Day 13: 49th State: Part 1

Today is the big day! We got up early and packed up camp in record time. We had decided the night before that we would not make breakfast at camp but would drive the 30 miles to Stewart, have breakfast there, and then hop right over the border to Hyder, Alaska.

Stewart, B.C. is not much larger than Hyder, AK, but it had a gas station and a hotel that had a restaurant. The restaurant served us bottomless cups of hot coffee and fluffy pancakes. We ate like the condemned. Then we walked around town to take chicken pictures and to see what else they had to offer. We were gravitationally attracted to a museum that had an old timey fire engine out front, so S and K had some photo ops. Then enough stalling! Time to head back to the U.S. of A!

We got our passports out and ready, then drove the one mile to Alaska. No guards, no customs, no anything but dirt roads to a seedy little town. There is nowhere to go from Hyder except Hyder, so apparently if this is your big idea on how to sneak illegally into the US, the country wishes you well on your journey over the mountains and/or sea.

There are two tourist attractions in Hyder: The Blue Glacier, and a National Park where you can see bears. We had been told by friendly folks at the campground last night that there had been a rock slide two days ago at the glacier that took out the road, so we would not be able to see it. We were set on seeing bears, though. We did pass Bear Glacier while still in Canada on our way to Stewart. We did not get any photos, but the ice looked as blue as Windex. It was quite lovely.

We got to the middle of town, as far as we could tell, and there were no signs or any help at all in figuring out which way to go to see bears. However, there weren’t many options. We took the only road that looked like it went anywhere. We drove the length of the town, all on dirt roads, and then continued more miles down the same dirt road, hoping it would lead somewhere other than a crusty old coot’s cabin. In fact, it led directly to Tongass National Park, Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site. We found it!

This park has an observation deck built by a shallow creek where salmon come to spawn. You can see the salmon, but this is also a great place for bears to catch an easy meal. The observation deck keeps the visitors safe from the bears, and vice versa. Over time, the bears learned that they are safe from people, and they continue to come to this creek, to the amazement and optimal viewing by throngs of tourists. Today we added four observers to the deck.

We had been told at breakfast that the bears typically come to Fish Creek before 8:00 a.m. and after 3:00 p.m. We arrived at almost noon. There were no bears, but we saw salmon spawning. They are huge fish. It hadn’t occurred to us before that when you see the classic photo of a grizzly with a salmon hanging out both sides of his huge head that the fish, too, must be of good size. I hoped that the wilderness supported a couple of lazy bears that didn’t like to get up early, or at least a bear or two that got peckish about lunchtime.

People on the observation deck talked amongst themselves, and we met a guy that showed us on his camera the amazing photos he had gotten that very morning. We practically seethed with envy. Then the alert went out. Black bear spotted! We watched, and sure enough, this fairly young bear, very skinny, came out of the underbrush and started wading in the creek. Have you ever watched an indoor cat go out in the snow? They walk a step, shake their paw, take the next step, shake the paw, etc. The black bear did this with the water in the creek. It looked like it was his first day getting his paws wet. Then salmon splashed behind him and he jumped away from them startled. Everyone on the deck laughed quietly. Poor bear was going to stay skinny if he was afraid of the fish. He headed to the other bank, directly below us, and he started eating berries. Maybe this bear was a vegetarian.

Word went out again – grizzly bear downstream. We could barely make him out, but slowly and surely he approached. Unlike his young black bear friend, he clearly knew what he was doing, and he was huge. He paced along the bank, watching for the salmon spash, then pounced in. The chase took less than 15 seconds, and he was back out with a huge catch. He ambled into the brush to eat. Ten minutes later, he was back. Same result.

We were so thrilled at our luck, and then word went out again. Another bear! This was a black bear that had some brown on his shoulders. The park guide ventured this bear was about 3 or 4 years old. He was very skinny, and his fishing skills made it understandable. First, he satisfied himself by eating the leftovers from the grizzly. Then he splashed in himself and tried to chase a salmon downstream. Upstream, we silently chastised him, chase them upstream if you want to have a chance. He chased again, then stood up on his hind legs as if he’d sort of forgotten what he had got in the river for. Finally, he chased upstream and caught himself some lunch. We cheered quietly -- no startling the bears allowed. “I just love a happy ending,” I overhead a tourist say. Well, happy ending for the bear, I added to myself.

Day 12: Almost There

L had one request for the trip: we had to stop at a Tim Horton’s. Someone told her he was a famous Canadian hockey player or something and he now had a huge chain of these coffee and donut stores that were fantastic. We had noticed one a block away from our campsite as we pulled in last night, and we all agreed we would save time in the morning by having breakfast at Tim’s instead of oatmeal in baggies.

Tim Horton’s was directly across the street from a McDonald’s. The McDonald’s had no one in line. Tim Horton’s had 22 cars waiting at the drive-through and a line of 5 or 6 people at the counter inside. We figured that was a pretty good endorsement. We went in and were dazzled by their pastries and breakfast sandwiches. We decided to try them both. They were delicious. The whole place was like a Dunkin’ Donuts crossed with Panera. We all agreed that if we had these stores in our neighborhoods, we would never eat breakfast at home.

The morning was bright and pleasant. We headed west towards Alaska. Based purely on observation only, we decided the main industry in B.C. was logging. We wondered what the other residents did for a living, since we so rarely saw homes, and we did, they were clustered in tiny towns that did not appear to support anything but possibly ATV repair.

After several days of traveling through the Canadian Rockies and beyond, my own impression is that their second major occupation was roadway construction. B.C.’s economic stimulus plan also involves roadway improvement projects, most of them on two-lane roadways reduced to a single lane for several hundred meters at a time and controlled by flaggers on both ends.

My estimation is that about 90% of the flaggers were women. I don’t know if women don’t have the heavy equipment skills, or if crews don’t allow women to do anything else, or if they have hiring quotas to include a certain percentage of women and that’s the easiest place to fill positions, or if they staff women in these positions because irate drivers tired of waiting tend to be more polite to women than men. Those were my top theories. You have a LOT of time alone to follow the most inane mental wanderings when on a motorcycle. Since we entered Canada, we had to stop at least once an hour for a construction zone, and our bikes were absolutely filthy from several thousand miles of bugs and grime and dirt construction zones.

We flew past tiny towns and finally stopped in Smithers where there was a Harley dealer. For a change, we did not stop for mechanical difficulties. We stopped just to have lunch, and while we were there, we got the firefighter connection yet again. When you travel with two firefighters, both riding Firefighter edition Harleys and both wearing their firefighter patches and firefighter only riding group jackets, people talk to you even more than when you are just a group of four women riding together. Almost every place we stopped, someone would come and talk to S and K, and invariably, they were retired fire fighters or had been a volunteer for a decade or so, etc. The man running the Harley dealer was a 17 year volunteer. He couldn’t do enough for us, and he let us use their soap/water/equipment to wash our bikes. We took a break for an hour or so to clean them up.

We headed back out on clean machines and within 8 miles, hit another construction zone with dust flying everywhere. Well, clean is a temporary and fleeting condition, for motorcycles as well as homes. Or bodies, as this trip would attest.

We reached our day’s tentative destination: Kitwanga. S had called the night before and made a reservation at a campground here as well as another campground about 45 miles north, according to her map. However, the GPS could not find the second town. We were going to touch Alaska the next day, but the current schedule had us riding 300 miles riding to and from AK in the same day. We figured that would not leave a lot of time for us to sightsee in Alaska, so we wanted to get some additional mileage in today.

We finally decided to chance it and head up the road. About 30 miles later, S, who almost always leads, pulled over beside the road. There was almost no traffic on the road – we saw other vehicles about every 5 or 10 minutes. The signs all said to check your gas because there were no services for about 120 km. S was worried that maybe we had called the wrong campground. What if we went 45 miles and there was nothing there? Then we would be stuck going another 45 miles or so hoping to find another campground and hoping they would actually have a site left we could use (not a good bet as we have found in Canada). The remoteness of our current location suggested we would also definitely need bear boxes to hold our food overnight, but what if the campgrounds were too primitive to provide them?

We took a vote and 3 out of 4 of us decided to drive 15 more miles and hope the campsite we reserved was actually located here. Fifteen miles later, there was nothing. L was defeated. She lay down in the middle of the road while we once again voted on our next move. There was zero chance she would be hit by a car. Attacked by a bear would be more likely on this road. We took a blind vote: 2 to return to Kitwanga, 2 to continue on.

None of us really wanted to backtrack. We had ridden too hard to get where we were. We pulled out the map again. We took a couple more votes. It is nigh on impossible to achieve consensus with four tired women. In the end, S decided and we followed, driving another 45 miles to another provincial park: Lake Meziadan, B.C. It was stunning. There were a handful of sites left, the sun was still up (sun doesn’t set until about 10:30 p.m. in these parts), and it was, as the name suggests, on a beautiful lake that we could see from our campsites. We boiled water, ate a freezer bag meal, and considered ourselves lucky. If one cared to look, one could see a divine hand all over this trip.

Daily Recap: 400 miles, Still British Columbia, campground at Lake Meziadan, B.C.

Day 11: More Mountains

We woke to a nip in the air and the sounds of car doors opening and slamming. There were a couple of young women with a tent at the site right beside us. As we woke up and put on the only sweat pants and sweat shirts we had packed, L and I headed out to the bear lockers to retrieve our stores. I asked L if she had heard our neighbors packing up their car. She agreed she had, and she said, those two girls got cold and they went to sleep in the car.

No way, how would she know that? But sure enough, she was right. Their car was still there with a pair of flip flops neatly placed beside each door. When we passed, the front seats were empty. Both girls were huddled in the back seat. Man, did she call it. Less than 20 minutes later, they had had enough. They took their tent and went home for some proper rest.

S and K came over to our site with the camp stove and their freezer bags full of oatmeal. L was banging around in the tent while S, K, and I sat in front of a roaring fire, wearing knit caps, full sweats, and our frozen fingers wrapped around scalding hot mugs of coffee. L stuck her head out of the tent and asked brightly, “Hey, has anyone seen my swimsuit?”

We collapsed in laughter. “It’s July!” we all cried in unison.

“I know. I’m thinking of putting on my swimsuit and walking around all the campsites in nothing else but flip flops and a towel over one arm and asking everyone, ‘Do you know where the pool is? I thought there was a pool.’”

We clutched ourselves.

“Hey, don’t laugh. It might be the only thing I wear today. I’ll ride on out of here in my leopard print with the skirt flying out behind me and my snow-peaked mountains jutting forward to lead the way!”

Coffee expelled through nostrils.

So, the Canadians love to camp, but they are pretty prissy about it. At the shower house in the morning, all the sinks were taken by women blow drying their hair and applying makeup. This is camping?

We got back on the road, onto Route 16: The Yellowhead Highway. I had seen on the map a town called Tete Jaune. I was thrilled to be able to lend my French “skills” to the group and was all prepared to act all scholarly and inform them that it meant yellow head. Then we saw Yellowhead Mountain, and the Yellowhead Highway that helpfully had a cameo graphic of a head in profile and is colored in yellow. Turns out that once again I am no use whatsoever to the group.

We drove through Mount Robson Park. Mount Robson is the highest peak in Canada (according to an overheard conversation that I have not taken the time to verify. If you want facts you can count on, you got the wrong blog). Again, we saw the most stunning array of mountain peaks still hanging onto pockets of snow.

About lunchtime, we stopped for gas at a little town called McBride. It was located so that whatever direction you turned, you saw mountains looming around you. The buildings were right out of the set of Andy Griffith. At a little ramshackle home across from the gas station, a man was making chainsaw art. It was wonderful craftsmanship, and while one man performed for the four of us, his lecherous buddy sidled up to S and tried to make his move on her, inviting to come back after 5:00 to drink with him.

We went across the road to eat at a park and then found an information center there. We got some great maps and brochures for camping throughout B.C., all for free. We popped back on the road, and the mountains were in the rear view mirror. We had the best roads for motorcycling we had hit to date: nice curves that you could take at speed, and just rolling hills. Wonderful. Then a trip highlight: we drove down a hill, and we saw a big black bear in the middle of the road. When he saw us, he ran to the side of the road, then stood up on his hind legs and turned around to look at us, as if it say, “What in the world was that??” Well, why should the bear be any different. We are four women on bikes. We have been garnering nothing but attention for 11 days now.

Again, we drove for over a hundred miles without seeing a house or a side street, and then all of a sudden, we came across a series of three or four handmade signs advertising homemade bread and pies and other goodies. It was a café in the wilderness. We stopped because there were gas pumps, but we stayed because they had ice cream.

As we walked in, L had to duck under a brown paper lunch bag blown up and tied to the top of the doorway. As we enjoyed our cones, L asked the waitress what was up with the bags. She said they deter hornets. Does that work? Oh, yes. Hornets are very territorial. They see the paper bag and they think it is a hive, so they don’t come in. The things you learn.

While we were picking out cookies to take to the campsite with us for later, a man parked his RV and came in to buy a pie. He asked her if she had a whole blueberry pie, and she said she did. He looked at it. Can I taste it first? I don’t want to be stuck with a pie I don’t like. We all looked at each other. This was the stupidest thing we had heard all day. You get to sample ice cream before you commit to a cone, but you don’t get to try a piece of pie. They let him try it anyway.

Here’s the best part. As we walked back to the bikes, we were checking out his RV. On the back, he had a big bumper sticker stating he was a member of “IAAI – The International Association Against Idiots.”

Daily Recap: 230 miles, Back to British Columbia, RV campground in Prince George, B.C.

Day 10: Icefields Parkway

We woke up to the sounds of an angry squirrel. This is a more effective alarm clock than we have at home, and there’s no snooze button. We ate our oatmeal out of a freezer bag and strained our fresh percolated coffee through a paper towel. Then we packed up and headed north through the Kootenay National Park.

Ever since we crossed the border into Canada, we noticed the color of the rivers is totally different here. It is the clear light green that looks so pure you figure it must be fake. As we drove through Kootenay, we continued to marvel at rivers and lakes of this most peculiar color. We pulled over at a stunning overlook (thanks to Chris for emailing me a list of synonyms for “spectacular.” I’ll be sprinkling them through future posts). I’m not sure the photos will do it justice, but I’ve included one as an example.

The temperature had cooled dramatically from the day before, and it became colder as we headed up in elevation. We saw waterfalls and snow peaked mountains and crystal lakes as we drove through one picture postcard after another. Laura said, “I think I was unfair to Canada in my three-word assessment of hot, buggy, and smells like Christmas. It really doesn’t do the country justice. I’ve mulled it over and expanded my entry.”

“Well, give it to me. What’s today’s soundbyte?”

“Canada is cold, buggy, and smells like Christmas.”

“Good choice. Big improvement.”

We left Kootenay and entered the Banff National Park, on our way to Lake Louise. We were meeting a friend of S and K’s from Virginia that also happened to be vacationing in Canada at the exact same time. She was ice climbing with a group called Chicks with Picks.
We picked an outdoorsy sounding restaurant where we could meet, Lakeshore Grill, or some such thing. It looked All-Americana and the menu was standard (North) American food. We sat down to order and gradually noticed we were the only non-Asians in the joint. In the middle of whitebread Canada, we found the only all-Asian restaurant around. The friend told us she had to get up at 3:00 a.m. every day so they could climb up and get to the ice by 10:00 so they could finish climbing the ice by noon before it starting melting. Yep, that’s right, melting. The four of us decided that as daring as we might feel traveling 10,000 miles on motorcycles to spend a few hours in Alaska, we were serious wimps compared to the Chicks with Picks.

We left Lake Louise and headed west on the Icefields Parkway. Mountain peaks covered in ice (hence the name) loomed on both sides of the road. Elevations were helpfully labeled in meters. Temperatures are all posted in Celsius. We ordered turkey lunchmeat from a deli and had to figure out how many hundreds of grams we needed for four sandwiches. I haven’t done this many metric to English conversations since engineering school.

We stopped for gas, and L and I were layering up, putting on all our coats and pulling buffs over our faces. “It’s JULY!” crowed S and K. So glad you packed all those shorts! Don’t you just hate a sore winner? I pulled on my rain gear over everything else I owned to block the wind.

We drove three hours through the most unspoiled wilderness I had ever seen, with that same peculiar light green water. The odd thing is that as immense and awe-inspiring the scenery is, your brain starts tuning out after awhile. It is as if your senses can only handle so much and decide, “If you’ve seen one pristine, emerald lake at the foot of craggy, snow-peaked mountains, you’ve seen them all.” Before long, you have to catch yourself and make sure you are intentionally taking it all in instead of watching the curves in front of you and/or the bike in front of you.

We made it to Jasper and tried to find a campsite. The Canadians LOVE to camp, and they are serious about it. We drove literally for 160 miles without seeing a single house, driveway, or side street. Then we came out to some little tiny town and a campground with 640 sites, every single one of which was booked. We found another campground and an available site but no amenities. Well, it had a shower house and clean restrooms (they call them “washrooms” in Canada), but the site had no water, electric, or internet. It did have scat on every trail leading from every tent site, and it had bear lockers where all campers had to stow any food that would not be stored inside a hard sided vehicle (car or RV -- tents and tent campers are just like a big bear lunch sack).

We figured all the scat couldn’t be wrong; we would make full use of the bear lockers. We made a big fire and ate Tater Trasherole out of freezer bags, with a Gatorade chaser.

Daily Recap: 250 miles, 1 province: Alberta

Day 9

Movin’ day. Time to get moving again. The back felt pretty good, although if I dropped anything, someone else had to pick it up. Next stop, the Canadian Border.

We made it through customs and took our obligatory photos by the “’Welcome to British Columbia” signs. S had made us all a metric conversation strips and laminated them so we could tape them to the inside of our windshields. (Harleys are American made, and they obstinately do not include kmh on the speedometers.)

The first thing I noticed about Canada was the road striping. In the US, the road dashes are 10’ long with 30’ long spaces. Canada’s dashes appeared to be longer than 10’, perhaps 15’, with the same length space. I puzzled about the length for awhile until I remembered Canada uses the metric system. Ah, must be either 4 of 5 meter dashes with the same length space.

Yeah, I’m a geek. I’m pretty sure no one else was thinking the same thing. When your occupation is a traffic engineer and your major vacation each year involves a road trip, it is a bit of a busman’s holiday. Mostly, traffic control is about the same as the U.S.

It is highly possible, however, that my companions were also checking out the road signs. We saw a warning sign for some multi-antlered critter I assumed was an elk. Then there was a sign with a squat looking dump truck with a lumpy load. I figured it must mean either, “Caution – coal trucks entering road,” or “Warning – truck full of basketballs ahead.” It could go either way.

I was also thrilled to see all the signs in both English and French. In our area at home, most signs include Spanish, but we never see French. If only I had used some of my three years of high school French in the past 26 years, perhaps I would remember more than, “Je m’appelle Amy,” or, “Ou est la biblioteche (where is the library?).” (If I'm wrong on any spellings or French grammar, I didn't verify anything from my 26-year old memories of class.) I tried to figure out how to fit either sentence into casual conversation with a French Canadian and failed utterly.

It was lunchtime, and we were excited to feel cosmopolitan and dine internationally. We pulled into the first goodly sized town, and we saw the following Canadian restaurants to choose from: McDonald’s, KFC, Arby’s, and Dairy Queen.

Canada was by far our hottest day yet. “It’s July!” L and I heckled S and K. Bet you two now wish you had packed your swimsuits, don’t you? We’re not looking so dumb now, are we?” It is not our way to be gracious winners.

We stopped at a campground with only one campsite left available. S had called all our reservations to cancel them the day before, because our new trip plans couldn’t use any of them. Now we would be on our own to find what we could on the fly. The only site available in town was pretty primitive: bathrooms, but no showers. We took it. If there had been a pool or a creek, we would have immersed ourselves in it. Instead, we got water from the sinks in the bathroom, went outside, and poured it over each other’s heads to cool off. We dined on our freezer bag meals together while it was still light out, and then we played cards for two hours on the picnic table. Yep, this trip pace was going to suit us just fine.

We had been driving through pine trees all day. And heat all day. And when we stopped, we were besieged by mosquitoes. Here is L’s impression of Canada so far: “It’s hot, buggy, and smells like Christmas.”

Daily Recap: 250 miles, 1 province: British Columbia

Day 8

Pride. I’m not sure which hurt more: my back or my pride on being outed as the weakest link among strong women I admire.

Pride. Each one of us had told every single person we knew and worked with that we were riding our motorcycles to Alaska. Not that we were going on a long vacation on bikes or that we were going west, but the destination was clear: Alaska. S and K said the other firefighters would never let them live it down if they didn’t actually get there. L would also be abused by her coworkers, since she dishes it every bit as much as she takes it.

S, our trip’s Julie McCoy, pulled out the maps. For those of you under 40 years of age or who exhibit taste in your TV viewing habits, Julie McCoy was a character in the 70’s sitcom, “The Love Boat.” She was a cruise director for the Pacific Princess, and each week she was able to fulfill each passenger’s deepest desires in just a five-to-seven day vacation at sea, up to and including matchmaking to find true love between two total losers, played by washed up TV actors.

I LOVED The Love Boat, and I loved Julie McCoy with her cute little Dorothy Hamill. (For those of you under 40, I can’t possibly be expected to fill you in on all 70’s and 80’s pop culture. You grew up with computers, for cryin’ out loud: Google Dorothy yourself!) I’d like to pawn this off to the fact that I was young at the time, but my current Tivo programming list still indicates an appalling lack of standards.

Anyway, the point is that S pulled out her maps and started a new plan. Within 30 minutes, she came up with a friendlier option that would still allow us to touch Alaska, although much lower and for only part of one day. She mapped it out so that we would only ride 200 to 250 miles each day, so we would have time to stop for lunch at someplace pretty, eat together, and walk around awhile before climbing back on the bikes. We would also have time for side trips and chicken pictures.

We decided to take a daytrip to Glacier National Park, 30 miles away from our campsite, I could come back and go to the chiropractor one more time, and then if all went well, we could set out on our new course Saturday morning.

L and I had been to Glacier two years ago on our cross country ride with the Harley Owners Group. We loved it and looked forward to showing it to S and K. The day quickly became hot. Then hotter. This park truly displays the awesome grandeur of creation. We marveled. But we also failed to plan. The day became late, and we had not packed food nor near enough water. There were no options at the top of the mountain.

We headed back serpentine roads hanging off the sides of cliffs, back to the nearest town with restaurants, and we stopped at the Huckleberry Patch. Our server from the restaurant last night had recommended it to us east coasters who had no idea what a huckleberry was, except that Yogi Bear had this kind of pie in his pick-a-nick basket.

Huckleberries threw up all over this store. There were t-shirts and cups and magnets dedicated to the berry. There was huckleberry fudge and milkshakes, and yes, pie. We ordered lunch and any beverage that was ice cold. Slightly revived, we went back out to the bikes.

Riding a motorcycle for several hours on a hot day drains your enthusiasm for, well, anything. And everything. We just wanted to get back to camp as rapidly as possible. We could have seen the Holy Grail of chicken pictures: a 40-foot high statue of a rooster made out of aluminum foil saved by a thousand local school children, feet made of popsicle sticks, and feathers fashioned from rubber bands and super glue, and on that day, we would have blown by it without a moment’s consideration.

I dropped the girls off at the campground, and I continued straight to the chiropractors office late on a Friday afternoon. I walked in and said, “How’d you like to do an adjustment on a sweaty, disgusing biker?”

“Step into my office,” she replied.

Glacier was as awesome as I remembered. The huckleberry milkshake was inspired. The chiropractor a godsend. The cool shower at the end of the trip, divine.

Daily Recap: 150 miles, Still Montana

Day 7: The Healing

For those of you who think chiropractors are quacks, you obviously have never walked into a doctor’s office, listing to the left, walked back out still listing but with a prescription in your pocket for muscle relaxants and a week’s bedrest, then walked right across the street into a chiropractors office to come back out 30 min later standing up straight and able to go back to work. If your objective is to get off work for a few days, take your ailing back to the former. If you have stuff to do, go to the latter.

I sat down at the picnic table at 8:30 a.m. with a phone book supplied by the campsite office. My body is a temple; it is the only one I get in this life, so I choose my medical care with rigorous standards. I opened the yellow pages and picked out the three largest and most attractive display ads, and I gave them a ring.

One of them wasn’t open on Thursdays. Another wasn’t open until Thursday afternoon. The third opened at 9:00 a.m., so I sipped my coffee with the girls to wait. At 8:55, my cell phone rang. A chiropractor was on the other end of the line; said she had just gotten in the office and saw this number on her caller ID. Hmm. I’ve never had a medical professional call me back without leaving at least two messages of increasing urgency, and this time, I hadn’t left any. Guess business is slow.

I programmed her office address into the GPS (MAN, is that thing handy!), got help getting on the bike, and set off immediately. I crawled into her office, and she called to see how much my insurance would cover. She said I had a ten dollar copay after fulfilling an annual $200 medical deductable, of which, let’s see, I had so far used, um, zero. She looked up. “You don’t go to the doctor often, do you?”

“No, really I don’t. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m ridiculously healthy.” She looked at me. I was tilting toward starboard. “’Except for this,” I added quickly.

She adjusted this, popped that, cracked the other thing, and if not a new woman, I was at least no longer a completely broken one. I went back to camp with a little hope in my heart.

We took the entire day easy and then decided to go out to dinner together. I believe I have mentioned that S was our consummate trip planner. She also put a great deal of thought into our evening meals. It is too expensive to eat at restaurants every night, and it also takes a great deal of time. Cooking at camp requires dishes and cleanup, and after being on the road for 10 hours, no one feels like cooking. Backpackers carry dehydrated meals that only require you to add boiling water to a pouch of food, seal it up for 10 minutes, then eat right out of the bag so your only dishes to wash are the spoons. This is the perfect option in that it also light and easy to pack 21 days worth of dinners in our trailers. The problem is that the backpacker meals you buy in outdoor recreation stores are pretty expensive.

S did some research. She found a website, trailcooking.com, where a woman made up a bunch of recipes so you could make backpacker meals yourself in Ziploc freezer bags that would hold up to the boiling water. They are surprising good, very economical, and indeed, after a long day, it is the only thing we had the energy to make.

After a week of dining on various chicken and rice combos out of a freezer bag, and we were looking forward to a real restaurant. We all ordered different dishes and then laid into the basket of fresh bread and butter brought to the table as if we had just gotten out of prison. When the entrees arrived, we practically applauded. Every plate looked like the finest meal on earth. We tried everything from each other’s plates, family style. It was pathetic, our sublime joy over a little well-plated cuisine. North Bay Grille in Kalispell Montana. Tell ‘em the grungy biker girls sent ya. If you dare.

Day 7

Warning: I’m going to get slightly biological here, so if you are easily offended, you might consider a different blog or at least skipping the first paragraph. I woke at 3:30 a.m. with a raging need to pee. As it turns out, if you drive 11 hours in searing heat, get to a campsite and rehydrate all at once with a bottle of Gatorade G2, a Coca Cola, and two 20-ounce bottles of water, you cannot expect to make it all the way through the night before you wake up bleary eyed, try to unzip a tent in haste, slip on your flip flops, and dodge mosquitoes five hundred feet to the community bathroom. Ah, this is living!

(Biological entry ends. Stand down.) I woke up and could not rise without assistance. I could not put my shoes on without assistance. I could not lean down to unzip the tent without assistance. I could not walk without assistance. Basically, I needed to move in immediately to Sunny Skies Assisted Living.

All I had was my trusty companion, L, who had been sound asleep before wakened to Defcon 1 alarm horns. We hobbled back and forth, and then she shoveled me back into the bed, hoping a little more rest and sleeping on my other side would magically heal me.

The alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. and I tried again to walk. L’s dad was a fighter pilot, and the jargon comes back at some of the oddest times. “Are we go or no-go?”

I bit my lip. “It’s a no-go, Houston. The rodeo is over for this cowgirl.” (I know it is a mix of metaphors. Give me a break here, I’m injured).

We hobbled back to tell K and S the bad news. Well, okay, I sent L back to break it to them first. I try to be a tough lady, but crushing disappointment makes me cry every time. They knew it was coming. We sat down to a breakfast of oatmeal, yet again, and coffee as we tried to figure out where to go from here. L and I figured S and K would head on by themselves, and we would pick our way back towards Sicily’s house so I could recoup for a few days.

K wasn’t having any of it. Her back couldn’t continue at our current pace either. The next thought was for S and L to continue, and K and I would happily stay at Hampton Inns for awhile until they were coming back through. We could rejoin them then, and my back could be better by then. However, when we did the math, that meant the four of us would be split up for 10 days of a 24-day vacation. What fun is that?

At the end, it came back to the fortune cookie. The journey had become unpleasant, something to be endured just to get to the destination. We decided to live by the fortune cookie and make the journey fun again. We would stay put for a couple of days, I would go to a local chiropractor, and we would replan our trip on the fly to a new destination that would allow us all to enjoy ourselves again.

Final note: If you are going to be stranded somewhere with an injury, I highly recommend a lovely campsite by a river with snow-capped mountains in the background. Especially when Domino’s delivers.

Trip Recap: 10 miles (to the chiropractor and back), same state: Still Montana, with the best friends any human could ever wish for.

Day 6

We rose to a new day. I, however, rose bent over, with a slightly S-shaped spine. I was eating L’s prescription pain pills for her knee like they were tic tacs and then getting someone to help me throw my leg over the saddle to get on the bike.

Every single morning, we would check the trip bible and compare it with the GPS for our projected daily mileage. The actual total when we arrived at our destination would always be 30-50 miles longer. We could not figure out where the extra miles came from. Today’s total was projected at 430, a long day by our standards. K and I looked at each other dejectedly.

Today was the best weather yet. We started in light jackets then changed to a vest and t-shirt at the first gas stop and a short sleeved t-shirt only at the second gas stop. This is how a day on the motorcycle usually progresses, but our trip so far had not borne this out at all.

We would have loved to drive through Yellowstone, or at least Bear Tooth Pass leading to Yellowstone, but we had no time for side trips. We drove directly west to Missoula, then north to Kalispell. L and I were excited for that last leg, because it leads right by Flathead Lake, this spectacular (I know I’m reusing the same adjectives. I should have packed a thesaurus) body of water on the way to Glacier National Park.

We got about 10 miles north of Missoula when all progress halted. We were stuck in construction traffic, and the sun was now beating down. The road was torn up down to the dirt, so we picked our way through pitted gravel and ate the dust of a half mile-long line of cars in front of us. Sweat ran into the dust on our faces and made mud and misery.

A 10-mile stretch of construction took us over an hour and a half. Time crawled, and our odometers hit the “daily total” of 430 miles before we even got to our much-anticipated lake. By the time we saw Flathead, we were all so tired of riding, that we didn’t pull over to look or take photos or anything. We rode on like it was a job. Like one of those first jobs you ever had that made you decide maybe you should go to college after all.

We found our campsite and collapsed in a beautiful spot right beside a river. I had fantasized for a hundred miles about pulling off my boots and sticking my feet in that cold, glacier runoff stream. But when we got there, I knew there was no way my back would permit me to navigate down the rocks to get there. A cool, coin-operated shower in a tacky RV park wearing flip flops to protect me from years of built up shower stall grime was the best cleansing of my life. It cost a quarter. I would have gladly paid 50 dollars.

Trip Recap: 480 miles, 2 states: Still Montana (it is a big state). Sorry, nothing funny to write about today.

Day 5

We started the day with a cool morning but bright skies. The wind had abated some, but it still buffeted us around. The speed limit was 75 mph on flat straight roads that hopefully led to happier lands, but with the winds pushing us back, none of us could top 70 and still hang on.

We left SD behind and entered Wyoming. The terrain changed a bit, but not the wind. We stopped for gas in Sundance, WY, home of the Sundance Film Festival. We decided to run through Main Street to take a look see, then detour slightly to drive by Devils Tower, of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” fame.

Before we left the pumps, we realized that S’s bike was throwing oil, as evidenced by the oil slick down the side of her camper and on the front of my bike and pant legs, since I ride directly behind her. The GPS found us the closest Harley dealer along our path, about 60 miles away in Gillette, WY. We set a course that avoided all pleasant diversions and beat feet.

Unrelenting prairie winds. Harsh and unforgiving land. Beautiful but desolate landscape. This is Wyoming, every single mile of it in the saddle. Suddenly, we saw smoke stacks and smog in the distance. This was Gillette. We got to Harley, and when I tried to get a ten dollar bill out of my pocket, it dropped out of my pocket and was whisked away so quickly that I didn’t bother trying to chase it. I gave it my blessing and hoped it might reach a needy soul when it finally landed in, best guess, Iowa.

The mechanic came out to take a look, and we asked him if it was always this windy here. He nodded a contemplatively and said, “Yeah, I’d have to say there’s most always a breeze.” We hooted. A BREEZE! Hate to see a really gusty day.

We got the diagnosis: it was a rocker box problem, whatever that means. My dad, brothers and Uncle Charlie could fix anything with moving parts. Alas, all I ever cared about was basketball, and I never paid attention to anything about the internal combustion engine. Here’s the extent of what I know about the mechanics of my motorcycle:

It’s blue.

Such a stereotypical girl thing that it pains me.

It was supposed to be a 1.5 hour repair, so while we were waiting around, the mechanic recommended a local Mexican restaurant. We were thrilled to check out the local fare instead of our typical PBJ or lunchmeat sandwiches out of the cooler and figured the diversion would do us good, as a break from the typical mileage grind.

Well, I don’t claim to be a connoisseur, but clearly neither was the mechanic. It was quite possibly the most mediocre Mexican meal I’ve ever had. Let me put it this way: Applebees is more authentic. However, it didn’t come out of the cooler, and the ambiance, though lacking, was still better than our typical chow downs at Exxon. In comparison, it was a fine repast indeed.

We got back to the dealer. They weren’t done. The 1.5 hour repair ended up taking 5 hours instead, and we closed down the place. We wondered if this was their sales tactic, since while we were stranded, I ended up purchasing a new rain suit that would, if marketing could be believed, actually repel rain. Cha-ching! Unexpected travel expense! (Are you getting the idea that a road trip is an expensive endeavor?) Plus, K bought a new helmet. She had a new one before we started the trip, but the attachment for the face shield broke during the tornado trail of tears through South Dakota, and she didn’t want to go another 9,000 miles without any face protection from rain. They shipped her old helmet back to our home dealer for replacement. All in all, it was a good day for Harley and a rough day for the trip budget.

We were leaving Harley at 6:30 p.m. with 230 miles to go for the day. Our destination was Billings, Montana, to visit my sister-in-law’s house. Not my sister-in-law, who would be out of town, but her house, for which she graciously gave me the garage code and the security alarm code so that we could sleep in real beds and use her laundry room. Some sisters-in-law become true sisters, and Sicily is one of them. We were disappointed to miss seeing her and the family, but the use of her house was a most excellent gift.

But we had a big decision to make: four hours of driving at the end of a grueling day, or stopping short tonight at a hotel and trying to make up some miles the next day. Our schedule was too tight, with pre-reserved campgrounds that if we missed one day, we’d be forced into trying to catch up or losing a whole string of daily destinations.

We decided to go until dark, until the next gas stop (120 miles) and reevaluate, unless the wind broke our spirits. But not long after, we crossed into Montana. The heavens parted and I’m pretty sure I heard angels sing. The wind stopped. The weather became mild. We could pick up speed. The terrain became interesting, then gorgeous. We hit our gas stop, and the vote was unanimous. Press on, brave riders.

As the sun sank, the skies still remained light for some time. We could all see why this was called Big Sky country. Our band of four became a freight train, changing lanes like a drill team, passing vehicles left and right, chug-a-chug-a-Choo-Choo! We pulled into Billings, exhausted and exhilarated to use a garage, to not have to pop up our tents, to have a real shower in a beautifully appointed home, and to launder our disgustingly soiled riding clothes.

S, our consummate trip bible, had a big red binder with each day’s itinerary, campground destination, mileage, and planned meal. In the cover, she had slipped a fortune from a fortune cookie she had right before the trip, “The trip is not about the destination but of the journey itself.” We had used that as our trip philosophy. But our journey itself was becoming a grind, and my back was not getting any better. We fell asleep in clean sheets and with troubled dreams.

Trip Recap: 450 miles, 2 states: Wyoming, Montana

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My sister told me I could change settings to allow anonymous comments, which I think I just did. Sorry to anyone that wanted to comment but couldn't.

I haven't had internet or phone service for 3 days, so i'll try to catch up a bit tonight. Thanks for all the lovely emails encouraging me.

Day 4: The Trip

Man, are we ever going to see hills again? The heartland sure is flat. And by flat, I mean there is nothing to stop wind from whipping across the prairie at speeds that make the most docile folks mean tempered and irritable. Prairie grasses were bent double as we passed, and the wind was so constant and loud that our ears rang with unaccustomed silence whenever we stopped for gas. There was no respite. At all. And I do mean AT ALL.

We were absolutely powerless to explain why anyone would live in such a harsh and unforgiving land. Our best guess is that the only pioneers that settled here were stranded when the ox died. Every town should be named, “Last Breath” or “Dismal Plain” or some such moniker. Because I was on a road trip with no one to talk to, I spent miles entertaining myself by coming up with likely high school mascots for the area, like the Infinite Prairie Central High Fighting Conestogas. The Ceaseless Wind Senior High Ground Weasels. You get the idea. Post your own creations so that I may laugh over the next hundred miles.

At one gas stop, I leaned over to get something out of my saddlebag, and I felt my back give out. It has been touchy for years, but the hard miles and lack of proper rest caught up to me. The group stopped at Cabela’s to find some additional camping gear, and I headed next door to WalMart for a back support brace and some single use chemical ice packs. I bound myself up, go back on the bike, and gritted my teeth for the final 200 miles of the day. I fancied myself quite the tough girl, so a little back injury couldn’t stop me. Right? Right??

We were all listening to weatherband and local radio stations to determine if we were going to be overtaken by a tornado. Winds were 40 to 60 mph. Apparently this is bad, even for South Dakotans who clearly have a high tolerance for Mother Nature-inspired misery. Unfortunately, local radio assumes you understand local counties and landmarks. A Tornado watch for north Merritt County isn’t much help to the unfortunate traveler who has no idea what county she is in.

Rain came down again, and since my rain jacket failed so spectacularly before, I went with a heavy jacket that in my experience has some rain shedding properties. I figured I would probably be soaked again, but maybe this time I would at least be warm.

Not so. Rain poured down the collar again. The rain shedding properties only applied to light rains, not the gully washers we were riding through. We had to slow to 45 mph on major highways, because it was impossible to keep the bikes up in the wind and still see through the rain. Rain splashing off vehicle tires in front of me was thrown sideways by the whipping winds for 15 feet into the ditch before landing again. The wind was simply wicked. We pressed on, our merry, insane band of hard core bikers bent forward once again into the wind. At one point, I became so punchy, that I just laughed myself silly. How ludicrous! Why would anyone ride in this? Seriously? The winds pushed at us like a playground bully. We hung on. At one point, I was truly afraid that one of us would be pushed into the ditch by a robust gust. We rode for 15 miles, and I was searching for an exit. But at the next exit, S passed it right on by. That is one tough lady, thought I.

We figured the wind (if not rationality) precluded setting up the tents that night, so we bedded down in a Super 8 at some god forsaken town in South Dakota, right next to “The Happy Chef.” We couldn’t be choosy. We found out from cable tv in the comfort of a warm, dry hotel room that we had ridden parallel to a tornado. We tried to determine if our vacation had been fun or not.

420 miles, 1 state: South Dakota. Super 8 hotel in SD

Day 4: The Chicken

We started the day with our first mechanical problem. S’s bike had a check engine light on. The oil was low, so we asked the almighty GPS to find us an auto parts store. Out of the four of us, not a single soul remembered to pack extra oil, even though we were headed out on a 10,000 mile trip.

She added oil, but the “check engine” light was still on. Before the trip, I programmed the GPS with the location of every Harley dealer in the United States and Canada. The closest one was “Roosters HD” that was located 30 miles away. How apropos.

Here’s the back story: L and her brother have this tradition of passing pack and forth a little wooden chicken. Several years ago, their mother insisted on giving this country kitchen chicken statue to L when she was visiting Florida. She was staying with her brother Robert, and she threatened to leave it with him. He gave her grief about rejecting their mother’s gift, and so when L returned home, she left the chicken behind on Robert’s shelf among some awards and knick knacks.

A couple of months later, Robert came to visit and when he left, he hid the chicken in a soup pot. She returned the favor on her next visit to him, putting it in a pocket in the pool table. For years, this chicken has been hidden in golf bags and sock drawers, under car seats and in the back of closets. The final straw was when L rode her motorcycle to Tampa to visit Robert and his family before we were heading out for our first cross country motorcycle trip. He threatened to hide it in her bike, but she told him there was no room. Robert didn’t believe her. He got up in the middle of the night to hide the chicken in her saddle bag, wrapped up in her rain suit.

Well, lemons make lemonade, and all that. We took the chicken across the US and took pictures of it at every tacky roadside attraction we could think of. It became a great conversation starter, and passers by would invariably help by pointing out local photo ops we hadn’t come across yet. For Christmas, we compiled the best photos using snapfish.com to create this fantastic coffee table book of the chicken’s journeys.

Okay, that’s a long setup, but the point is that we once again have the chicken on our trip. And having to stop at “Roosters Harley Davidson” does seem a little fortuitous. L bought a t-shirt for Robert and had it shipped to Tampa. I’ve posted a picture of the actual chicken with the shirt.

Our trip was delayed by 2 hours while S’s motorcycle was repaired. Cha-ching. Unexpected trip expense du jour.

Day 3

More flat, flat land and mile after mile of corn fields. We saw a hillside covered with goldenrod in Iowa. The highway was straight with so few turns that by the time a curve came, we’d been driving over an hour and I practically forgot how to lean into it.

We went straight down the road for 50 miles looking at dark blue sky in the distance that meant rain on the horizon. But for 50 miles, we refused to stop to put on rain gear. I’m not sure why, but all motorcycle riders hate their rain gear. We put it on at the very last minute when it is obvious there is no way to get out of it. Well, maybe I do know why. It is hot, restrictive, hard to put on over boots, tight in some places and baggy in others.

Fat raindrops started to fall, so we pulled over at the next exit at an abandoned tractor trailer truck depot. We ate lunch, MRE’s of peanut butter and crackers. To avoid eating fast food for the whole trip, we kept a cooler with lunchmeat, bread, and a bag of sugar snap peas for our first few lunches. We hadn’t restocked, and the cooler is only so large, hence the MRE’s. MRE’s are designed to last unrefrigerated for years, but the only way the foil pack of crackers was edible is if they were prepared with an extremely high PB to cracker ratio. We sat under a truck bay, happily ate the lunch of the righteous, pulled on our rain gear, and hit the road again.

The benefit of hitting a pelting rain on Day 2 of the trip is that all other rains seem like a mere inconvenience. We ended up going through a construction zone as rain again had us huddled behind our windshields. A truck went through a huge area of standing water and splashed it all over on L who was riding right in front of me. She was covered by a towering wall of grimy road water. I was scared for her for a minute, afraid she would lose all visibility and run into a concrete barrier. Then as the wall cleared, I saw her pump her fist toward the sky in absolute defiance to the gods, as if to say, “Oh really? Seriously? Bring it! Is that all you got?”

The rain cleared, and we saw our first “Scenic Overlook” sign since West Virginia. We didn’t even bother to stop. It appeared that the only overlook was a slight rise that allowed flatlanders to survey a town in a valley. Yawn. Besides, we were tired of these two states and wanted to make our daily quota of mileage. Every day was planned in detail with a particular campground reserved for our destination. There was no room at all for dallying. And for whatever reason, Mapquest and the GPS would both give us a similar mileage total for the day, but by the time we would reach the campground, our daily odometer readings would reflect an additional 40 miles or so. It was maddening to S, who had planned everything so carefully to prevent us from ever going much more than 400 miles, mainly because both K and myself have a history of back problems and can’t take high mileage. S is about the toughest woman I know and loves to ride. She could probably cover 600-700 miles a day by herself, happily. So it was a total gift of love that she planned differently just for K and I.

Our last stop before reaching the campground was at a pickup truck beside the road in Iowa selling fresh ears of corn out of the back. We picked up half a dozen ears, and headed the last 30 miles. K and I both got orthodontia as adults, and both of us got our braces off within a month of taking off for this trip. We were both thrilled with the opportunity to eat fresh corn on the cob for the first time in at least a year and a half without having to cut it off the cob.

Within a mile of the campground, I hit a bump in the road. I have a cup holder attachment on my handlebars, and the pin holding it on vibrated loose. The cup holder and the bottle of water in it both went airborne and apparently hit my little windshield bag that holds my digital camera. The camera also went airborne and all pieces landed in the middle of a two-lane road with no shoulder.

The camera was rated as waterproof and shockproof. It survived being launched from a motorcycle going 55 mph and hitting a road, but not without taking casualties. It is clearly no longer waterproof, because the metal casing is bent all to hell and back, but it still takes pictures. Cha-ching. Another unexpected trip expense to replace yet another electronic device.

Day 3 recap: 450 miles, RV campground on the river in Onawa, IA
2 states: Iowa, Nebraska,

Day 2

Day 2 was a day of flat fields and weather. We saw mile after mile of green fields, and one gorgeous patch of black eyed susans inside a highway interchange cloverleaf. Then the ominous gray clouds that had loomed for miles delivered on their promise.

We got caught in torrential downpours for over 2 hours --the kind of rain that comes down so hard that car windshield wipers can’t keep up, and cars pull over under overpasses to wait out the worst of it. When they get back on the road, they drive with their flashers, go slow, and make the best of it. In the midst of that were four bikers, hunkered down low in their seats, helmets thrust forward determinedly into the wind.

Motorcycles don’t have windshield wipers. Because of this, windshields are sized so that you can look over them. However, rain still hits your helmet and/or goggles and visibility is still poor. At one point, we all pulled of the road behind a long line of cars that had stopped on the shoulder, and we ran over to the ditch where elevation was lowest. We were truly expecting to see a funnel cloud any minute. Maybe we weren’t in Kansas yet, but a tornado with a witch on a bicycle and Toto in a basket would not have seemed out of place.

Water hit my face, drained down my neck, and poured under the collar of my “rain jacket,” soaking my t-shirt underneath and wicking down to the waistband of my jeans. I felt cold rain running down inside the arms of my jacket. But still we pressed on.

In my melancholy, I thought about how a cross country trip by motorcycle is much more sensory experience than by car. It involves all your senses instead of just sight. You start out in the morning in crisp air and feel on the verge of being cold. Then the sun rises and you warm you up. You drive by a field and smell freshly mown hay. You take a side road and smell fresh lavender. You have a panoramic view unobstructed by a car roof or door panels.

Of course, if you are going for sensory experience, you don’t get to order just all pleasant experiences. Gotta take it all, my friend: the spectacular and ecstatic along with the extremely damp. Apparently, miserly makes me philosophical. So sue me.

We pressed on until the next gas stop where we complained about the weather and thought proudly of ourselves as some truly tough bikers. I opened the pocket of my rain jacket to remove my iPod, and it poured out with about two and a half cups of rain collection. Cha-ching. The cost of the trip just went up by a replacement cost of an iPod nano.

This is probably an excellent time to mention how a modern biker travels. There was undoubtedly a simple time of Easy Rider, with a couple of badass guys on bikes with minimal gear. This trip is not that time. I have a GPS, and iPod, another backup iPod, a Bluetooth motorcycle helmet that transmits the GPS voice to speakers in the helmet, a Bluetooth intercom system so I can talk to L in her helmet, a digital camera, a laptop to blog at campsites, and the campsites now typically provide WiFi. It is a different age, folks.

Day 2 recap: 450 miles, RV campground in Peoria, IL
2 states: Indiana, Illinois

Day 1

S spent idle time at the firehouse for the past couple of months planning the trip. She mapped out the route so that we would ride each day around 400 to 450 miles. and longer only when necessary. 500 miles per day is a long day on a motorcycle. I figured I would well-trained for this kind of time in the saddle, since my profession requires me to sit at one place, staring at a computer screen without moving and with minimal breaks for upwards of 8 to 12 hours per day.

I was wrong. Turns out, I have a 300 mile ass. I am uncomfortable and cannot find a suitable seated position for anything over 300 miles. I guess the difference is that my office chair rarely reaches 70 mph or hits potholes.

S and K met us at our house Friday morning. We had breakfast together while we still had the use of a stove and dishwasher, and we compared what we had packed. L and I packed swimsuits, 4 pairs of shorts apiece, and one blanket. S and K packed one pair of shorts between them, no swimsuits and 3 blankets. S peered into our storage and said, “We’re going to Alaska. Where are you two headed?” I said, “We’re traveling to Alaska, too, but it’s JULY.”

We got all hooked up and on the road. I was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt and leather vest. Thirty minutes from home, before we even reached the Blue Ridge mountains, I was cold and had to ask the group to pull over so I could put on a jacket. So much for the “It’s July” strategy of packing for body temperature management.

Day 1 covered roads I have driven back and forth to my home time hundreds of times. We stayed the first night at my mom’s house in Columbus, Ohio, and she fed us homemade pizza. When I was in high school, mom took a job at a local pizza parlor to help ends meet and learned the art of making pizza dough to complement her already renowned prowess for bread making.

This was not a day of “roughing it.” Staying at your mom’s house and getting a home cooked meal is about as pampered as one can get. She sent us on our way with homemade banana nut bread, little packs of keebler cookies, and hugs. I’m not sure, but I think she tucked some gas money in my pocket.

Day 1 recap: 470 miles, stayed at mom’s house.
5 states: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio

Alaska Trip Prologue

Every summer, I take an all-girl motorcycle trip for two weeks. Our little girl gang of four picks a destination, and then we figure out some way to all get the same time off. This year, our destination is so ambitious that we had to increase the vacation length to three weeks. What I did this summer on vacation 2009: rode my motorcycle from our garage in Northern Virginia to Alaska and back.

Cast of characters:

S and K are both firefighters. Their profession hints at their altruistic bent, since if your house is on fire, they are the first ones in to save your family, including Fluffy and Sox. But it goes much deeper than that. When your relationship fails in some spectacular manner and you need to move out, like, today, you call S and K. When you start an overly ambitious home improvement project that requires hacking out a retaining wall with a pick axe and you discover a buried stump that you cannot remove with middle age-softened bodies and simple hand tools, you call S and K. It occurs to me that if this is the nature of my typical phone call to them, I should expect the next time to find that their phone has been disconnected with no forwarding number.

The point is that these two should be first round draft picks for friends in your life. Three years ago when the four of us went to Sturgis, SD, we were less than one hour into the trip when we came across an RV that had overturned just minutes before. There were no emergency responders on the scene yet, so S and K said, sorry girls, vacation delayed. We have to stop.

Everyone was okay, but the three children were taken off to another area by family members while S and K stabilized the vehicle and checked out the driver. K came over to the children a little while later to calm them down. A little girl about 5 was crying from fright and uncertainty while clutching a bedraggled stuffed animal. K bandaged up her arm that had been scraped up, and in her calm, serious voice, asked, “And how’s Bear doing? Does Bear have an owie?” While the little girl solemnly nodded, K bandaged up the teddy bear’s arm in the matching location. That should tell you all you need to know about K’s character.

My partner, L, is a teacher, so she has the whole summer of. Everywhere she goes, she brings the show. She is side splittingly funny, with occasional gusts of drama that she quickly neutralizes into fodder for her own self deprecating humor.

And what’s my role? Well, I’m sure I have my charms, but I’m not exactly sure what they are. Best I can figure is that I’m an old plow horse: nothing flashy, but a solid and faithful companion who is game for anything and pulls her share of the load.

The four of us travel ridiculously well together. Usually, we cut travel expenses by sharing one room at the Hampton Inn. Sleeping four to a room requires a level of travel intimacy that is not for the meek at heart.

This year, we plan to camp 21 out of 25 days of the trip. We are staying with my family three nights and we figure there will be at least one night where the weather is too atrocious to face putting up a tent in the rain. Each pair has a little pop up camper that can be towed behind a motorcycle. It folds out into a nice tent with a king-size bed. The engineering is simply cunning, as it can be popped out and set up in about 2 minutes flat. This can even be done by a couple with a minimum amount of arguing, even when they are hot, tired, thirsty, and hungry from riding about 450 miles in a day. Truly an enthusiastic endorsement.