Route 66 plan

ByByron August 28, 2016 2 Comments
Route 66, or the Mother Road, is a fairly famous American highway that was built in the mid 1920's, and was one of the first of the US highway system. There is a fairly long Wikipedia post about it here.  It has been rebuilt and re-aligned many times over the years, and since the adoption of the Interstate system in the late 50's, it has, unfortunately, disappeared to a large extent. We...

Desert ready!

ByByron August 28, 2016 1 Comment
I've started looking at temperatures in the first few cities we'll be passing though. LA has consistently be in the high 20's. Not bad...Vegas and Death Valley have been high 30's though, and it doesn't look like it'll be cooling any time soon. So, since Sandra has been using my first helmet since she started riding (yes, we both have unusually large pumpkins), and it's black, we decided it might...

Day one…California!

ByByron September 3, 2016 1 Comment
My alarm happily turned on this morning at 3:30am, and I bolted out of bed, made a cup of coffee and had a shower. Thankfully, Sandra had put in a lot of work in the past couple days to make us well-prepared to hit the road, so we had little to do in the way of last-minute packing or panicking. So, after having to call Beck's after the airport limo didn't show up, we got to Pearson on time,...

Day 2…Death Valley & Las Vegas.

ByByron September 4, 2016 0 Comments
So, today we left Lone Pine, and made our way down hwy 190, through Death Valley, and on to Las Vegas. Death Valley is one of those places that you could never forget - you start at about 4000ft elevation at the entrance to the park. Then it's a series of switchbacks and ever-increasing temperatures, all the way down to Stovepipe Wells, which is at around sea-level. When we started out in Lone...

Day 3 – Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, and Kingman Arizona

ByByron September 5, 2016 0 Comments
Leaving Las Vegas is a great thing, no wonder they made a movie with that title :) We left to the NorthWest this morning, to make a stop at the famous "Gold and Silver Pawn Shop". It's supposed to be 24 hours, but it ain't. Anyway, we got there just as it was opening. It's cool, but yeah, it's a pawn shop. Apparently the guys from Pawn Stars are there quite often but I have yet to see them there....

Day 4…Kingman to Williams on the old Mother Road

ByByron September 6, 2016 1 Comment
Today we rode a really great section of 66, the longest original stretch that you can ride from what I understand. It really goes from Kingman to Seligman, but there is another ~40 miles after Seligman that is unmarked but that we were informed about by the proprietor of the Seligman Sundries store... Anyway, it's really a great ride..hardly any traffic, lots of old americana to see, and so much...

Day 5 & 6. Williams, Grand Canyon, Winslow and the Painted Desert.

ByByron September 8, 2016 0 Comments
One cannot always count on having useable wi-fi in hotels, a day in the Grand Canyon, combined with a few hours riding all adds up to missing a days' posting. Oh well, it's my blog, and nobody seems to be making any demands on my writing and photography skills, so there :) Anyway, we started out yesterday morning from Williams, AZ pretty early, and made our way up to the Grand Canyon. After...

Day 7 – Grants to Albuquerque

ByByron September 9, 2016 2 Comments
Again, I feel I must tell everyone that hasn't been to the American Southwest that if they haven't been, they MUST come here sooner than later. It is such a wonderfully rich landscape, full of wide open plains, surrounded by riotously coloured mesas, and just a never-ending series of "Wow, look at that" moments. It really is almost indescribable, simply because of the magnificent scale of it all....

Day 8 – Happy Birthday to me, in Santa Fe

ByByron September 12, 2016 3 Comments
Well, I did it, I made it to fifty! What can I say, it feels the same as 49, as you probably guessed :) Anyway, after leaving Albuquerque, and a frankly quite terrible hotel, we scampered up the I25 to hwy 550 to take the long way to Santa Fe, on the advice of my good friend Rene. Well, what a side-trip! We ended up stopping in Jemez Pueblo and had some 'fry bread' at one of the little roadside...