Northwest adventures from this vantage point
By Maverick - Sep 30, 2005

What do Green River (Utah), Fallon (Nevada), Bridgeport, Merced, Cloverdale, Crescent City (California), Cottage Grove, Astoria (Oregon), Port Angeles (Washington), Victoria, Barriere (British Columbia), Banff (Alberta), Choteau, Billings (Montana), Buffalo (Wyoming), Rapid City (South Dakota), and the Front Range have in common?  Connect the dots and you have one of the coolest motorcycle adventures that can be packaged into 18 twenty-four hour days.

During late July and early August of 2005, four of us passed through nine states, two countries, two provinces, and an island while traveling five thousand three hundred forty two miles.  We saw and experienced some of the most beautiful sites that the United States and Canada have to offer.  Deserts, mountains, lakes, wonders of nature and the historical preservation of extraordinary adventures, achievements, endurance, conflicts, survival and ignorance.  The temperature ranged to a high of 107 degrees in Green River to a low of 32 degrees the morning we left Banff.  By and large, we had much more blue sky than anyone could ask for.   We had ten minutes of rain, on two different occasions during the entire trip.

In Nevada you can experience a cricket storm; in Fallon you can ask for a car wash and end up at the Sheriff’s office and when you check into your motel almost anywhere, you need to do an environmental scan to be sure you are still in the Americas.  In California you can get high driving through the grape vineyards; in Oregon there is Lava Rock everywhere and you can walk where Lewis and Clark spent 150 winter days 200 years ago.  In Washington you can walk through a rain forest that is perfectly dry; on Vancouver Island you can see a magnificent Castle and more flowers than you can imagine growing in a former limestone quarry.  In Alberta there are ice fields and glaciers feeding Lake Louise; in Montana, you can relive Custer’s encounter with Native Americans and there is a menu of experiences in and surrounding Sturgis.  Stimulation for all the senses!  

Kirk’s Road King Classic and Debby’s Ultra Classic met every challenge with out even a hint of a problem.  These bikes took the elements as they came and stood bright, beautiful and proud every morning as passersby uttered, “nice bikes” or “what a beautiful machine” often stopping everything to dream and say “someday maybe”.

It was a pleasure to get to know our companions as we shared our perceptions and perspectives of what we were experiencing.  

Breakfast in Virginia City created an interlude sufficient to contemplate how the prospectors must have spent labor and leisure. We also learned about how the city’s inhabitants worked together to create a community that supported the ups and downs resulting from the uncertainties of exploring, discovery and mining precious minerals.  The City is built in the mountains and much of it burned to the ground three different times, only to be reconstructed through persistence and will.

Yosemite was our first opportunity to see the giant sequoia trees (they were amazing) and the park is as wonderful as we’ve all heard and read about.  Riding through the park on a motorcycle is perhaps not the best way to experience the wonders of nature contained here. But we were soon on our way across California and north past coastal waters, inland through Napa Valley and then through the Avenue of the Giants.  Here you basically want to keep you eyes on the road because those monsters grow right next to it.

Highlights on this adventure are too numerous to mention, but from Northern California to the Front Range, three stand out and are highly recommended.  Crater Lake provides insights into the area’s evolution over the last 500,000 years.  Humans have witnessed the transformation for 10,000 years and scientists have investigated it for more than a century.  The eruption that preceded the formation of Crater Lake spewed ash as far as Canada and Nebraska.
 
Butchart Gardens, just 13 miles north of Victoria, was created by Jennie Butchart beginning in 1904.  Jennie conceived of a plan for refurbishing her husband’s worked-out limestone quarry site.  From farmland nearby she requisitioned tons of top soil, had it brought to Tod Inlet by horse and cart, and used it to line the floor of the abandoned quarry. Little by little, under Jennie's personal supervision, the abandoned quarry bloomed to the spectacular garden that it is today.  More information is available at www.butchartgardens.com.

In Southeastern Montana, stop by the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  Plan to spend several hours learning about the encounter (the orders, intentions, decisions and battle) between Lt. Col. George Custer Commanding the 7th Cavalry and the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians on June 25th and 26th of 1876, 11 years after the end of the Civil War. 

We are grateful to live to ride in this beautiful country.   What a ride!!!