2011-Yellowstone

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Lennie and I have finalized our plans for a North West bike trip.  We will be spending 23 days on the road, and will visit 14 different states, and 2 Canadian Provinces.  We plan to leave home on Friday, July 1st, and return back home on Saturday, July 23rd.  Our current route plan covers roughly 6700 miles.

Here are the states and provinces we plan to visit during this trip (14 states / 2 Provinces):

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Alberta Canada, British Columbia Canada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa.  

One of our biking goals is to visit every one of the lower 48 states.  This will be our third summer taking bike trips out west.  Two years ago, we took a somewhat central route through Iowa, and South Dakota, and last year we took a more southern route through Alabama, Texas and New Mexico.  So, this year we wanted to take a northern route across North Dakota and Montana.

We would also like to visit 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 get to visit 5 National Parks (listed below), along with two National Monuments.

We will also be spending a few days in the Canadian Rockies, and will visit 3 National Parks in Canada.

National Parks in US (5):

• Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

• Glacier National Park, Montana

• Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

• Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

• Badlands National Park, South Dakota

National Parks in Canada (3):

• Banff National Park, Alberta

• Kootenay National Park, Alberta

• Yoho National Park, British Columbia

National Monuments in US (1):

• Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Montana

For the second summer, we plan to use our 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 anywhere 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 have added the ability to leave comments.  Please feel free to add comments/questions as we make our way through the trip.  You can get to the comments page by using the links at the top of our daily pages, or by choosing the "Trip Comments" page from the sidebar on the left.

Upon completion of this trip, we will have visited 36 of the lower 48 states in 3 summers on the Goldwing!  We are planning an East Coast trip later this fall that will take us through 8 additional states.  That will put us at 44 states, leaving just 4 more to visit next year!  Here is a map showing our visited states once this trip is complete.

Below is a very high level view of our trip plan...