Photo Trip Report

This trip was all about Wolf. The whole point was to take him on a tour of places he'd never been and to enjoy being with him on the ride. So, there wasn't much of a trip report accompanying this adventure.

The map (at right) describes two routes: the one we planned (purple) and the one we took (red). Garmin's Mapquest software says we travelled 3400 miles. My GPS and odometer put the trip at closer to 3600 miles. Our original route was 4100 miles and included New Mexico and Arizona.

Obviously, we bypassed some of the adventure we'd planned; in favor of ease and comfort. Wolfe is a Minnesota kid and he isn't fond of heat. After a few days of cooking in 100+F South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah heat, he decided he wasn't all that interested in the Grand Canyon. So, that changed the western edge of our route. Once we passed Grand Junction, CO, I decided I wanted to see more of the western edge of CO. That was a terrific move.

We took a couple of days at Mesa Verde and Durango, which meant we wouldn't be doing New Mexico. That allowed us to head for Marble, CO via the scenic route I've never looped the Black Canyon and that was more than worth the effort. We spent a half day in Marble, another good move. We took Independence Pass through Aspen on our way to Buena Vista, something I've never been able to do; mostly because the pass always seemed to be closed when I lived in CO. That was a great move. We blew almost a whole day in Buena Vista, rafting the Arkansas. We split Buena Vista mid-afternoon, early enough to ride to the top of Pikes Peak. Always a great move.

We loafed for two days in Manitou Springs and Denver. Wolf had dinner at South Park's infamous Casa Bonita. We split Denver late afternoon Friday in the middle of Denver's rush hour and made it a dinky 150 miles to Sterling for the night. The next day, we cut out of Sterling at 5AM and diagonal'd Nebraska to make good time while seeing the sandhills, the grasslands, and Ashfall Fossil Park. After that, we just hammered out a way home, 850 miles total on Saturday.

We made it back about 10:30PM and neither of us went straight to bed. We had a great, safe trip and it was one of the most fun mini-adventures of my life. I hope we get to do a few more of these.

Crusin' the Rockies

Wolfe and I are on the 3rd day of our Rocky Mountain Adventure. We've had a few glitches. Got cooked in the Black Hills yesterday, but had an amazing day and night at Rushmore and in Keystone. The picture, at left, is Wolfe being held up by the wind at the top of Morton Pass on Wyoming Highway 34. We must have fought a 50mph cross wind all the way over the pass. Kansas has nothing on Wyoming winds.

Today, we got out early (about 3 hours too early for Wolfe) and were making great time until about 1PM, when we stopped for a moment in Laramie, WY and I discovered my right fork was pulsing oil. We'd covered about 250 miles or so and I was hoping to add at least another 150 before stopping. Instead, we're in Laramie for a while.

Suzuki's dealer here, Frontier Cycles, seems to be on it. I carry a pile of tools, but nothing near what it would take to replace a fork seal. I thought about pulling the fork, flushing it with diesel, filling it with ATF, and making a run for a friend's house in Denver where there might be more tools and a shop I could use, but the guys at Frontier think they have the necessary parts and I'm taking a gamble on them. Where this goes from here is anyone's guess.

On the Road Not Alone

My road trip this week with my grandson, Wolf, was something I haven't done for a long, long time. A trip like that would reminded even a crotchety old fart like me why people take trips with other people.

I used to take a couple of trips a year with one of my girls, when they were teenagers. We used to pick a direction, sometimes even a destination, and ride up the coast of California together. Every one of those trips is burned into my memory among the best moments of my life. It's a personal flaw that I can't do much with, but traveling with more than one other person is nothing but draining for me. Our family did some trips all together, but not many. It might have been just me, but it always seemed like we ended up more stressed from our vacations than we were when we left. But traveling with one of my family members was always fun.

Traveling the back roads of Minnesota and Wisconsin with Wolf was a throwback to those good old days. We saw and did things I wouldn't have done on my own. We stopped more often, we stayed longer, and I enjoyed myself more than I ever do traveling on my own.

There was a period, between 1996 and 2006 when I hardly went anywhere on my motorcycle during the summers. Wolfe was the reason. Nothing I could ever do on my own would be as cool as the stuff I could do with my grandson. We hung out almost every weekend for 8 years and most weekends for the following two years. As he gets older, he's less interested in being slowed down by an old guy, so I've gone back on the road for bits of my summers. If I'm not with my kids, I'd just as soon be alone. So there you have a reason why I'm a solo tourist.

For a while, I'm going to have the best of both worlds, motorcycling places and doing it with my grandson. It's hard to top that for as long as it lasts.