other side does. This leads the bike toward the greater force of friction. It works pretty good until there is nothing to grip, such as a sand pit. We still plan to find some pavement around this stuff.

It rained two or three times on us while we went down the road. It dropped to 80 degrees. This felt cold to us after roasting for a couple days.

We found a road that took us around some of the powder. We plan to stay on the road for a bit in hopes the powder will be gone by the end of it.

The wind here is ridiculous. It never stops blowing because there is nothing to stop it. Back home we have mountains and trees. Here they have grass. I really gets to whipping you around when it blows for a bit.

As we rode along we found this small town called Hooker. We didn’t even stop in the town but I found it worth noting becuase of its name. A bunch of businesses put the town name in front of the business name. The result is a pretty comical name such as Hooker True Value and the Hooker Chamber of Commerce. It was enjoyable.

After riding the pavement for a bit we went into the town of Guymon. The first stop was a Phillips 66 gas station for a fill up (Gas stops: 27). Unfortunately we didn’t buy a gallon jug which meant no people comically staring at us.

After the gas stop we hopped right across the street to a restaurant called Saka Hibachi and Sushi. It turned out to be good food. We order a hibachi New York Strip (steak pieces in rice) without knowing that it came with a whole box of sushi too. We were stuffed by the end of the meal.

We rode on for a few hour or so until we found a Dairy Queen. Dad and I are both suckers for peanut buster parfaits from here. We rolled in and got a pair. Neither of us thought that we were going to eat the whole thing. Dad did eat the whole thing and I came very close. We left after we were certain that was hated ourselves.

We continued on to find the trail to be even more of this annoying baby powder. We rode for hours in that stuff. At one point we came down a road and I found this rut. I didn’t think anything about it. It looked just like the other hundred of ruts that I had seen that day. This particular rut turned out to be a real winner. It dumped my bike steeply to the left. I got the bike to catch. That’s when the bike stood up so fast that it shot up into the air. I was flying through the air with the bike for a moment until the tires landed on the far right edge of the road. Here the bike bucked a bit as the back tire fell into the ditch. Just as soon as the back tire bottomed out on the ditch the right tire started in. From that point on I have no idea what happened to the bike. I was shot through the air like a lawn dart. I managed to land pretty smoothly and immediately started rolling/sliding to get away from the bike. I was already a little late to start the task. I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye and scooted a bit further. The front tire went on the left of my legs and the back tire went on the right. I had been in the perfect position. The only thing to be caught was my right boot under a soft bag. Dad just picked the bike up a tad and I released it from the fabric. After flopping down the dirt and just missing the bike I stood up entirely unharmed besides maybe a bruise and rug burn from my pants.

The bike has sustained some relatively heavy damage. The front end is cracked open. The mounts for the console have sheared off. The windshield has a lot of scratches and the mount for it is bent in. The crash bars got even more scratches. The left bark buster has been rendered useless. We got the tools out and gathered everything up. We fished around for awhile inside the bike to get a loose screw out for holding the windshield in place. Then we put it back together and bent the thing back into shape. We super glued the console on and put a few of its screws back in. Everything still works. The bike just looks ugly.

Right as we finished the bike up and took off the rain started back up. We were pretty annoyed with the rain at this point, especially since this state has been in a drought for some time and now it’s raining everywhere. That rain is great for Oklahoma. They really need It just stinks that we are getting rained on so much.

So we have finally reached the border of Oklahoma and New Mexico. I can now officially declare that Oklahoma is a terrible state for riding motorcycles. Oklahoma says there OK in there state abbreviation but I can affirm that riding motorcycles there is not OK. You do what you want, but I do not think we will be returning on bikes any time soon.

We are now in New Mexico and things have very quickly gotten more interesting and more enjoyable. The roads have much less powder. There is less wind. The scenery is much nicer with some trees and hills around. We saw two jack rabbits (which are huge rabbit). We are having a good time again.

We were riding through a bunch of cows when a few got on the road. Dad then says something that cracked me up for a good ways down the road for unknown reasons. Here is goes. He said “Watch out these cows are fixin’ to get stupid.” You have to know the circumstance for it to be funny. We have been riding through cows a lot this trip. When the see the motorcycles they get this look. They kind of stare at you and freeze in a sturdy position. They make it seem like they really want a piece of you. Then they get spooked and run off. The issue is they aren’t the smartest about where they run. Sometimes they go right in front of you. So Dad’s quote managed to some up everything in this paragraph in one sentence.

We have been riding for a while longer and have discovered that we might run out of gas. There does not seem to be a station without a considerable distance. I guess we keep going.

While hunting for a gas stop along the TAT we had still been riding on a very flat surface with occasional baby powder spot. Suddenly the ground fell away into a huge, beautiful canyon. The temperature dropped to a comfy 70 degrees and the sun was just setting. It was great and a real surprise to us. On top of all the good stuff we also have very little powder to ride through. We couldn’t ask for anything better except a gas station.

It turns out that most of this entire canyon is part of a ranch. This thing is mile after mile of land owned by the same bunch. It is called Cross L Ranch. The whole thing is filled with animals. We saw deer, antelope, elk, rabbit, and all sorts of small critters. A lot of those animals were large bucks. This is such a change to the flat and straight riding we have been doing for 2 or 3 days.

It wa getting dark so we had to pull into a spot for the night at a tiny town called Branson. We are camped outside of a jail. It’s not an official jail. It is more or less a historical item with the block and concrete construction and big metal bar doors. It provides protection from the wind. On top of that it has a water spigot and a portapot!

We munched on some quick food from the bag and are headed to bed. I’ll let you know if anything happens. Hope you all had a Good Friday the 13th.

We got spooked by our own tent. A bush rubbing the rainfly can sound surprisingly like a small invading critter.

Total Mileage: 3782.9

Day 16:

Before I forget I need to point out that we were in Colorado yesterday for a very short period of time. We basically went into Colorado, spent the night there, and rolled right back into New Mexico in the morning to find gas.

Last night there was a loud noise that woke both Dad and I up. It was like a loud howling. After our brains woke up a bit we realized that the noise was from a group of coyotes. They must have been pretty close for as clear as the sound was. There was also a train that went through twice that I can remember. The tracks were a little ways up the hill. It would blow its horn right as it went past the spot we were at. Needless to say neither Dad or myself got a very good nights sleep.

After packing up we began the hunt for a gas station. We still haven’t filled up from yesterday and are still almost empty. We found a place on GPS that we thought might have a place. I told Dad we were headed to Gastown. He didn’t understand the reference. (It references the action movie Mad Max. It’s a pretty accurate reference really. I mean we are two dusty dudes scooting across the desert on motorcycles looking for gas. The only thing missing is the combat which we do not want.)

We finally found a gas station (Gas stops: 28). It was a Phillips 66 station. We filled up and checked to see if the station had a grill or something. They did not. We then left to find some breakfast.

On the way to breakfast Dad noticed a Honda dealership on the GPS in Raton. We rolled in to find a replacement mirror to use temporarily. (Remember the left mirror shattered yesterday in that crash.) We found that they were closed and had a really small store anyway. We did a search and found another dealer just 4 miles away that we knew would open soon. It was called Hester’s Motorsports. They opened while we pulled into the parking lot. We checked for the mirror. They had a mirror but there was no way for us to fit it on the bike. So we left to find breakfast again.

We found a place to eat. It is called El Matador. Dad and I both had some 3 egg omelettes that a fellow recommended to us upon heading out the door. They were good omelettes. They came with hashbrowns, a tortilla, and salsa if you wanted. It an alright place to stop if you are rolling through.

We saw a car wash across the road from the El Matador. Actually, we saw two car washes. The one in front was an automatic car wash. This would not work for motorcycles. We would have to ride through it. It would best be tar out of us. Instead we went to the car wash in the back. It was a regular car was with the pressure washer stick. We scrubbed the bikes up the best we could while listening to some older rock music that was being played ok the overhead speakers.

After washing the bikes we went back to the first Honda dealer which we have discovered is called R&D Honda. They were now open. We went in with very low hopes of finding a mirror for my motorcycle. It turns out they actually had a mirror. It’s even close to the right mirror. In fact it is a right mirror. We had to flip the mirror upside down to get it to face the right way on the bike. If you look closely it might look a little funny but it works. At this point that’s all we can ask for.

We were just riding along a rode to get back to the TAT when we found a gate blocking the road. We had to turn around and head back out. The problem was we had to find a way around the blocked road. We ended up hitting some interstate to get around.

We made it back to the TAT. We started on a pretty decent road that had some plants here and there. Then the road turned into a hard dirt. It had a little bit of slippery gravel on the road but nothing like back in Oklahoma. You can relax a little on it. Then we took a turn and the trail suddenly turned into a desert. Don’t worry, the road stayed the same. It is just all the vegetation around was dead. It was blistering hot. Then we took another turn. Remember turns are really scarce here and this is miles through the desert. There was a solar panel farm. Shortly after that we were in a mountain biome. There were pine trees everywhere and loads of vegetation. It was such a sudden change in environment. We started up a hill that seemed to never end. It had a whole bunch of rocks and bumps on it. It was a little greasy looking. It turns out we were more comfortable on this than we had been in days on anything else besides pavement.

We finally found the top of the road. It turns out we were on a mountain pass called Cordova Pass. It is 11,284 feet above sea level at the top. The air is crisp and clean. Dad and I both put our rain liners in both to keep warm and to prevent any rain from soaking us if Mother Nature decided to do so. We are starting down the other side.

We have arrived in a place called Cuchara. This place has a lot of people spooked becuase it came within half a mile of a recent forest fire. I can tell you that it is fine. There is literally nothing wrong with the town. The fire is long gone. You can’t even smell the smoke anymore. Now that the fire has been covered, allow me to explain the town. It’s a small area with lots of shops, some restaurants, places to stay, and even a mini golf course. All the buildings are wooden and the atmosphere is cool. While at Cuchara Dad and I are at a place called The Dog Bar and Grill. It is apparently pet friendly. The owners have to keep ahold of their pets but are allowed to have them with them at the restaurant for at least the outside deck. Dad and I both order a ½ pound burger that is apparently famous according to the menu. I have to say it was a good burger. I mean it wasn’t the greatest in the world but it was definitely above average. It is also important that I note that this place is not fast food. It is a sit down meal. They take your order and bring your food out. We walked around for a bit and tried to get some ice cream and play mini golf to find out that the owners had already closed. It’s a small town. Shops close up early. Overall Cuchara is a pretty cool place.

We decided to just stay here in Cuchara for the night. The floors in the hotel we were at are a little bouncy. It’s slightly concerning that we might fall through one spot. I’m fairly certain that this is one of the only spots in the hotel like this as everywhere else is firm and normal. When we checked in earlier the hotel keeper said to keep one door in particular locked since the bears here have figured out how to open it and will wonder the halls. That isn’t an issue either given no one unlocks the door. We are both hitting the hay. I’ll let you know if something happens.

Total Miles: 3959.7

Day 17:

We started the day up with the usual packing fest and then headed over to a place called Timbers. It was a little slow, but they told you that upfront on a sign. They had good lemonade. Both Dad and I had two pancakes and we shared a side of bacon. (We don’t intentionally get the same meals. We just see something good that we both choose coincidentally.) These pancakes are more filling than you might think. We also had some watermelon and a very sour orange with our meals.

Remember how I said that there was a big fire near Cuchara yesterday? Well we found the remains from it. It did come very close to the town. There are miles of burnt forests. I’m talking entire mountainsides. It will take many years to grow back. The good news is the area around immediately Cuchara still looks just like it did before the fire.

We headed into a gas station just to fill up (Gas stops: 29). It was a Sinclair station. Nothing eventful happened here.

Once we left the gas station we found two fellows parked alongside the road. One of their bikes had a tire off. We assumed they needed help. We stopped and talked to them for a bit. They were alright. They were just fixing a flat tire. They were both from England and had come to America to ride the TAT. (They actually started in Canada.) They flew their bikes over on a plane. They send their bikes around two flights before their own and by the time they get to their destinations their bikes have already passed the customs and whatnot. We had a good time talking to them. Once the conversation ended we hit the trail again.

It looked like it was going to have a pretty serious rain. We even stopped and put our rain liners in. It did rain, but only a weak sprinkle. We continued on without thinking much about it.

We rode the trail for awhile and discovered the fellows we met earlier had caught back up with us. They ride a lot faster than we do. Like we are hitting 30 mph and are a little shaky doing it. They are pushing 50 or 60 mph all the time. There was also a fellow who had caught up to them (which means he rode the same speed or faster). They pulled up next to us and said to stop for a picture. We all pulled over and talked while we got some pictures. It was cool to talk to all of them and all the different stuff they have seen. I did not catch the names of the two English fellows. The third man was named Walker and he was from Memphis Tennessee. We went ahead and took off our rain liners as it was hot down in the valley. After about an hour we all packed up and headed onto the trail once more.

We headed up over a huge pass through the mountains in San Isabel forest. Neither one of us found the name of the pass. We do know that the highest point we reached was at 10701 feet above sea level thanks to Dad’s gps unit. It was in the 60’s up there. We took a quick stop and started back down the mountain.

That rain from before came back. It was just an average rain. It is a little cold due to the elevation combined with the rain. We went ahead and put the rain liners back in the coats to prevent us from freezing later. It is funny how cold it feels on top of the mountain and how hot it feels in the valleys.

Alright so the rain has taken a pretty harsh turn. We had to stop because we couldn’t see. They rain wasn’t that bad, it was the fog on our face shields. It would have completely blinded us if we had continued. We pulled over in a D shaped turnout. The paved road was the straight side of the D and the pullout was the curved part. The middle of the D was a dip that was at least 8 feet deep and about as wide as a two lane road. The right side of the D was bumped up against a large hillside. As soon as we stopped the rain began picking up. It was raining so hard after just a minute or two that hillside was eroding. You could watch the hill deteriorate right in front of you. Soon the erosion formed into deep ruts on the hill. The ruts spilled out onto the arc gravel lot we were on and down into the dip in the middle of the D. Then the whole main road became flooded. The flood water from the road also came pouring into the dip. We had gotten a tarp out and were huddled under it as we watched the whole area around us become entirely covered in brown, muddy water. All of this water was pouring into the middle dip, which was now a raging river into a lake. After a few minutes the entire 8 foot deep dip had been filled with mud, trees, logs, stumps, and water. It was now stirring around like a cauldron. Soon enough the water spilled over the lower part of the D. This sealed off our exit path. We were now stuck on our arc of muddy gravel until the storm passed and the water went away. A few cars showed up just to turn and leave again. A few emergency vehicles such as policemen and forest rangers went barging up through the flooded roadway. One ranger stayed on the straight part of the D for a while and called Dad over. They met at the lower end where the water was now steadily pouring over the gravel and road. The ranger told Dad that we had to get out of here. He was pretty forceful. Dad tried to ask him something but he immediately told Dad that this was just the beginning. It was going to get a lot worse. Dad looked at how bad the situation already was and asked him what he needed to do. The two of them came up with a path through the floodwater that was shallow. Dad came back and explained what we were doing to me. He told me to just stay right behind him and follow the path they came up with. I really didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t tell how deep the water was but I knew it was flowing fast. I was concerned the bike would be drug out from underneath me (which has happened before). However, I knew better than to sit here on the hillside as it melted around us so I just said “alright”. I chucked my boot (which now held a swimming pool of water) over the seat and followed Dad down to the water's edge. He said the water was going to be a lot more intimidating than it was going to be difficult. He creeped in. I was shallow. I followed him in. It was actually a pretty sticky surface. We wandered down the floodwaters until we made it to some visible roads. After that we bolted down the roads to get out before the storm got worse. There were pickups with pull behind campers by the dozen. All of them were absolutely flying out of the low areas to escape the flood. We had to cross four more flood waters before getting to a safe town. I guess I am considering these creek crossings as my definition for crossings this trip is anything with flowing water that gets our tires wet (Creek crossings: 36).

We made it to a Best Western hotel without much trouble. We found some bikers on the way and let them know they couldn’t go the way we came. Under the roof at the hotel we met a group of Harley riders who were interested in our trip. They were cool to talk to. They were on a trip to Utah.

We headed into the hotel and took a warm shower. Warm showers will become your best friend. They fix a lot of aches and pains. It I think that it’s important that I noted that we have officially stayed in hotels more than we have camped thus far in the trip. We are staying in a hotel tonight because of the storm. We don’t think it’s a good idea to camp in this storm plus we really wanted to get our clothes dry. Oh well. We are having fun either way.

We tried to go to a shoe store to find some new flip flops. My dockers still stink pretty badly from being wet and there is no fixing them. We are just going to buy some new flops and be done with it. The problem was the store wasn’t open. I guess we will wait to get some new less smelly shoes.

We also tried to go to the movies. The last movie for the night was getting started right at when we got there, but we hadn’t eaten anything yet. We had to miss it to eat.

We ended up at a Chili’s to eat. I tried a Cajun noodle plate and Dad had some fajitas. Both were good. I was actually surprised with how good my plate was. I might be getting that plate again sometime.

After the meal we headed back to the hotel to put some laundry in. We had tried earlier tonight but the machines were already in use. We were unsuccessful again. We headed out for ice cream at a Cold Stone Creamery. They have really good ice cream if you are in for a stomach blaster.

We went back to the room and watched some TV while we waited for the laundry machine to finish someone’s load. We ended up watching professional rodeo riders tackle and rope cows.

Welp, that pretty well covers it for today. I’ll write more in tomorrow.

Total Miles: 4074.2 (Over 4000!)

Day 18:

We are up and at it again. Same ritual as usual except we ate breakfast before taking everything to the bikes since we were worried about missing it. Dad and I had some tiny waffles and oats. The waffle maker had 4 tiny waffle places that added up to be about the size of one big waffle. Dad wasn’t going to have oats but the water dispenser had one of those valves that shuts off a bit after you let go of the button. Dad said he would eat it and fixed me up a new bowl of oats. I don’t really know why he ate the overwatered bowl of oats. I would have eaten it as a reminder to stop the water early next time. He seemed happy with them anyway. After breakfast we loaded up the bikes and took off.

We rode just a short ways and found a gas station (Gas stops: 30). It was a Exxon with a Kwikstop store attached to it. After the near empty experience back in New Mexico we decided to start filling up whenever we can. Nothing eventful happened while we filled up.

We rode back up the road that we used in our hasty retreat from the floods yesterday. We know that part of it was in a place called Royal Gorge and a place called Bighorn Sheep Canyon. After that we couldn’t tell where we had turn on the road. We took a road that was not familiar to us and found the TAT before we could find the D shaped lot we were in before. We decided to keep going on the trial instead of searching for the D shaped spot.

We ended up on some cool gravel and dirt roads out in the boonies. They were easy to ride and do not have much dust. We enjoyed these roads. They frequently changed in elevation and at the peaks you could see some huge mountains. Sometimes you would end up on the mountain you saw before. We came to a peak here that was at around 9661 feet above sea level.

We rode back down out of the mountains to a town called S____(<— trying to get that). We stopped at a really messed up gas station (Gas stops: 31). I think it was intended to be entered from the opposite direction we came into. It was really small on top of that. We had a bit of a challenge to get close enough to a pump to fuel up. Just as we were about to leave a fellow cane over to talk to us. His name was Z. Yep. He likes to be be called Z. He told us his real name (his last name started with a Z) but it was long and hard to remember. It turns out that Z is from a town that is close to where we live. He has a son that attended the school that was our school’s arch nemesis. If that wasn’t hitting close enough to home, he knew and just rode motorcycles with the fellow who sold Dad his Africa Twin back home. What are the chances that we would meet someone like this?

We asked Z where some good food was. He directed us to a restaurant called the Boathouse. It is right alongside a creek that has a popular lazy river. (A lazy river is where you get a big circular tube, throw it in the river, and float downstream on it.) Dad had a spicy burrito (red chili and beans) and I had a burger called The Griller (provaloan cheese, mushrooms, onions, burger). I will also note that there soda is good and they have tasty ice. Both of us thought the food was wonderful.

After we left the Boathouse we headed back into the trail and up into the mountains once more. At this point we can roughly tell the elevation by using the temperature. It changes noticeably as you go up or down. We ended up on top a mountainside near another one of our good buddy road graders. We were at 10879 feet above sea level there. We then started down a rather hairy downhill. It was narrow and steep. The ground was a little greasy. There were occasional rocks protrudimg from the dirt. In all honesty it wasn’t that bad, but was the hardest thing we did today.

When we got near the bottom of the hill we found a winding path along some flatter basins. The wind was blowing us away. We had to lean the bikes over to stay on the road. Dad said “We have to lean the bikes clear over to the foot pegs just to go straight.” This was an obvious exaggeration but it gets the point across. We saw a big storm coming and assumed it was the source of the wind. A few drops of rain started in and we immediately pulled over and put all of our rain gear on. We weren’t going through the wetness of yesterday again.

After just a short ride down the trail we found something that doesn’t happen very often. I have traveled a lot and have only seen this once or twice. Dad and I rode down a gravel road to a small creek fed pond. The road had blocked the creek some to create this shallow pool. In the shallow pool stood a moose. It was right in the open. We watched it for awhile. It looked at us once but didn’t seem to mind the motorcycles even when they were running. Then a couple side by sides came over the hill. The moose stood stiff. It stared at the side by sides even though they were a mile away. It walked a ways away and into some brush before they arrived. A truck and van showed up as well. The moose remained hidden until the side by sides left. It then looked around while the truck left. After that it came back out and wandered around the pool again. It was strange. Why is the moose so afraid of side by sides but nothing else? Shortly after the moose came back out Dad and I went back to riding. Even as we left the moose didn’t seem bothered by us except for when the engines first started up.

We rode for a bit before the rain hit. Our efforts to put on the rain gear had finally paid off (not that we were happy about it). It was getting dark anyway so we opted to find somewhere to camp. We found a national forest and a designated camping area. We got spot number 5. It is right next to a creek and has lots of trees. The only issue are the occasional cow patties that got here somehow. We hung our food in a tree as we have heard there are bears around.

We had another MRE for dinner tonight. It was Chili Mac with Beef. We had also stored some chips from restaurants and ate this during the meal as well. We couldn’t quite get the water to boil (a crucial step) but we decided to cook the MRE anyway. It actually turned out pretty good. Even Dad said that it wasn’t hateful. I enjoyed it well enough. I would still eat another MRE.

I think that pretty well covers today’s events. Right now I have to put this phone away as the light from it is attracting bugs. The bugs in turn are eating me up. I’ll write more here tomorrow.

Total Miles: 4300.1

Day 19:

We got up this morning to find it quite cold out. We both had a good nights sleep with a few interruptions due to the cold. We packed up the tent and started right onto the trail since the campsite was right next to it.

Our first stop today was a short ways down the road at a rental dealership. We didn’t need a rental or anything. We just wanted to use the gas station they had right outside (Gas stops: 32). We filled up and headed out.

Are next stop was in a place called Chillin. It is an internet coffee shop (food and WiFi). It serves breakfast and coffees as far as we can tell. (The menu may change over the day.) Dad ordered biscuits and gravy and I had a big bagel sandwich (an everything bagel with egg, cheese, and bacon in it). While eating at the restaurant we found a fellow named Jeremy. He was a hiker who was traveling the country. He met the two English dudes we met earlier and recognized us from a photo they showed him. He told us that one of the English guys was named John. We still don’t know the name of the English fellow I talk to.

We headed onto Engineer Pass right after we finished eating. The end of it is actually connected to this town. It started out with some rolling hills and deeper gravel next to a creek. We wondered it the road had been graded recently. It turns out that we had to pass the road grader on the road. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. We actually found another road grader doing some work yesterday (or the day before) but I forgot to mention it. After the road grader the road turned into a mostly light gravel with occasional large rocks and dirt. Most of the rocks were embedded into the dirt. This makes it much easier to ride on. We were fine with the rolling hills. We even got to see an old mine and a decommissioned water dam they used on the way. That was cool. Then we hit this uphill that lasted for forever. It was steep and winding. There were some really sharp uphill U turns in there. The rocks got continuously worse as we went up. The road also got more narrow. We found two tiny creeks on the way up (Creek crossings: 38). At one point we found a group of three Jeeps. The first Jeep knew what was coming. He got way over. The second Jeep didn’t have as much time and moved over some. The third Jeep basically didn’t know we were there since the other two Jeeps blocked it’s line of sight. Dad and I both came so close to that Jeep that we worried about scraping our mirrors on it. Dad moved over a little. We were pinned against the hillside, not the cliff, so this adjustment was acceptable. There was a gravely ditch between the road and the hillside. He slipped into that ditch. After a series of fishtails (none of which put him in danger of faking of the cliff) I asked him if he was good. He said no. A sudden wobbly moment allowed him to drag his back up out of the ditch. He then stabilized the bike. During this time I had not gave the Jeep and inch of ground. I must have barely missed it. I didn’t have any issue with the rut. Somewhere near the top of this road we hit a whole bunch of particularly sharp U turns. At the very top we were challenged with several mud holes. (Yes. Mud holes at the top of the mountain.) We had to skirt the edges of the pools by using the steep bank on the left (far away from the cliff on the right). If you stopped or slowed down on these banks then you would have plopped right in the puddle. Both of us made it. In fact, that stay moving theory had to be applied for the whole mountain. If we had stopped anywhere it would have been a bad time. Anyway, we had then made it to the top of Engineer Pass. It was quite a sight up there. The issue that really got us is that we now had to get back down the other side. Going down is harder than going up. It’s also a lot scarier since you can get out of control on your speed and shoot off the cliff. It turned out that the speed control was not an issue for us. We instead struggled with simply maintaining balance. The rocks were hard to bounce down. The only time we really had some trouble was right near the bottom of the steep section. There was a sharper right U turn that Dad apparently wasn’t happy doing. He got going too slow and the bike flopped over towards the hill. I was actually lined up to make it around the turn except that Dad’s bike was now blocking the path. I didn’t want to run over Dad. I also didn’t want to shoot off the cliff. So I just flopped over to except mine was away from the hill. Neither one of us were hurt. After we stood the bikes up Dad rode both his and my bikes down a short ways to get us pointed in the right direction. A friendly Jeeper brought him back up to my bike and took me down to where he stopped his. They saved us a lot of walking there. After floundering down the hill some more we finally reached the bottom. We said we would never do that again. It was the most stupid thing either one of us had ever done. We had an option to go up onto Cinnamon Pass. After what we had just gone through we gave that a hard pass. Instead, we decided to head to a town called Silverton to get something to eat. Just a short ways down the much smoother road I heard something that sounded like a paper card in a bicycle spoke. I stopped. I was going to pull up to Dad so we could take a look. I then smelled something burning. I just shut the key off and dismounted the bike. The issue turned out to be somewhat comical. My top bag on the back had partially fallen off and had been trapped between the back tire and the frame of the bike. The tire tread had burnt a hole right through the bag and into part of the tent bag inside. The top bag was on its last legs anyway since I broke some of the straps that hold it on during the Oklahoma cartwheel. We took everything out of the bag and discovered the tent and everything else besides bags to be fine. We strapped the top bag back on the Best we could (with the hole still in it) and took of for town. Not five minutes down the road we stopped again for two black bears. We didn’t get to see the bears, though. Someone told us about them. They had ran to the bushes just before we stopped. We went down the road a little more and found a self guided mine tour. We wanted to do it, so we stopped again. That tour was cool. Some of the stuff is still operational and you can run it by pushing a button. The mine collected gold, silver, zinc, lead, and copper from the mines. It also sorted these metals with mercury and other agents. (You actually make some metals float and others sink in a solution by combining the metals with oxygen and mercury.)

Once we left the mine tour we headed into Silverton. The first thing we noticed upon arriving at Silverton was how every speed limit was 15 mph. We hunted for a restaurant. After asking an assorted jerky saleswomen where to go we ended up eating at Handlebars Food and Saloon. (Like the mustache, not the motorcycle part.) That place was neat. Our waitress was 6 foot tall and friendly. We both got a ribeye and a Coca Cola. I would recommend Handlebars if you are passing through.

Just as we were about to leave Silverton two fellows came up and asked us about our bikes. We explained the bikes and the trips. They asked us where we were headed. We showed them a map. There was a very short route called Ophir Pass and a much longer paved route around it. We didn’t want another challenge today like Engineer Pass. They said we should be perfectly fine on Ophir Pass since we had already conquered Engineer Pass today. After a quick chat they told us they would be driving it in a Jeep soon. If we needed help they would be there. So we took off and found the pass. It started really easy. The roads were packed nicely and the rocks were all embedded into the dirt. I think we enjoyed getting to the top of Ophir Pass at 11789 feet above sea level. Then we started down the other side. Dad stopped and my anti lock braking on the front (which cannot be turned off) sent me for a spill. This was going to be a rough one. The first 100 yards of the downhill was littered with huge loose rocks. At this point our friends from Silverton showed up in there Jeep. Dad left shortly after and planned to come back and get my bike. He did not want me riding this part (and for good reason). He made it down to a U turn and stopped. Our Jeep friends took me down and brought Dad back up so he could take my bike down. Once we got both bikes down that terrible rock we turned them around with help from the Jeep guys. Dad and I then rode a short ways down the path. It turned out to be just about as bad as the top part. There were loose and unpredictable rocks everywhere. You couldn’t ride in a straight line. Essentially you hung on and hoped the bike went where you told it to. Dad eventually made it to a large section a flat shale where he plopped the bike up against the hill. I followed suit to avoid running him over. Dad then said to wait and took off down the hill with the plan of coming back up.

This next paragraph was written as I sat waiting on Dad to come back and for the Jeep to come down. I wrote it then to capture the moment and pass the time.

So I am now sitting on a rocky ledge in the middle of Colorado trying to make it down a mountain pass. It has loose rocks anywhere in between the size of sand grains to the size of 15 pound bowling balls. The middle ground seems to be about the size of a professional football (American) or a softball. A few of them are the size of a microwave. Occasionally there is one the size of a fridge, but luckily the rocks this big are off of the road. I assume Dad has successfully ridden his bike all the way down this incredibly skinny and insane path. This thing is no more than a car width wide. It had better be a skinny car too. I was told to wait. We just laid my bike down against the hill. A family with a standard Jeep has been following us down the hill to make sure we make it alright. The plan is they are bringing Dad back up so he can ride my bike down the mountain as well while I ride down in the much more stable Jeep. I do not think we will ever ride a pass like this again. The view is beautiful. It’s like something you would see in a painting. But it’s not worth riding down this near impossible path and risking our lives. Hard enduro riders would struggle with this stuff. I think it needs to be known that this was declared an easier option on the map. Either this is true and the other option is completely impossible or the map is incorrect. I am thinking the latter. Dad has arrived with our Jeep friends. I’ll write more later.

Now that paragraph seems pretty calm just reading it here. In reality this moment was the second most scary thing I have ever done. There’s a big deadly cliff on the left, a bunch of sharp rocks everywhere else, and I was sitting idle while my Dad rode my bike down this treacherous thing. I hated it. I would have rather taken the beating to get to the bottom than have let Dad ride his and and my bike down it. He was already exhausted as I was from Engineer Pass. I didn’t want him to hurt himself due to fatigue (or any reason). He dropped the bike two or three more times down the hill. I helped him set it up a few of those drops. After riding down in the Jeep that he made it although it was a rough go. We both felt terrible. We thanks the two Jeep guys for helping us and learned that their names were Reese and Don. We wouldn’t have made it down the mountain without them. They insisted we come stay at their house for the night since we would have a hard time finding a place to stay. We decline since they had already helped us so much. After that we parted ways. On the rest of the path down the mountain Dad and I found 5 more creeks (one of them was when I was in the Jeep). None of these were very hard but did have a bit wider width than most have in Colorado (Creek crossings: 43).

We finally found the pavement (which felt oddly smooth) and went to look for a place to stay. We ended up in a community that was way too nice. There was no way we were going to be able to get a place here. These were full on houses with yards that looked like a perfect golf course. They had a cool lake. There were water sprinklers everywhere. Yea. This is the wrong part of town for some dirty motorcycle riders.

We left the community and found a gas station (Gas stops: 33). We talked to some people who were filling up and also needed a place to stay. We decided on a campground. After a ride to where the campground was supposedly at we discovered it didn’t seem to exist. After another ride we ended up at the Telluride Hotel since no one else would answer their phone or had no vacancy. (Telluride is a famous ski resort.) This place cost like $300+ for one night. I guess we have been paying like $5 tops for a bunch of days in our tent. This definitely makes up for it.

Well that pretty well covers today. I’ll let you know more about tomorrow.

(Ignore this stuff: 3 d a piece w/ 1 on my bike

Fix charts and stuff for that above.)

Total Mileage: 4390.0

Day 20:

We are up. We both had a really good night of sleep in our fancy hotel. We have come up with a plan. We intend to ride a whole lot of interstate to get to the west coast. The interstate mostly follows close to the TAT and we are frankly tired of wrestling the bikes through the rocks and dirt. If our bikes were a little lighter we might have a better time on the off road sections. We have also figured that you could have a better time on this trip overall if you stayed in a hotel every night. It would be more expensive, but you would get good sleep each night. You wouldn’t have to pay for or carry the weight of everything that comes with camping. We could eliminate over half of the weight we have by simple not bringing a tent or things to cook with. This weight reduction would make the off road trails much more fun. Anyway, let’s get into the day here.

We went down to breakfast first thing today. We noticed that the breakfast was not complementary. It was also about the same as a regular breakfast and worse than some of the cheap places we have stayed. Either way the food was alright and we mowed through a good bit of it.

After breakfast we packed everything into the bikes. A fellow working there commented we had a lot of stuff. I do not think he had seen a motorcycle like this. He mainly stayed to take the cart when we were done with it. I wondered if he thought we would take it. Odds are he was just trying to keep the carts moving but I found humor in the idea of a motorcycle towing a hotel cart down the road. We had a conversation as we packed our stuff. Just as soon as we took the last thing off the cart he grabbed it and took off into the hotel. We left the hotel shortly after this.

We drove through a series of semi curvy highways and interstates before arrive at the Utah-Colorado border. There was a sign that we wanted a picture of. We finished taking the picture and just as we were about to leave something relatively large poked its head out of the bushes. It hovered there for a moment before stepping out on the edge of the pavement. Dad and I froze while we figured out what it was. It spotted us and did the same. Before we could do anything it took off into the woods. It was a young brown bear. What is really cool is that this is this first time that we have seen a bear while standing in a different state. We were in Colorado taking a picture of the Utah sign. The bear was in Utah. That means we spotted it across the state line. We rode up to where it left the road and spotted it again (this time with both the bear and us in Utah). This allowed us to confirm that is was in fact a brown bear.

After seeing the bear we rode on into Utah. The scenery didn’t change much at first. It was still the scrubby hills of Colorado. In fact there were even some pine trees and such for a good ways. Then we made it to a construction zone. Dad talked to the worker holding the stop sign. It turns out they were struggling with finding a way to patch a dip in the road. It had been two weeks or so since they started. It must be really giving them a run for their money. Right after we left the construction we crossed a comparatively small mountain that dropped us into a field. That is when everything started to change. The trees suddenly got shorter and thinner. A few minutes later they had disappeared completely. The sagebrush grew more abundant at first presumably due to the excess of light provided by not having any trees. A little further and the sagebrush failed to grow as well. The grass took over since there was nothing left to impede it. The grass stayed for a good while until we got near Moab. We dropped over a rim and from then on it was slickrock. (For those unfamiliar, slickrock is a very smooth rock that has been formed by the wind over time. Do not be deceived. There is nothing slick about it unless it is wet. It is colored in array from black to brown to red to a blistering orange. Some formations are taller than 3 story buildings while others are shorter than your motorcycle.) We continued through the slickrock until we got to Moab. We hopped off the road for a short stop at a motorcycle dealership to attempt to find a new top back for my bike since the old one had the hole from Engineer Pass in it. They did have a top bag, but we decided against getting it for a lot of different reasons like the shape it was and logical wear and tear predictions. We hopped on the road, rolled along for a bit, and then into a Phillips 66 gas station to top off (Gas stops: 34). We then went to a place called Fiesta Mexicana Family Restaurant. It is a place that serves Mexican food. I had an enchilada and Dad had a burrito-chimichanga combo meal. Both of us were satisfied with the meal.

We left the Mexican restaurant. As we were riding down the main road we saw two fellows riding motorcycles. At first I didn’t recognize them. Then one of them gave me an excited thumbs up. I immediately knew who they were. I told Dad through the head sets “Hey that was our buddies!” He replies back asking who. I said something about the English guys. We did a U turn to go back and find them. They had apparently done the same. We ended up meeting in a parking lot outside of hardware store. Sure enough, it was our friends from England. One came in and locked the rear wheel as he slid to a stop. This is the third time we have coincidentally met these fellows. I finally have both their names. The one who slid his back tire is named John and the fellow I talked to a lot on one of our first meet ups is named Terry. All of us were happy to see each other again. It turns out that John had mashed up his front tire fender and had put some of the pieces back on to help protect the forks. We talked about Engineer Pass and the surrounding area. All of us think it was rough. During our happy conversation a fellow in a cowboy hat showed up in a large truck. He talked with us as well. When he left one of our English buddies told us about the cowboy hat. Apparently no one wears cowboy hats in England. You get made fun of if you do. I mean you might get made fun of in the U.S. if you wear a cowboy hat in the wrong place, but in Moab it is practical since it blocks out the sun and therefore acceptable to wear. I had never thought about the cowboy hat being worn in other parts of the world. I thought that was an interesting point of view. After being roasted for awhile I checked the temperature. It was a toasty 105 degrees Fahrenheit. We then went our separate ways from our English friends. We went into whatever the hardware store was and discovered it to be much larger than we originally thought. We bought some super glue and Gorilla Tape. It turns out that Gorilla Tape is incredibly strong. We patched up the front of my bike to help it along from the Oklahoma incident and patched up the top bag from the Engineer Pass shredding. Both held well. The fellow in the cowboy hat randomly popped in again and talked to us about the cowboy hat. I don’t think he knew about our conversation with the English fellow but he too talked about foreign views of the cowboy hat. He said that Germans apparently idolize cowboys. I honestly have no idea if that is true or not, but that is what the guy said.

We then jumped back on the road and left Moab. We went down a road and up a very long hill to a place called Archview RV Resort. We only stopped to fill up our water paks and take a picture of the entrance gate. We had just been here this summer in a motorhome. It was strange to be here again so quickly.

We left Archview and found some more construction. This construction would become a common theme throughout the day. The only thing of interest at the construction site was a semi that pulled up behind us. I spend most of my time following Dad which means I am in the back. I am close to whatever is behind us. This semi was doing nothing wrong, but it pulled up behind us to wait for the construction. The cooling fan on a semi is huge. So I am sitting on a motorcycle and all I can see in my rearview mirrors is a grill and all I can here is that whirring noise of the fan. It’s kind of intimidating.

After getting through the construction we pulled into a Conoco gas station (Gas stops: 35). There was a fellow who asked a good question. There were three nozzles on the gas pump. One was black, one green, and one blue. The black is usually unleaded. The green is typically diesel. The blue is apparently 100% gasoline but neither of us knew that. He wanted to know which nozzle to use for regular gas. The problem was the buttons were in odd places. Like the buttons were not near their corresponding nozzles. It was a strange pump. We eventually figured out that he needed the black nozzle. When I went into the store I went through the usual hunt for a gallon jug of water. This hunt was unsuccessful so I picked up a couple 1 liter bottles. I asked the lady up front before buying and she found a gallon jug hiding in the fridge for me. I told her why I needed a whole gallon before she even asked. While ringing up the gallon she pointed out I had a bug on my coat. I honestly knew that it might be there but I couldn’t find it earlier. It hit me on the way down the road. I had assumed it bounced off. Since I now knew that it was still there I immediately wanted it off. Another worker was able to get the thing off me and tell me that it was a flying ant. I had never seen one before. I thanked the both of them for getting it off. They gave me a happy smile, waved, and I left to fill up the water paks.

On the way up a curvy highway type road Dad and I spotted a women trying to change a tire by herself. We know that changing tires can be a pain. We just went back and helped her out. She had made it a pretty good ways herself, even being able to get the lug nuts broke loose. She had the right tools for the job. We completed the change to the spare tire for her without much trouble. She thanked us and told us that her dad was a mechanic and made her carry the tools around. I suppose her dad was right to do so. She left on her donut (a nickname Dad and I use for the skinny spare tire) with two hours of driving to go. We caught up to her a ways down the road and waved as we went by. She still had her spare tire. I guess that’s a good sign.

We basically burned the interstate for a long time. Nothing eventful here.

We made it to Salt Lake. Not the city, just the lake. We are coincidentally going around the opposite side of the lake and hence avoiding the traffic of Salt Lake City. We stopped for a bit at a beach access to go for a swim. We had been told to take the opportunity to swim in Salt Lake if we ever got it. Plus we had to stop soon anyway. So we changed into our suits and headed down to swim. The problem is Salt Lake literally stinks. It lingers in your nose. To understand why, allow me to explain how Salt Lake got so salty. All the rivers and streams in the area dump into this lake. They all bring with them some salt. Since the water has nowhere else to go but sit in the lake it evaporates under the heat of the sun. However, the salt cannot evaporate. The water cycle completes once more and brings in more salt that cannot get out. The result is an incredibly salty body of water. We think the reason it stinks is because none of the water is flowing or has waves. This means the mud on the rocks will stink to high heavens until it gets wet for awhile. The flies apparently like this drying mud as they hang around it in swarms. So we got passed the smell and flies. When we got in the warm water I noticed the sand was black and grey. This is fine. It is just not something I have seen. When we swam we noticed that the water is so dense from all the salt that our bodies actually float on the surface of it instead of sinking. It is a really strange feeling. I could compare it to having a life jacket on your whole body. When we got out of the water our skin dried within minutes. My chest was dry before my legs got out of the water. It was due to the salt. It took our skin moisture with it. We were incredibly itchy. We found a hotel and booked a room.

We made it to the hotel. It’s called a Comfort Inn. It is a moderate place. For some reason the elevator beeps sound something like a church bell mixed with a grandfather clock. This sound is intentional. It is just really weird. We got to the room and immediately took showers. It’s amazing how much better your skin feels when it has some water in it.

The only thing we did in the hotel tonight was order and eat a Domino's pizza. Yup. We are enjoying the quiet.

That sums all of today up. There will be more coming tomorrow.

Total Miles: 4778.3

Day 21:

We got up at around 8 AM today to get ready. We needed the sleep since we finally went to bed at around midnight yesterday. (That means I actually fell asleep today.) We gathered some stuff up and headed straight down to breakfast.

Breakfast was a pretty average deal. We each got a waffle and I had some oats as well. The bag of oats didn’t have a fill line for the water so I ended up guessing how much water to put in. It tasted right so I must have gotten close. The waffle had a lot of different syrups available. I tried a boysenberry syrup. (I looked it up later. Boysenberry is a cross between European Raspberry, European Blackberry, Loganberry, and Dewberry.) It was incredibly sweet. In fact, it was a little overbearing. I made it about halfway through the waffle before I had to throw in the towel.

After breakfast we loaded all of our stuff on a cart and brought it out to the bikes. We noticed that we had forgotten the keys somewhere. Dad stayed to pack and sent me back into to search for the keys. I told the man at the front desk who gave me a temporary replacement key for our room. When I got to the room I discovered that the housekeeping lady was already getting our room fixed. I told her I had forgot some keys in the room. She let me in. I searched the room for the key but had no luck in obtaining the keys. When I went back outside to make sure Dad hadn’t sent me on a wild goose chase I found him talking to an older fellow. The fellow had a 1972 Ford F-250 Sport Custom pickup truck. What was interesting is he had bought it when it was new and has had it ever since. Despite the trucks age it still only had 150,000 miles on it. (I know 150,000 miles seems like a lot but that is only about 3,260 miles each year.) After the conversation Dad went back in and hunted for the keys more while I checked through some bags. Dad came back out with the keys. He found them behind a pizza box. (I actually moved that pizza box in position while searching for the keys and thought I had already checked that spot.)

We didn’t make it far before the first stop. In fact is was only across the street. We needed some gasoline. It was a Flying J this time (Gas stops: 36). Nothing of interest happened while we filled up.

After that gas stop nothing of interest happened all the way up to where we found the Bonneville Salt Flats. For those that are not familiar this is where the land speed world records are set. It is just a huge flat pan of hard salt with nothing on it. We didn’t stay long, but we did walk around on the salt for a bit and get a picture with our bikes sitting on the salt flat. The salt is oddly solid and a little slippery at the same time. It doesn’t really feel like any other ground we have been on. Picture riding on hard pack dirt with a very thin layer of sand on top. We also noticed that it felt somewhat hot. We were surprised to find out that it was only 89 degrees out. (We have seen triple digits recently.)

Somewhere in this part of the day I saw a sign telling the name of a valley we were going into. It said Deeth Starr Valley. This is so close to the Death Star from Star Wars that I had to point it out here. That’s all.

We stopped at another gas station to refuel (Gas stops: 37). It was a Shell station. The interesting part about this station was how close it was to Nevada. We could see the state line from the pump. I also noticed that the casinos lined the streets as soon as we crossed into Nevada. Dad pointed out that Utah is very moderate in its lawmaking while Nevada seems to be much more relaxed in its laws. For example Nevada allows these casinos while Utah has made them illegal. The members of the two states much clash frequently given their drastically different systems.

When we started into Nevada we crossed through three tunnels. One was still under construction. These tunnels were more bridge overpasses but they had the shape and continuous nature of a tunnel so I went ahead and counted them (Tunnel count: 13).

We stopped yet again for gas (Gas stops: 38). We are really flying through the fuel today. This stop was at a Sinclair with a Winner’s Corner store attached. Inside the Winner’s Corner there was a restaurant called Arctic Circle. It is a burger and fries kind of place. They were apparently training a new member. I had a cheeseburger and Dad had some fried Halibut. We both should have known better. The food was alright but know that it is gas station food. We did get some ice cream that was good stuff from here, though.

Just a short ways down the road from the gas stop and Arctic Circle we went through a much longer tunnel. This was an actual tunnel, not a converted bridge overpass (Tunnel count: 14).

After the long tunnel we went back to the boring Nevada roads. They are so incredibly straight and flat. The wind is something fierce. There is nothing to stop the wind. It could continuously blow from one direction for minutes at a time. The gusts that really got us were the ones that blow harshly from one side and cause us to lean into it. The wind would suddenly switch directions and blow towards the way it was coming from before. This would not only dump the support you were literally banking against but also try to shove you further over. We would both whip up and over to counter the new wind direction before we fell completely over.

Guess what? We stopped for gas again (Gas Stops: 39). This time it was at a Chevron attached to a Pump N Save. Nothing of interest happened here.

So Nevada is one desolate chunk of land. We road forever without a single turn. We turned onto another road and did the same thing for another long while. That was a boring time. At least we aren’t risking falling off of a cliff somewhere.

Hey we stopped for gas again today (Gas Stops: 40). This time it was at the only building within 50 miles of anything else. It was a place called Denio Junction. It had some gas and a store where we bought some water and talked to a fellow motorcycle rider who was headed back to Washington (the state, not the US capital). The rider was on a BMW street oriented cruiser and was surprised with our dirt trek across the country. After talking to him for a bit we loaded up the water paks and headed out.

Just as we were about to leave Denio Junction my sunglasses broke. The earpiece snapped. I would be blind without a pair of sunglasses in this bright area. We tried to super glue the earpiece back together but discovered the super glue to be too weak. I still had the old pair of sunglasses with all the scratches on them. I wore the old pair despite the scratches since the store didn’t have any sunglasses available.

We made it to Oregon. Things have already gotten more interesting. There are hills and turns. The vegetation is greening up. We will see what happens from here.

We went down into a huge valley. We must have lost 2000 feet of elevation in three miles. After that we continued going down even further. When we found the bottom of the valley to be a massive flat plain. There were deer munching on some hay. After that we started back up. Instead of climbing the steep valley wall the road went up through a narrow off branching valley that gradually gained elevation. It would have been a great ride had the sun been higher. In fact, Dad said “I’m with you. This would be a really pretty ride if that blow torch (the sun) wasn’t blasting our eyes.”

We came down into the town of Lakeview. We needed to find yet another gas station. As we were hunting I told Dad that we should not have eaten the food from the gas station (Arctic Circle restaurant). He agreed. It messed up both our stomachs. At that moment we came up with a good quote of wisdom. You should never buy your food at the same place that you buy your gasoline. We found a gas station after creating that quote (Gas stops: 41). It was a Shell station. We just rolled in and started pumping our gas. We had made it through filling Dad’s bike and had moved on to mine when a man walked up in a suit. He asked us if everything was alright. We told him everything was fine. At this point the man stood quietly for a moment, quickly said something, and then awkwardly walked away to tend to other vehicles. Dad and I were both confused for a moment until Dad remembered that we were in Oregon. The gas station here apparently still follow the traditional method of gas stations where a worker fills your tank for you while you shop the store or talk to others. I had heard of this before but I did not remember it here to apply the information. I’m sure the man saw our license plates and knew we were not from around here. Hence, we would not know about his working position. This must have been why he left so hastily upon asking us how things were going.

After finishing the last awkward moments of the fill up we left to find a hotel. We knew that there was a Best Western nearby. We have had very good results from Best Western hotels. They are low enough quality that they do not chase you down for the occasional ruined towel but are nice enough to have plenty of comfort. Anyway the Best Western parking lot seemed pretty crammed. We were unsure if we would get a room. It turned out that they did have a room for us right above the front desk. We are out on this peninsula like structure that sticks off the other side of a balcony with one other room. I honestly kind of like it. We are almost alone out on this point like this.

After finding a place to stay we hunted down a restaurant to eat at. We wondered around for quite a while until we found a place that was open and seemed to be what we were after. The front only had a red double door surrounded in a dark wood with a menu on the left in a box. The white sign fitted above the doorway said “Julia’s” in fancy cursive writing. It had a road sign shape next to the writing that said “On 395” inside it. The sign was intended to say “Julia’s On 395” but it came across a little hard to read. We read the menu and walked in once we decided it sounded good. Personally, I was surprised at what we had just walked in to. This was an Andes Candies kind of place. They had the very nice silverware and plates. There was that soft and somewhat jazzy lounge music playing quietly in the background. All the walls and floors were tastefully decorated. This place was a fine dining restaurant that looked a little rough on the outside. I don’t know what Dad was thinking, but I was a little bewildered as I followed the waitress to our table. On top of the visual surprise the food was wonderful. I had a tasty fresh salad with good ranch. They brought out a simple but excellent sliced bread with butter for us to share. I had the best steak I have had yet this trip (and for a while before it). It came with some mashed potatoes that were also fantastic. I have been looking for mashed potatoes like these for a long time now. Dad had the soup special. It was a cream broccoli. He said it was different but he enjoyed it. He had the same steak and potatoes I did and he was also very impressed. If you are wondering about the service, it was snappy and attentive. Three or four different waiters attended our table to be sure we had everything. The whole place was fantastic. If you are passing through Lakeview (which the TAT does go through) then be sure to stop and give this place a spin. After all, it was established in 2018 in a smaller town and seems to need to recognition.

After the restaurant we came back to the Best Western. We are going to sleep. I’ll will write more here tomorrow. For the record there was a total of 6 gas stops today.

Total Miles: 5320.0

Day 22:

We are up. We should be back on the TAT today. I forgot to talk about it, but we actually tried to find it yesterday when we got into Oregon. We found where the trail supposedly crossed our road. There was a very unused entrance on the right and there wasn’t even a path where it left again. I would say Dad and I made the right choice by skipping this part of the TAT in Nevada. It would have taken us forever to find a way around roads that sometimes don’t even exist anymore. We are hoping Oregon isn’t like that as well.

As of this morning we have officially figured out how we are going to get home. We are going to ship the bikes back via the mail and fly home in a plane. I have never flown so this ought to be an interesting day. Yes. Just one day. Think about how we have been at this for over 3 weeks now and we are going to get home in a day. Before I talk any more about that I think we need to actually get to the coast first. I’ll save anything else related to getting home for later.

Since we were worried about breakfast we went down to get some. It was actually pretty standard. I would consider this breakfast just about as good as the one we had in that $300 place in Telluride. Don’t let a price deceive you.

We stopped for a bit just down the road because we needed to lubricate our chains. Nothing fancy. We are off again.

We made it into a cool forest. There were lots of large lodgepole pine trees here. They occasionally get tall enough to make a shady spot on the road. Those spots are always nice since the sun has been relentless lately. While running around in these woods we would periodically find entire groups of cows. Some groups would block the road. We had to get them to move my very slowly creeping towards them. We also saw a group of firefighters rolling around in their bush trucks. What makes seeing the firefighters more interesting is that we had a conversation with them just this morning before we left the hotel. It was cool to see them out and about.

Towards the end of this path through the woods we ran into a bunch of potholes. It became a challenge to avoid them by using the thin tightrope like strips of pavement between each series of holes. Sometimes we would make it. Sometimes the thin pavement strip would end and dump us into a big hole. I’m boringly going to call this game Dodge The Potholes.

We rode through a large forest of mostly pine trees. During this time we came across what appeared to be fog. We realized it was actually smoke. The fire fighters had told us about it earlier. It got to be quite thick in places. None of it gave us much trouble. I am considering this part of the day overcast because this is the closest option I have in the weather chart.

I saw a sign for Crater Lake. I had seen all sorts of stuff about this place but had never been there. I asked Dad if he wanted to go see it since we would have to branch off the TAT to do so. I don’t think Dad thought much of it. I mean it is a big lake. He went anyway just to see it. We worked our way into the park from the north entrance. When we started up the mountainside he asked me what the story of this lake was. I told him that a big volcano (that I later discovered to be called Mazama Mountain) had erupted here long ago and the caldera has since became a very deep lake. When we made it to the edge of the rim and saw the lake we were both surprised by how big and blue it was. The dark blue could change to a teal or even a green when the water got more shallow. The entire lake was sunk way below us and all the walls into it were nearly vertical. It was a really neat sight. We learned from others that recently the view of lake was not this clear due to the smoke. The smoke that comes from a nearby forest fire gets in the caldera and floats around there. This blocks the view. We were lucky to be able to see it this clearly.

About halfway around the loop we stopped at a place called Mazama Village for some gas and something to eat (Gas stops: 42). We filled up and headed just across the parking lot to Annie Creek Restaurant and Gift Shop. We were seated pretty quickly. Dad and I both had a steak with mushrooms, onions, and gravy. I had some pretty decent Mac and Cheese and a big chunk of cornbread with mine and Dad had some mashed potatoes and corn with his. It took awhile for the food to cook, but both of us think that it was better than we expected.

After leaving Mazama Village we continued around the loop until we got to the north entrance where we started. We rode right back out to the TAT and continued riding through the huge pine trees.

We came across a turn in the TAT. It was a narrow one lane bridge that had pavement on the other side. We went ahead and took it since it was paved. We were surprised by a narrow one lane paved road through the woods. It was neat to ride on something so skinny and curvy but at the same time so easy to ride on. We both really enjoyed this part of the trail. That was until it turned into gravel and we realized there was about 60 more miles of this narrow and occasionally deep gravel. We weren’t up for that. We bailed out on a road that would take us back to the highway (the easy TAT option). Things were going alright until Dad ran over a stick. It was just a normal stick yet he got a flat tire from it. A huge splinter the size of a railroad spike had poked into his tire and tube. It broke off to be the same width but was now about 2 inches long. We had to replace his tube with a spare we had. During this time we went ahead and set up the tent for the night. It was going to be dark by the time we fixed it. We were correct. We also can’t find the bear spray but there is no way we can ride out of here in the dark. I guess we are taking our chances with the bears tonight. We are now going to sleep after getting Dads tire fixed. I’ll let you know more tomorrow.

Total Miles: 5619.8

Day 23:

We got up this morning from our tent amongst the woods to find it very cold out. It was somewhere just above 50 degrees out when I got to check a bit later. I did not sleep very well due to the cold and Dad seems to have done better with his sleep than I did. We packed everything up and continued down the road.

Now if you remember from yesterday we stopped on a hillside gravel road in the middle of nowhere because Dad had a flat in his back tire just before dark. You might also remember that we lost the bear spray. I can affirm that we are still alive and that the bears did not mess with us. Anyway we had to get out of this skinny gravel road so we could get on with the trip. After beating the bushes back and giving trees high fives with our faces we made it back out to the main road right exactly where we went in yesterday. At this point we stopped and put on our rain liners for warmth. (I know that we could have used the insulated liners that we have been toting around all trip but we didn’t want to dig them out and the rain liners were easy to get to.) When we started down the road we both noticed that it was shady due to the tall pines on either side and cool due to the shallow creek next to the road. We would have really enjoyed this part of the road given it was hot like it usually is but the cold made it more of an average experience. We found the sun and both of us could immediately feel the warmth of the rays even through our gloves.

After riding along in the periodically freezing shade for awhile we came across a town called Glide. We were actually just stopping for gas at a Chevron station (Gas stops: 43). (We are still in Oregon and haven’t figured out if we are supposed to pump our own gas or not. We do anyway out of habit whether they like it or not.) We were told by an employee that they had really good burritos inside. We didn’t know if we should trust the employee or if she was just really pushing the sales of her burritos. We took up the offer. We were surprised to find that the burritos were in fact very good. We also got a small bag of Chex Mix in a turtle flavor to go with it. (Turtle flavor is caramel, peanuts, chocolate, and usually one oddity like cashews all mixed together. I haven’t any idea why it is called turtle flavor.) This new flavor of Chex Mix was alright but seemed a bit overwhelming. We still like the original flavor the best. After this meal I have officially gathered enough information to conclude that I must correct a previous quote I put on here. I once stated “You should never buy your food at the same place that you buy gasoline.” This was a pretty spiteful sentence that has some fallacy in it. I now officially correct this statement in the hopes of better accuracy by stating “You should never buy your food at the same place that you buy gasoline unless it is breakfast food, you have carefully inspected the food, and you have talked to the person who cooked it.” I think this is a much better guideline for US gas station food as of this point in time.

While at this same gas station I finally remembered to go get a pair of sunglasses before we had the bikes ready to go. I ran back into the store and tried on a few pairs before settling on one. I had coincidentally got a pair of sunglasses with a fishing logo on the side. This seems to be a rolling theme. Every time I find a pair of sunglasses I like that are usually sponsored or made by groups related to fishing. I loved the pair I started this trip with. They were made for fishing. I thought the second pair I had were alright but the earpiece snapped. They were not fishing glasses. I now have a third pair that I really like. They are made for fishing. I believe all of them came from gas stations or similar stores. This evidence makes it seem that cheaper fishing glasses work well for my motorcycle purposes. Now back to buying my sunglasses. I went up to the counter to buy this new third pair of glasses and told the cashier that the other worker was correct in saying her burritos were good. The lady I was talking to before apparently overheard and bombarded me with questions about the quality of her burritos. She asked things like “Were they filling?” and “Did you like them?” I was happy to provide any feedback she asked for. After all, she is just trying to improve her burrito. You go burrito lady.

We continued on for some time on the road. During this time I discovered how much I like my new sunglasses. (We aren’t getting on the sunglasses bandwagon again here.) We saw a store that looked like it might have a replacement tube. We had already fixed Dad’s tube, but we wanted another replacement handy in case another flat of this nature happened again. We walked into the store to be caught off guard by the empty shelves and blank walls. This place looked like it was going out of business. After talking to the owner we discovered that the store was not closing. It was just opening for business. In fact, the store was not even open yet as all the things he had order to stock the shelves hadn’t made it to the store yet. We had just barged into the door and completely ignored his closed sign. In our defense someone else had done the same before us and they were still there when we walked in. The owner also said nothing about it until I pointed out his closed sign. I would tell you more about the store and what it sold, but there was literally nothing to sell yet when we went there.

We continued riding the pavement until we finally made it to Port Orford. For those that are not familiar, Port Orford is the last town you get to see on the TAT because the end of the trail is the ocean here. That is correct. We have finally made it to the west coast. We were pretty excited. I mean it only took us 5792.3 miles of riding to get here. We drove down the ocean and found that we could in fact take our bikes down on the beach. We opted out of this since getting through the sand would have been a nightmare. We instead parked on a narrow parking lot that was very close to the ocean and walked down over the hill to feel the water. As expected it was very cold. You do not want to swim in it. We stayed there on the beach for a bit and took some pictures. We both realized how tired we actually were. We would drift off for a bit without thinking about anything until one of us eventually caught our own and the others attention. It wasn’t like we were completely done. It was more like we didn’t know what to do next. I guess we had to take a minute or two to reset. Once we had cleared our thoughts a little Dad and I went back down to the beach and up onto Battle Rock. Some maps of the TAT consider Battle Rock the official end of the TAT. My guess is Battle Rock is a more specific ending than the entire town of Port Orford. Either way we learned the story of Battle Rock. A long time ago a bunch of settlers came to set up shop and the natives weren’t happy. The natives tried to dispose of the settlers by killing them or getting to leave by threatening them in the same manner. The settlers were not leaving. Instead, the crawled up onto a big rock (Battle Rock) and fought until the natives had backed far enough away that they could make a hasty escape into the nearby forest (current day Port Orford).

We also noticed how the wind here is ferocious. The whole town is filled with that same wind. It doesn’t even make sense since it is always blowing towards the ocean. The ocean is cold. The ground is warmer. The warm air should rise up and leave a vacuum above the ground. The cold air from the ocean should be pulled in to fill the vacuum. The cold air should get hot due to the ground and rise up too. The hot air that has already risen should fill the vacuum created by the cold air moving to shore and then cool over the water. This creates a big loop of the cold air heading to shore, heating up, rising, and sinking back down above the ocean. That means the wind would be blowing towards the land at ground level. As I have already said the wind here travels out to sea. This is a perplexing event that we cannot figure out.

After thinking about this with our fried brains we finally came around to figuring out what we needed to do. We started by finding a place to stay. We ended up just over up the hill from Battle Rock in a place called Castaway By The Sea Motel. It is a cool place that has ocean view windows in every room. It too is filled with the wicked gusts of wind. They must really nail down their roofing shingles here. You can roll in the hotel and get a room with no reservation. The rooms are nice and spacious. I would recommend it if you plan on spending a night here in Port Orford.

After finding a place to stay we moved on to the next order of operations: finding food. The lady at the hotel had thrown a bunch of recommendations at us for various things. Dad said she mentioned The Crazy Norwegian. We were walking around trying to find a restaurant when we stumbled across this exact restaurant. We decided to give it a go. A bubbly staff serve soups, sandwiches, and seafoods. I got a bowl of chili and Dad got a bowl of clam chowder. Both of us got the bread bowl. (It turns out a bread bowl is a big chunk of bread with a hard crust that literally works like a bowl. I had never had this before.) Both of our meals were good. I am not a very big fan of chili and I still enjoyed it. We also went for the pies they have. Dad had a coconut and cream pie and I had a ”Razzle” pie (it is raspberry pie) with ice cream. Dad enjoyed his and I thought mine was delicious. I knew before I even got finished with the pie that eating the whole thing was going to make my stomach hurt but it was good pie so I did it anyway.

Once we left The Crazy Norwegian we headed back to the room, hopped on the bikes, and headed over to a nearby beach. The hotel lady said we might find agates there. (Agates are fancy glass-like rocks with nifty patterns on them.) Both of us wanted to relax for a bit. Dad’s idea was to take a nap and mine was to search for some of these agate rocks. So we compromised and went to the beach so I could search and he could nap in the sun.

During our ride to the beach we enjoyed our bikes being much more responsive. We took all the weight out of the cargo bags. It is amazing how much difference it made. The lighter you can pack the better your ride will be.

Once we had gotten our fill of relaxing for the moment we left for the laundromat. We really needed to wash our clothes. We sat in the laundromat for awhile and occasionally talked to some people about our bikes and the trip.

We finished the laundry and made it back to the hotel. I finally got to eat my bag of sour skittles. I have been toting them around since we passed through Denio Junction. We are hitting the hay. We can finally sleep for bit near the ocean.

Don’t worry. This page will continue until we arrive home. Don’t forgot that there should be more stuff on the site once I get there.

Total Miles: 5799.0

Day 24:

We got up and started to move around this morning to find that we were both sore from walking on the beach. My legs feel pretty stiff from the loose sand. Although, we did have a good time on the beach yesterday so I think it was worth it. Ask me again later on in the day.

We packed things up as usual but today was different. We needed to sort everything out for the flight home (more coming on that at the end of today). We wanted to go ahead and pack all that we were going to take with us as carry on in the bags we plan to take on the plane. We ended up loading Dad up with a lot of weight and mine with hardly anything. I told Dad that he had a lot of weight and that I was happy to take some. He didn’t want to reorganize the stuff so he decided to deal with it.

Just as we were about to leave I talked to Dad about agate. (I found some yesterday while walking on the beach.) He directed me to the lady in the office. It turns out the has a whole collection of these things and even pictures on the walls. We talked for a bit about them and she insisted I have a few to take with me. I guess I have some larger pieces now. She must enjoy finding them and giving them to people.

After talking with the agate office lady we left the motel and headed into Port Orford for some breakfast. We planned to find a place with lots of people. (Lots of people generally means good food.) That place with lots of business ended up being TJ’s Cafe and Diner and Pub and Grill. Yes. That’s the whole name according to the sign. I think they refer to this place as simply TJ’s Cafe. We both ordered a country fried steak. They had some good food there. No wonder so many people had shown up for breakfast. While eating the meal Dad and I realized something. Yesterday I made a statement about gas and food. It went as follows: “You should never buy your food at the same place that you buy gasoline unless it is breakfast food, you have carefully inspected the food, and you have talked to the person who cooked it.” I have come across a situation that I must cover. The new quote is “You should never buy your food at the same place that you buy gasoline unless the place is primarily a restaurant that sells gas or the gas station is selling breakfast food, you have carefully inspected the food, and you have talked to the person who cooked it.” This is an incredibly long sentence but it is accurate in the long version so I’m going to leave it that way. As we were about to leave the restaurant a man wanted to talk to us about our bikes and trip. He was a rider as well who has ridden mostly street. As we talked to him a table nearby caught on to the conversation and asked me about the GoPro camera mounted on top of my helmet. As I told the couple at the table about the camera and trip another person sitting down the row started asking questions. (Two four person tables are generally bunched into one long table at this restaurant. This lady was at the same 8 person table but separate from the first group.) We had to get out of there before the whole restaurant was asking questions.

A ways down the road we needed to stop for some gasoline. We found a Chevron and pulled in (Gas stops: 44). This time we remembered that we were in Oregon and waited to see if someone was coming to pump our gas. After a minute or two no one came. We shrugged and started pumping our gas. Maybe we are supposed to pump it ourselves and we just had some weird station managers before. Dad had made it about halfway through his tank when some dude came booking out of nowhere and mumbled something that sounded like he was going to be back in a second. Both Dad and I had earplugs in. I don’t even think Dad knew he said anything and I was still trying to figure out what he said as he blasted by. Dad started in on my tank and the guy flew back out towards where he came from. I didn’t even catch if he said something this time. Dad finished my tank as well and put the gas nozzle back on the rack. We were about to hop on the bikes when that guy came back and announced he was here. We gave him a bewildered look. After a moment he returned the same look. He glanced at our license plates quickly and started in on a short but very speedy speech. I caught something about him asking us if we had already pumped the gas. Before we could answer he jumped to the conclusion that we had. He seemed upset by this. He stated something about that we couldn’t just pump our gas, something more about some state laws that I assume regard pumping gas, said this was his store, and then compared us using his pump to going into a tractor store and driving around the tractors before purchasing them. I was going to point out this tractor thing was a bad analogy since we had already paid for our gas. It would be closer to driving a purchased tractor around in the store but I understand that there is an issue of some sort here that we can resolve. Before I could get any of this stated the guy took off to a hut to do something else. I looked at Dad who seemed just as thoroughly confused as I was. I told him we should probably leave (?). He nodded. We got on the bikes and took off. The fellow didn’t chase us down or shake a fist at us so apparently he was done with whatever he had said.

We came across some sand dunes alongside the road. We had no intentions of trying to ride on these with our bikes. Oklahoma thought us better than to do that. We just wanted to see the dunes and the vehicles people were bringing to them. We apparently caught the tail end of a thing called the Dunefest. My guess is it is a big gathering of dune riding vehicles that all go around and have a good time of some sort. There were still quite a few parked pickups with ramps out on the sand. There were a whole bunch of fourwheelers and dune buggies scooting around. What gets me is a lot of these people where in shorts. It was a little cold out. It was around 60 degrees Fahrenheit but it was overcast and wet due to a fog from the nearby ocean. On top of that the sand burns if you fall in it with bare skin. I haven’t any idea what they were thinking. In all fairness they probably didn’t know what we were thinking by bringing a pair of heavy motorcycles anywhere near this sand. With that I let them be. They were having fun. I don’t blame them.

We went north on US 101 until we came across this cool looking beach. We were on a cliff bank and could see some jagged hills with lush plants followed by a white sand against the ocean below. There was a marked hiking path down to the beach. We decided to go see the beach up close. This was fine and dandy until we actually got on the beach. The waters were rough and relentless to the sand. The wind never stopped and was forceful the entire time. There were spots that had seen so much wind that the sand was blown off clear down to the hard pack. It was nasty down there. No wonder no one was here. It was cool to see and feel for a short time, though. Like the sand would build up in drifts. It was incredibly fine and felt like corn starch. Anything that could withstand the wind had a big row of sand stacked behind it where the wind couldn’t get to it. It was a neat sight. We had enough of the sand blasting us and headed back up the hill. This proved to be more difficult than we thought. We made it up fine but not without a pretty good effort.

After catching our breath from the hike we continued up 101. It was a great ride. We went through a tunnel and of course honked our horns (Tunnel count: 15). The road was winding and curvy. There were plants and trees growing everywhere on the cliff. The only problems were the fog that blocked some views and the occasional wind blast. We had a good time with it.

We came across a town on 101 and decided to pull in another gas station to fill up. It was a Shell this time. After the last gas station we gave the dude a good bit to come out and do what he wanted to. He showed up. Dad motioned that he was going to pay for the gas. The guy was fine with that. Dad picked up the gas nozzle. The guy was also fine with this. Dad started filling up his bike. The gas guy was still perfectly fine with this. He asked Dad if his card was credit or debit. Dad did not hear. I had taken my earplugs out to see what the guy would do. I answered for Dad. After that the guy was perfectly fine with Dad using the pump. We are now officially confused to what we need to do at a gas station. Do we wait for the fellow to fill it up or not? Oh well. At least we have been able to get gas. After filling up we went ahead and got some Snickers candy bars to munch on while we tried to discuss what to do at gas stations.

We finished the snickers and continued up the road to the next few towns. In one of them we found a crab shack. (A crab shack is a restaurant, usually in a dinky wooden building with scarce paint, that serves seafood as fresh as it gets. They keep it alive until they cook it right on site. They can get pretty pricey despite the restaurant convictions and the seagulls that are often found loitering around.) The crab here was pretty good. Dad and I had a whole crab each. Their fries were addicting. I would give you a name of the restaurant but the place literally didn’t have a name. It just had fresh crab advertisements everywhere. We were about to leave when I found a hat on the ground. I had saw a family earlier who I thought it belonged to. I saw them piling into a car. I started a sprint (for as much as that is worth in my boots) across the parking lot. They looked at me as if I had stolen something for a minute until they realized I was trying to give it back to them. The young boy took his hat back and the one who I assume is the mother thanked me. I told her it wasn’t a problem and that she was welcome.

Once we finished our trip to the crab restaurant, we hit up 101 for a bit further before finding the interstate. We burned some various interstates and stopped only a few times to make some quick adjustments to our gear. We did stop at a rest area to change sunglasses (it was getting dark) to find an area that we were interested in looking at. We had come across an old water lock that was still in operation. (A water lock is like a dam in the river that is used to lift boats up a considerable elevation instead of porting all the stuff from the boat at the bottom to a new boat at the top.) You couldn’t see it very well due to the trees but it was cool that it was there. Somewhere during the ride today we found a second tunnel for the day (Tunnel count: 16). Both tunnels were longer than usual.

We made it to a Best Western hotel in Portland that we made reservations in earlier. It seems to be a special Best Western as it is particularly nice. They have all kinds of fancy furniture and a very helpful fellow at the front desk. He told us to move our bikes to a very secure location under a roof and up against the hotel wall behind some posts. This would help prevent them from being stolen. Speaking of protecting our bikes from thieves, Dad showed me a cool trick. You lock the steering all the way to one side using the key and then put the bike on the center stand. That way they can’t roll the bike until they take it off the stand. However, if the thieves try to take the bike off the stand without unlocking the handlebars then the bike is going to tackle them by falling over since the sharp steering will offset the balance. If they manage to stand the bike up they still have to roll it somewhere. They can’t do this because the steering is locked so the bike can only turn in circles. It might tear the bikes up but by then we hope the thieves will give up. The best thing is we don’t have to get up early since our flight is not until Tuesday afternoon. It is Sunday. We have a whole day to burn.

With that I have now made it to telling you about our flight. We are going to mail the bikes home with a lot of our stuff and fly back. Our bikes will show up with our stuff sometime after we get home. We are taking some carry on bags for stuff that we need as soon as we get home. Anything that is related to traveling, like the tent, will show up with the bikes in the mail. That is it. It isn’t complicated. I’ll let you know how it goes and if we recommend doing it. Right now I’m going to get some shuteye. I’ll write more soon.

Total Miles:____ (<—Coming)

Day 25:

We got up at around 8 AM or so. That’s is as late as we could sleep in. Yup. I know people who can sleep to 1 PM. Oh well. We meandered around the hotel room without much purpose for about an hour. Remember that today is the day between when we arrived in Portland and the day the flight leaves. We didn’t have anything planned and it was nice to be able to just lay around and do whatever. We went ahead and hit up the breakfast in the lobby at just after 9. It was a decent breakfast. They had some burritos that were ok. After that we went back to the room and lounged for a bit more.

We got bored after a bit and decided to find something to do. We started with trying to find a mini golf places. Why mini golf? We don’t know either. It was just somewhere to start. I discovered all of the mini golf courses were closed despite there being like 5 of them. Dad asked about a movie. That sounded good to me. I looked up some theaters and we settled on one called The Academic Theater since it was playing the movie Solo. Neither of us had seen Solo yet. We went out and dug the bikes out from the skinny hole behind the posts where we put them yesterday. After a short drive we arrived at the theater.

The movie was good. The only complaint I have is they took the scrolling words from the beginning of every Star Wars movie out and replaced them with the blue font that says “in a galaxy far, far away….” We had some popcorn, a drink, and a slice of pizza while we watched the movie. I think we are calling that lunch.

After leaving the theater we stopped at a 76 gas station to fill up (Gas stops: 46). (76 might be an abbreviation for something.) We are now back to the predicament of finding out whether or not Oregon wants us to pump our own gas. We rolled in and the gas guy immediately came over to help. Dad stuck the card in the pump and the guy asked if we wanted regular or premium gas. Dad said premium gas. The guy hit the button and left. This left us to assume we were to pump our gas. The guy came back around later and seemed happy that we were pumping. So what we are gathering here is that some dude gets paid to hit an obviously labeled button for you and nothing else whenever a motorcycle comes around. Let it be known that they do seem to pump gas in vehicles. They just seem to avoid motorcycles. We are very confused with this.

After getting gas we started up towards the Columbia River Gorge. Dad has ridden this once before a while ago and wanted to see it again. When we arrived at the road into the gorge we found it to be close. We were directed to a state park nearby that has shuttles that will take you up to the road. Now hold on, we can’t ride our tiny motorcycles on the road but some giant bus is allowed to? We are confused by this. Oregon has a weird way of going about things. Our guess the road has construction and they have to limit the amount of traffic on the road. We are going to use the bus since this seems to be our only option.

Alright so we got to Multnomah Falls. The first thing I noticed was that there were cars driving on the highway. This meant that we could have just ridden up here on our bikes just as we had suspected. We had been tricked into paying for a bus ride we didn’t need by a sign on the road. Oh well. At least we finally got there. We went up and saw the falls. They were very long and narrow with a light amount of water coming down. I am sure it is more lively in the spring when the snow is melting. It was cool even now, though. We then discovered the rest of the path beyond the falls was closed due to a fire last year making the ground unstable. We beat our way back down the crowded bridge near the falls and back out to the bus.

It turns out we weren’t the only people to be tricked by the sign. We met a few other groups who were angry about having to wait forever for the bus as well. They too questioned why they couldn’t have brought their cars up. Someone said that they asked the person distributing the tickets if they had to take the bus and he replied that it is strongly recommended as there wouldn’t be much parking available at the falls. We looked around and found loads of spots. Plus Dad and I are on some motorcycles that we can park in the grass or on a thin row of concrete if we have to. Riding the bus was in fact a mistake.

After a long wait for the bus and some good conversations with some people we finally made it back to Rooster Rock where we started on this bus ride. The bus driver that took us back seemed very understanding and tried his best to accommodate his passengers. I have no beef with the drivers, just the sign and the ticket distribution guy for misdirecting us like that. Anyway we could have gone further into the park but with most of it being closed due to the burn and with both of us being very tired from the trip we decided to head on back to the hotel.

We got caught on some rush hour traffic on our way to the hotel. We tried to find a way around but we were unsuccessful. We just sat in the traffic for a short time until we made it to our exit. I also think it was somewhere around this time of the day that we went through the short uneventful tunnel (Tunnel count: 17).

We rolled into the hotel and tossed out stuff in the room. I went out to the lobby to solve a Rubik’s cube with the Best Western logo all over it. After solving the cube a few times I discovered that Dad was unable to get back into the room as the card wouldn’t unlock the door. We tried to get some new cards but even these wouldn’t work. We eventually solved the problem by printing off an entirely new set of cards from scratch.

We rolled into the room and were officially beat for the day. Dad and I wanted a Coca-Cola. It just sounded good. I went to the machine to get some. We ended up drinking about half our bottles when we decided to try out a pizza place called Pizza Bros that the man at the front desk recommended. We decided we would probably need another drink with that but we didn’t order any with the delivery. Back out to the soda machine I went. I took a $5 bill this time to pay. The machine gave me change in the form of $1 gold coins. I didn’t think the machine even accepted these coins to pay for a drink. I had to go back to the room to find a quarter. Upon finding the needed money Dad also sent me to the front desk to break a bill to provide a tip for th for pizza delivery. After completing all of this we finally sat down and started our search for Ocean’s 11. I wanted to watch it since I hadn’t seen it before. Dad was fine with this. We had nothing else to do now anyway. We watched the movie despite already seeing one today. When the pizza showed up we both enjoyed our second bottle of Coca Cola and watched Ocean’s 11.

With our stomachs officially blasted we went to bed. That will pretty well sum up today’s events. Tomorrow is our flight, so that should be interesting. See you then.

(30 miles (this is a note))

Total Miles: 6157.7

Day 26:

We managed to sleep in until a solid 8:30 today. I’m fairly certain both of us just laid there awake for the last thirty minutes. We set around for a few minutes then started getting all our stuff rounded up. Before long we realized breakfast was about to close. We scurried down to check it out.

Breakfast consisted of a bagels and eggs. It was a pretty average breakfast. Nothing fancy really happened during breakfast. We ate. We left.

We then beaded back to the room to pack up the stuff we had taken into the room. This would be the last time that we would sort the things coming with us on the flight home from the things going home with the bikes. After deciding what to put where we walked out to the bikes and chucked the stuff on. We wondered around for a bit to be sure we had everything and left.

We arrived at the drop point for the motorcycles. Allow me to explain what is happening in detail. We are dropping the bikes at this drop point so that the shipping company can come to pick them up and ship them to the house. We are then headed to the airport to fly to Las Vegas and then to Columbus. The drop spot it is at Cycle Specialties (phone: 5034454411. Ask for Mark). They actually work on motorcycles customization and apparently mostly on Goldwings. However, they were happy holding our bikes for a few days until the shipping company showed up. The shipping company we are using is called National Auto Shipping. The bikes will then show up at our house sometime later down the road. If you use a bike shipping service, remember that you might be paying someone to steal your motorcycle. Try to find someone credible. Now for how we ourselves are getting home. We are flying home. The problem is we have to get to the airport after we drop the bikes off. We honestly didn’t worry about that. We just hoped on the bike and rode the quarter of a mile to Cycle Specialists. Dad then talked to a fellow who I assume is Mike. After that we collected are stuff for the plane and walked away. That means we are officially done riding the bikes this trip at 6158.8 miles.

We eventually made it back to the hotel by foot. We had remembered that the hotel offered a complimentary shuttle to the airport upon request. We took them up. A friendly driver picked us up in a creepvan (a long white van) and we took off.

Upon arriving at the airport we wandered around following the signs to our check in and whatnot. Once all that boring paperwork was done we ate at a China Panda. I tried to get a Kung Pow Chicken with some wantons. I ended up getting the Kung Pow Chicken. I would have to wait a bit for the wantons. That wait turned out to be a bit longer than I thought. The workers apparently got confused because when I received the wantons I also received a bowl of General Tso that I didn’t order. We figured out this misorder after I started munching on the General Tso and discovered a different taste. We then couldn’t return it due to sanitation issues. So I went from wondering how filling my bowl of Kung Pow was going to be to wondering if I could eat all of the chicken I just ended up with. The answer was I could not.

After the China Panda we walked around for some time before finally finding a chair to sit in. We had like 7 hours to kill and we couldn’t go anywhere since our rides where gone. We decided to watch Ocean’s 12. (This is the sequel to Ocean’s 11 that we just watched last night.) Before we could start the movie we needed to find earphones as blasting gunshot noises from the movie over the computer speakers at an airport might be an issue with the security. We checked to two stores for a headphone splitter. These things are usually a Y shaped device that splits the sound from one headphone port into two ports. This means you can plug two headphones in and not have to share a single headphone. We went to the first store and were immediately directed to another store all the way at the other end up the area we were stuck in. We walked down and found it. We also purchased two headphones and headed out to find a dark spot to watch the movie. We couldn’t find anywhere, gave up, and went back to the same bright spot we had before. Just as we were about to sit down Dad spotted a darker public table outside of a Starbucks that was equipped with two wall outlets plugs and two USB ports. We had found the jackpot. We rolled in, hooked up to the speedy free WiFi, and watched our movie.

We made it a good ways in until we decided to go get through security. Getting security done meant we could simply wait for the flight and finish our movie in peace. After the good ole shoe removing metal detecting process we found a seat with another outlet next to it and finished up Ocean’s 12. It was a pretty decent movie.

Welp. We have finally burnt through the hours and it is time to board the plane. I had never ridden in a plane. This was going to be an interesting experience. I even got a window seat. I’ll let you know how it goes.

We have arrived in Las Vegas. The flight was apparently a good one. I have honestly been much more scared in an RV and in fact on this very motorcycle trip. It does have some weird feelings though. During the flight we had a three seat row. We met a girl named Yohana who occupied the third seat in our row. It was cool to talk to her while we flew. When we got off the plane we walked out the chute thing and immediately found a casino out of the exit. That’s Vegas for you. We stayed in the airport until our next flight to Columbus began.

During our waiting we ate at a Great Stake. It is a restaurant that serves meat sandwiches and things. Our food was actually pretty good. I’m surprised that I hadn’t eaten at one of these before.

Total Miles: 6158.5

Day 26:

Note that there was no remark about going to bed yesterday. That’s because we didn’t. We just boarded the flight to Columbus which left after midnight. That means I get to start today’s entry before I even get to go to bed.

Anyway we are on the plane at Vegas. We found our seats way in the back of the plane. Dad got the window this time and I took the middle. We strapped into the seats and waited. By this point the sun was down and we were looking out the windows at nothing but an abyss out the window. The plane eventually taxied around to the runway. The takeoff was more bumpy than the first one. After that everyone else basically tried to sleep. I was busy looking at the Las Vegas lights shooting by below us. It is a neat sight. I assume the other people either didn’t care or had seen it many times before.

Once we flew away from Las Vegas I set in for the ride. There wasn't anything to look at out the window since it was so dark. I did not ever fall asleep. I do remember Dad rummaging one of our bags for what felt like an hour. I eventually asked him what he was digging for. He said that the CPAP wouldn’t work on the battery for some reason. I think it was fine and we were both just too tired to do anything about the supposed problem.

The next interesting thing to happen on the flight was the sunrise. It was a great big orange band across the sky. It eventually took over most of the sky and dwindled off to be the usual blue color. At this point I went back to trying to get some sleep. Just as soon as I did the speaker turned on and someone blasted that they were preparing to descend into Columbus. No one got any sleep after that due to the chatter and constant announcements from the plane crew.

When we got out of the plane we ended up just waiting for a bit until our ride came along to pick us up. We didn’t really mind a wait at this point. We had kind of gotten used to it by now. My sister Alex (who wanted no part of riding on this trip) showed up. We sloppily clambered into the car and drove home.

Dad and I both agree that being home feels really weird since we got here so quickly. I mean with the time zone difference from Las Vegas we ended up getting home before 11 AM. I guess it doesn’t feel real yet. I suppose we will get used to it.With that said, we have officially made it back home and ended the trip. That means that this log must come to an end. There is a chance that more information will be added, but the actual events of the trip are over. I have enjoyed writing this even though it did turn into a book by the time we got back. Do you realize that this had 84 pages of 12 point font on Google Documents? It has 44,440 words on this entire document. I would say it has been quite a trip. Be sure you know that even though I have written this much about the trip I still wasn’t able to come even close to everything that happened. You would still have a great time on the trip. With that I hope you have enjoyed reading all about it. I wish you luck if you ever take the trip. I will hopefully be starting a new trip sometime (and therefore a new log). Maybe I will see you then.

~Brady Gorrell

:)

If you want, you can head on over to the Trip Epilogue page to read about some things that happened after our trip. You can use the navigation bar at the top of the page or just click the link below.