The ultimate adventure ride…our planning continues!

Planning for our epic western US adventure ride continues.   Baja John, my good buddy who is helping us plan this motorcycle trip, is a retired US Air Force officer, test engineer, and RX3 rider.   John’s talents are ideal for planning a big trip like this.

It’s tentative…and this is the general outline for now…wow, this is going to be great!

We’re refining where we’ll stay each night, and we may make some minor revisions to what you see above, but we’re pretty close to finalizing the itinerary now.   Wow, this is shaping up nicely!

We’ll depart each morning at 7:30 a.m.  Sharp.   Maybe even earlier, but not any later.  There are several reasons for this:

• We want to stay on our schedule, and I’ve found in doing these kinds of things in the past, if you’re not adamant about leaving on time, you don’t leave on time.
• We will be spending roughly 6 or 7 hours in the saddle each day.   It’s hot out here, folks, and we want to do as much of our riding in the morning as we can while it is cooler.
• We want to see the sights along the way.  We’ve built time into the schedule to do that.

We’ll be taking a short break approximately every hour.   That means a stop, a stretch, drinking some water, telling a joke or two, and a rest room break.   Plus, I need to grab photos for the blog!  I found on the Baja trip I got the best photos when we were relaxing on our breaks, and I aim to do the same thing again.

We’ll make reservations for our hotels in advance of our arrival.   We’ll have all that scoped out in advance, so it will be a stress free ride.

As I said above, we’re finalizing the cities where we’ll be staying and the daily mileage now.   We’ll post that shortly.  But in the meantime, these are the sights we’re going to see:

• The Grand Canyon (majestic is not a strong enough adjective)
• Zion National Park (it’s awesome)
• Bryce Canyon National Park (it’s awesome, too)
• Mt. Rushmore (my all time favorite national park, with magnificent riding through the Black Hills)
• Devil’s Tower (remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind?)
• Hells Canyon National Recreation Area (I’ve never been there; it will be a first for me)
• Yellowstone (when we say Ol’ Faithful, this is where it comes from)
• The Columbia River Gorge and the Columbia River (including crossing over on the Bridge of the Gods; folks, this is magnificent country!)
• Portland, Oregon (one of my all time favorite cities; it’s right up there with Chongqing!  We’ll grab dinner and a beer in Kelly’s Olympian, a bar with really cool antique motorcycles on display!)
• Tillamook, Oregon (hope you guys like cheese!)
• The Oregon Coast Highway (it’s even better than the PCH)
• Redwood National Park (a magnificent place…those trees are incredible, and if we’re lucky, we might spot a Sasquatch or two and maybe even some elk)
• San Francisco (we’ll ride across the Golden Gate Bridge!)
• Yosemite (Ansel Adams’ old stomping grounds)
• Monterey Bay (it’s going to be great riding down Highway 1 through this area)
• The Pacific Coast Highway (this is Highway 1, and it is incredible)
• Hearst Castle (an American treasure)

…and much, much more.  While you’re pondering all of the above, allow me to show off a bit with photos I’ve grabbed in some of these places!

The Grand Canyon…majestic just doesn’t begin to describe it!

The Oregon Coast, just south of Tillamook

One of many statues at Hearst Castle in Cambria, California

The California Redwoods, with my old WRX thrown in to provide a sense of scale

Yosemite…we are going to find a way to work it into the schedule, too!

Zion National Park…the colors really are this vibrant!

The response to our ride announcement and to our email has been overwhelming.   I greatly appreciate all of your comments and I will do my best to try to answer each email.  Please keep your comments and suggestions coming!

We’ll have some real motorcycle royalty riding with us, too, folks.  In addition to you (our loyal CSC riders) and our good buddies from Chongqing, we’ll have at least two US motojournalists riding with us on different parts of the ride.   And here’s an interesting development that just happened today…as you may know, the RX3 is popular in Colombia, where it is imported by AKT.   Well, it seems that our good friends from AKT want to send a few people to ride along with us on this epic adventure to see how it’s done.   I told the Colombians that is absolutely no problemo, as long as they invite me to Colombia when they do their ride.   I’ve been to Cartegena, and I want to go back!

Cartegena, Colombia…a photo from when I was there a few years ago…I want to return!

As you have no doubt surmised, we are not a typical motorcycle company, and we are not just interested in selling you a motorcycle.   We want you to be part of the adventure riding fraternity.   Baja was the first CSC adventure ride, this is the next big one, and we’ll have many, many more.

It’s going to be fun.