8/2 Niagara Falls ON to Boston MA, Albany NY or Tupper Lake NY

We were up early and made our way to Attica NY to meet Eric's friend Tim Fisher who had been bicycling from the west coast since late June. See Tim's blog at http://fishericross.blogspot.com . It's a great blog. Tim's observations and adventures and his accomplishment is incredible. Lou and I are going to peddle across in 2010! It was great to meet Tim and hear his stories over breakfast first hand. We stayed together until mid-afternoon when we separated at Exit 34 (Utica) on the Thruway. Eric and Lou, it was all I expected and more. It could only have been better if brothers Dave and Al were with us. I love you guys. Hope to Tupper and my lovely wife Sadie by 6:00 pm. 6653 miles for me from Alaska to home. I hope you've enjoyed my posts. Your comments are appreciated. If you have any questions about going cross-country on a motorcycle we can certainly advise you on what to do, what not to do, what to bring and what to leave behind. The most important thing is to allow enough time and don't become an intinerary zombie. The ride is at least if not more important than the destinations. At some point I will put a powerpoint together that illustrates these blog entries. Finally, I want to thank my wife for the understanding and freedom to let me embark on this adventure. She OK'd the sale of the old bike, purchase of the new bike, and 21 days away from home while she dealt with all the domestic situations. Sadie, you are the best!

8/1 Mackinaw City MI to Niagara Falls ON

Another 500 mile day that was quite wearing. The road conditions were not uniformly good and the traffic was incredibly dense especially in the lower half of Michigan and all the way through Ontario to Niagara Falls. We tried to stay along Lake Huron's western shore as much as possible, but did finally jump on the interstate to get to Port Huron and across Ontario quickly. Niagara Falls is a place that is a must stop just to see the falls. Their color, sound, and scale force you to focus only on them. I can get hypnotized watching the water fall much like staring into a campfire on a cool night. But the rest of the downtown, although clean, had little to offer as were were not into carnival rides, criminal and monster wax and World Wrestling Federation museums or chain restarurants. We shared a great meal and a bottle of red at Mama Mia's and went back to the motel for our last night together on the road. This was the only motel along the entire route that charged us for parking spots. I understand this is beginning to become the norm and they should be ashamed of themselves.

7/31 Neebing ON to Mackinaw City MI

Our good weather held and over the north shore of Lake Superior it even cooled off a bit especially when the wind came off the water. 500 miles this day that went very quickly as the roads were in good shape, traffic was light, the vistas were incredible and the bikes ran smoothly in 6th gear. We stopped for lunch in Marathon at about half way and took some time to walk down to the lake shore. We are rockhounds and that cobble shore was a mine of incredibly colored, smooth stones including several different basalts and agate. We crossed over at Sault Ste. Marie and settled in at Mackinaw City. We had Guiness in an Irish pub with dinner.

7/30 Bemidji MN to Neebing ON

These next posts to the end of the trip will be shorter than most of the previous posts. The days were longer, I took fewer notes, and we were moving through more familiar territory. So, you get just the highlights so we can remember where we were. Bemidji into Duluth in the morning. We stopped at the HD dealership and dropped our oil in the parking lot (into drip pans of course!) and did the 5000 mile service. We gathered a crowd with the three Alaskan bikes. After the service we went down town Aerostich. This is a company that makes and markets high-tech riding apparel and gear. Unfortunately, their catalog is much more user friendly than their retail outlet which is really just an afterthought corner in there manufacturing and warehousing space. After lunch we moved north along Lake Superior and stopped at Gooseberry Falls State Park viewing incredible stone work by the CCC, and Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. The latter is a famous and picturesque lighthouse that Eric has on his list of places to visit. He'll provide more detail. We ended up in Neebing just over the border in Ontario late that night after having perhaps our only and closest call with a deer at dusk in Minnesota.

7/29 Williston ND to Bemidji MT

First thing in the morning while it was still relatively cool we detoured south to clip the corner of the north unit of the heodore Roosevelt National Park and the Little Missouri National Grassland. A very surprising place. Heading south out of Williston the land has a little roll to it, but is mostly very flat. We pulled over a slight rise and before us was TR NP. It was a set of arroyos deeply incised in the flat plan surrounding it. It was incredible but kind of alien also. Initially the land started out as a flat plain and then the Little Missouri River and its tributaries eroded the canyon and all the little side canyons. We didn't have time to ride through but the ranger told us that bison roamed throughout the canyon. This is definitely a place to come back to. And no one was there. We met the very friendliest people in North Dakota. At a gas station a woman came over to us after filling her tank and wanted to know where we were from, where we were going. She told us she and her husband had been Yamaha dealers for years and now were wheat and cattle farmers in western ND. Almost unbidden she launched into a description of all the sites and little villages we should stop and visit in ND. What a booster for her state! "Well you know" she said, "most people think North Dakota is just empty flat nothing. But I'm here to tell you if you take the time it's a beautiful place and the people are very friendly. We like you to come and visit." She was a great lady and we wished her well as we got back on the road and ground out mile after hot mile. We crossed the North Red River into Minnesota and really began to feel that we were getting close to home. Many of the tree species were the same and there were many lakes and ponds with good sized rivers. Our last stop of this long day before we moteled it was Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River. We dipped our boots in the outflow of the lake and took pictures and then headed north to Bemidji. A long day, but a good one.

7/28 Cut Bank MT to Williston ND (Part 2)

Often we would hear someone tell us after beginning to discuss the stifling heat, that it must be OK for us because we were getting the wind. We all had full fairing bikes so little wind actually got to us. The wind that did was composed of hot air so it was like being blow-dried all over. Now the mornings were not very cool and the day got even hotter. The temperature differential between morning and afternoon was very reduced. Lou and Eric had Nalgene bottles with insulated booties that they filled with ice at the motel each morning. We stopped repeatedly to refresh with water and Gatorade. I took to tying a bandanna around my neck and pouring water into it to keep it saturated as we rode. The wind would evaporate the water and cool me a bit. Others on the road must have thought it strange to see me pour water from a bottle into my neck rather than my mouth. In truth there wasn't much respite; you just had to tough it out and make sure your pee stayed clear. It was interesting to see the natural vegetation and agricultural differences as we moved from west to east. Just outside of Glacier NP on its eastern boundary the land was arid. Very few trees of any size and mostly widely separated scrub growth. No irrigation or irrigation only in very small patches. Heading east then in Montana we began to see a bit more green as we ran into wheat and rough hay fields. The streams had large shrubs and cottonwood and box-elder in their flood plains. Rivers were rills crossed by short bridges with mud bottoms and sluggishly churning along the flat land. We began to pick up sunflower fields and corn and larger irrigated patches the further east we went. The land was still almost devoid of trees except those planted around houses as windbreaks. I suspect they may have been carefully watered to get them started. Finally, nearing Minnesota we began to run through real woods and larger fields of corn, wheat and sunflowers, and the whole suite of mid-western tree species appeared. Over the thousand miles from Cut Bank to Bemidji this green gradient was spread across the landscape to let us know we were heading toward abundant water.

7/28 Cut Bank MT to Williston ND (Part 1)

This day brought us across the entire eastern two thirds of Montana and into North Dakota, around 500 miles. We began to do higher mileage days to catch up on our itinerary. Often you will hear people say eastern Montana and North Dakota are flat, monotonous lands devoid of interest. They are correct to a certain extent. They are relatively flat, but they are not monotonous nor are they ugly or of little interest. It's not the land that has the problem; it's the viewer. In my opinion, these types of landscapes that have little relief and change only subtly over many miles have to be viewed with patience, quietness, and slow movement. They have a beguiling, subtle beauty that you have to work at to appreciate, but for which your effort will be paid in full. Some cultures that are faced with seemingly uniform environmetnal conditions become so attuned to slight differences in those conditions that they can describe them and give them unique names. Hence, the people of the arctic reportedly have 50 names for snow of different condition. Montanans and North Dakotans must then have a large lexicon for the subtle color shifts of yellow, tan, white, green, and dark, shadow, bright, dull, flat light palleted across the smoothed, rolling landscape. These are vistas that may not be as mystic, mythic or vertigenous as the mountains, but do more to hypnotize, mesmerize and spellbind.

The temperature was incredibly hot on this portion of the trip. More on that in my next post.