United States of America

A collection of 1129 posts

May/Jun '10 Premium Content

Southern California - Reader Ride

Where else could one ride less than 200 miles and experience the Pacific Ocean, the mountains, and the desert, but in Southern California? Take into account that it's virtually always sunny, rains less than 45 days a year, and temperatures generally hover between 60F - 85F. Throw in

May/Jun '10 Premium Content

Trails Across Wyoming

If Route 66 is the "Mother Road," then Highway 26 could lay claim to "Grand-Mother" status: it runs from the heart of the Great Plains, across the Continental Divide, and through the Cascade Mountains to Seaside, Oregon. Originating near the confluence of the North and South

May/Jun '10 Premium Content

Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia

Soaring 186 feet above the Chesapeake Bay, on its 4.3-mile namesake bridge, our motorcycles seem to have slipped the surly bonds of earth. Enormous ships glide silently below and seagulls follow our exhilarating descent onto Kent Island, MD. Another bridge crossing and we'll arrive on a rural

May/Jun '10 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Mountain View, Arkansas

We race toward the setting sun, darting from curve to curve along Arkansas' Route 14. A glance at the odometer verifies that the miles have really piled up since our departure from North Carolina. But the welcome climb into the foothills of the Ozark Mountains is reenergizing a couple

May/Jun '10 Premium Content

Lake Superior

The shore of the northernmost lake is made famous in poetry and song, from Longfellow's tribute to the shores of Gitche Gumee, to the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Tragic shipwrecks, 350 to date. Lonely lighthouses. Gaping mine shafts.

Mar/Apr '10 Premium Content

Georgia Coast

The Georgia coast might not be the first place that comes to mind for a quick motorcycle ride from Atlanta. But with only a weekend to spare, my husband and I wanted somewhere that we could ride to, within a few hours of our home in North Atlanta. With its

Mar/Apr '10 Premium Content

Northern California Wine Country

It's a happy coincidence: the same undulating topography that makes Northern California's hill country so perfect for growing grapes has also challenged transportation engineers to create some classic motorcycling roads. So what better way to find a bit of heaven on earth than to sample the

Mar/Apr '10 Premium Content

Southern Utah and Northern Arizona

"Nobody goes up the mountain anymore," laments Bob, my newfound, 76-year-old friend. "Everybody takes the highway. You got to go up the mountain!" Since this local character clearly has had much time to collect wisdom, I decide I best take him up on his advice. Encounter

Mar/Apr '10 Premium Content

Vermont and New Hampshire

Progress, like the odometer, rolls on and on. Time flies, wheels turn, numbers roll higher, and just about everything increases in complexity. Forests give way to farms, that concede to homes, that spawn shopping centers, that lure expanding city boundaries. But unlike the forces that drive the increasingly familiar conurbation,

Mar/Apr '10 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Wheeling, West Virginia

Day 1: Bodacious Buckeye Backroads Steve and Sharon Mauk, on their red Suzuki V-Strom, and Karen and I, on the Kawasaki Concours, whoosh west on the I-70 Bridge over the Ohio River. It's a beautiful summer's morning in August and we're ecstatic at the

Jan/Feb '10 Premium Content

Reader Ride - Northern Arizona

Extreme elevation changes, serpentine stretches of blacktop, and awe-inspiring scenery are the rule, not the exception in Northern Arizona. In a loop-ride of just over 300 miles, one can sample most of what makes this region world-famous. Visit a mining town, ride along the south rim of the Grand Canyon,

Jan/Feb '10 Premium Content

The Great River Road - Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin

Truth be known, a "Father of Waters" tour should really begin at Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota, the birthplace of the mighty Mississippi; however, to do that justice would have required stretching this three-day tour into five. I choose instead to begin my sojourn at a well known

Jan/Feb '10 Premium Content

Oregon Backcountry Adventure

I hear a loud CRACK just outside the tent and bolt upright from a deep sleep. My sudden movement sends the visitor thundering away through the brush. With my heart doing double-time, my hands fumble around the tent for the headlamp. Once in hand, I switch it on and shine

Jan/Feb '10 Premium Content

Ohio River Scenic Byway: Maysville, KY to Pittsburgh, PA

It's now late September, temperatures have moderated to the low 70s, and traffic is scarce on the Ohio River Scenic Byway. I'm back in Maysville, KY, on my Honda ST1300, with riding buddy Steve Mauk straddling his Suzuki V-Strom 650. We're both saddled up

Jan/Feb '10 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Ithaca, New York

According to scientists, the story of the Finger Lakes began in the Pleistocene epoch. Glaciers, some more than two-miles thick, crawled southward from what is now Hudson Bay, then retreated, and did it all again, several times. Over the course of their journeys, they gouged, tore, and plowed huge trenches

Nov/Dec '09 Premium Content

Reader Ride - New Hampshire

At anytime during riding season, the Cheshire County Loop offers an excellent day's ride for any motorcyclist. In the spring, when life is bursting forth, the earthy smells awaken a sense of adventure. On a quiet summer day, the tree-canopied roadways tease with dappled sunshine, and the ponds

Nov/Dec '09 Premium Content

PART I: Ohio River Scenic Byway - Cairo, IL to Maysville, KY

Our time on the Ohio River Scenic Byway is a journey that starts at river's end and flows almost a thousand miles upstream to its beginning, passing through an ever-changing landscape of people, history, scenery, and events. Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong

Nov/Dec '09 Premium Content

The Central Sierra Nevada and Yosemite

In 1986, CBS created a mini-series that parodied the overwrought primetime soap-opera melodramas of the decade ("Dallas", "Dynasty", "Falcon Crest"). In this series, titled "Fresno", the California city was lampooned for its civic pride, especially its status as the 64th largest city

Nov/Dec '09 Premium Content

South Central Missouri's Alphabet Roads

My Honda VFR's odometer spins past 30,000 as I enter the Missouri River town of Boonville. Over the years, I have ridden some of what I thought were the Show-Me State's finest back roads. However, these roads were mostly confined to Missouri's extreme

Nov/Dec '09 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Jackson, Tennessee

In 1925, the Grand Ole Opry began riding the crackle of amplitude modulation (AM radio) into the foothills around Nashville. Not far west, in Memphis, the blues had long before cast its spell across the Mississippi Delta. But in the early 1950s, where the periphery of Appalachia finally merges with

Sep/Oct '09 Premium Content

Southern Louisiana

The guys in the garage at the Transportation Revolution finish giving me directions just as a bank of inky clouds unleash their payload. Having no desire to guide the Triumph Scrambler into a curtain of precipitation, I wait patiently and try to contemplate the magnitude of the first leg of

Sep/Oct '09 Premium Content

Reader Ride - Washington State

So goes the old country song, and in today's economy those words fit most of us more snugly than we care to admit. Nevertheless, we freedom-loving, travel-addicted, wind-in-the-face motorcyclists will find a way to explore, even when our budgets can't stretch far enough to allow for

Sep/Oct '09 Premium Content

Part 2: St Clairsvile, OH to Vandalia, IL

Because the National Road had channeled considerable prosperity to communities along its path east of the Ohio River, the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois implored Congress to extend the road through their territories, all the way to the Mississippi River. As the National Road stretched westward, however, trains became

Sep/Oct '09 Premium Content

Rhode Island and Eastern Connecticut

My trip begins next to an 11-foot-tall green frog. On a spool of thread. On a bridge. Seriously. In the Connecticut town of Willimantic that's how they commemorate a peculiar bit of colonial history. One night in 1754, a terrible racket woke the local citizenry, and fearing an

Sep/Oct '09 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Ashland, Oregon

On November 27, 1941, travelers on US Highway 99 south of Yreka, Caifornia were astonished to find a band of men blocking the road and waving hunting rifles. They handed out a Proclamation of Independence, which informed one and all that the State of Jefferson was in "patriotic rebellion