2010 SouthWest Trip

Lennie and I are currently finalizing our plans for a South West US bike trip.  We are planning on spending 20 days on the road and will cover 16 different states.  We plan to leave home on Friday, May 28th, and return back home on Wednesday, June 16th.  Current estimates show our route covering about 6500 miles.

Here are the states we plan to cover this trip (16):

Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana

One of our biking goals, is to cover every one of the lower 48 states.  Last year, we went out west, and took a northerly route through the Dakotas, so this year we wanted to take a more southerly route down across Texas and Oklahoma.

We would also like to hit every National Park in the lower 48 states.  There are currently 58 National Parks in the US, with 46 of those being in the lower 48 states.  We will hit 7 of those National Parks (listed below), along with a number of National Monuments.

National Parks this Trip (7):

Arches (UT),  Bryce Canyon (UT), Canyonlands (UT), Capitol Reef (UT), Grand Canyon (AZ), Petrified Forest (AZ), Zion (UT)

National Monuments this Trip (6):

Cedar Breaks (UT), Grand Staircase Escalante (UT), Natural Bridges (UT), Sunset Crater Volcano (AZ), White Sands (NM), Wupatki (AZ)

Last year we used a cell phone application for live tracking purposes.  It worked fairly well, but only where we had cell phone coverage.  So, this year I purchased a personal satellite rescue and tracking beacon.  It is called a Spot Tracker.  The Spot unit contains a GPS receiver, and a built in transmitter, which sends location signals to low earth orbit satellites.  This means it can be used any where in the world, and does not depend on cell phone coverage !   It also has an SOS feature, which when activated, will cause the monitoring company to send out a full blown search and rescue effort.  If they see that you are on the water (like in a sinking boat), they will send out the Coast Guard, if you are in mountainous terrain (perhaps climbing or hiking), they will send out rescue helicopters, or if you simply drive your Goldwing over the side of a cliff/mountain, they will send out ground rescue teams.  Hopefully, we will never have to use that feature.  We will always have an active page that shows our current tracking data from the Spot unit.  You can find it by looking at the "Current Location" page in the sidebar at the left.

In addition to the Spot tracker, I also performed a number of other enhancements to the bike this spring, including installing a new, better riding, rear shock, new front fork springs, and a new Garmin Zumo GPS unit.  The new GPS has XM radio, as well as animated Nexrad Radar screens built in.  This will be a big help with navigating around any foul weather we may encounter along the way.