Back home

I rode back from West Virginia to Montreal in 2 days, with a night in a motel in Pennsylvania. So my trip is now finished and I am glad to be back home with my family.

Here are some stats of the trip.

- Number of days on the road: 62
- Total distance driven: 22 017 km (13 680 miles)
- Number of provinces visited: 6
- Number of states visited: 17
- Number of rainy days: 4
- Liters of gasoline burned: 1095
- Blog entries: 34
- Max range on highway per tank: 300km
- Cheapest gas: Tennessee at 3.19 per gallon (91.8 CDN cents per liter)
- Times stopped by police: 0  :-)
- Number of ferries taken: 1
- Nights couch surfing at friends': 6
- Nights in campgrounds: 35

Stars show the places where I spent the night

Tail of the dragon

From Memphis I went east to Nashville as I had one night before I was to meet up with Jacob. Nashville is a big party town. And now I know where women in shorts and cowboy boots come from!
We had a reservation at the Deal's Gap Motorcycle Resort located at one end of the 11 mile stretch of US 129 they call "The Dragon". 318 banked curves and switchbacks with no merging traffic in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Bikes and cars race up and down all day long! The Tree of Shame warns riders to be wary of the dragon!
With Jacob and Helene, who's also from Montreal, we rode the Dragon's Tail and the Cherohala Skyway. After supper we rode the dragon some more.  It's like being on a rollercoaster, but you're in control.
The next morning Jacob left early and headed for Florida. I rode some more through the Smoky Mountains, got my hair cut in Gatlinburg and changed my oil in Greeneville Tennessee. I found a quiet campsite and set up my tent on a deck, a first for me. The next day I rode on "The Snake", another infamous strech of asphalt, as I made my way to West Virginia.

Memphis

From a KOA in Limon, Colorado,  I rode the interstate all day through Kansas and reached Topeka. Next, a second full day of riding in Kansas and Missouri (Mih-zoo-rah) , then through the Ozarks of Oklahoma to get to Memphis Tennessee at around 11pm. Four states in one day again!

The motel, complete with a guitar-shaped pool, was right next to Graceland that I had to visit (guilty pleasure). 

I then made a quick stop at the Lorraine motel, turned into a civil rights museum, site of Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.

Gunnison

I stopped in a hotspring for a massage before moving on from Ouray, Colorado. 
The campground I found was at 8200 feet near Crested Butte and from there I rode though the canyons and mountain passes of the Gunnison park. I spent a little more time on dirt and gravel and I like the new rear tire, a Michelin Anakee III.
Next, I crossed the Continental Divide just east of Aspen, and stopped for the night in Buena Vista. Then, a quick run up and down Pikes Peak and through Colorado Springs to the high plains of cowboy country!

Colorado

After a late start from Tuba City, AZ, I headed northeast in the high dessert through Monument Valley in Utah, and then into Colorado. And I was about an hour in New Mexico. That's 4 states in one day :-)

I camped a couple nights in Ouray, an off-road mecca that calls itself 'the Switzerland of America'. I took the Million Dollar Highway and the (unpaved) Last Dollar Road. Jeeps are king here and people from all over come to these San Juan mountains to tear around on the backroads.