Several of our senior members are barreling down on retirement or have already left the work force for medical reasons.

We have popped off for years about this trip or that trip "needing to wait until we are retired" and we actually had the time to do them.  

All we discovered in the intervening years is that constantly rising INSURANCE costs were keeping us from retiring and that our bodies were getting funkier and funkier and less able to do the classic long long motorcycle trip.   Several of us have bought/custom built "distance rigs" for this very reason.

We have also seen older couples riding together at Kickstand, and we see the much more casual rate at which they ride.   To them it is all about the journey, not the whacking of Hurleys and dipping of Crumpits and the plucking of Ducs.


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Proposed easy trips

These trips have no reason other than we've never been there/done that.    These are the easy trips, ones that could fit in a lengthened weekend or stretched to a lazy week's worth.

TRIP #1 --- Run the Natchez Trace Parkway all the way from top to the bottom, stop by Stone Mountain Georgia and see the mountain side Confederate sculpture before it gets defaced, screw around in New Orleans or the gulf areas for a little bit then break up and head for home.   444+ miles one way supposedly and that doubled if we ride back up it again.   Speed limit is 50 with some short sections lower because of animal life issues.   Lazy rate is a day and a half down and a day and a half back == long weekend.   It gets longer though due to travel time to get to MM's place, our logical start point.

TRIP #2 ---  Run the Blue Ridge Parkway and whatever they call the various sections of the Virginia Skyline parkway all the way up to Washington area.   Dave's steam museum is up at the top of this run and that would make for a nice turn around point.   This trip is LONGER, about 650 miles one way and the speed limits range somewhat lower too.   This smells more like a full week trip.   Start point would be Kickstand Lodge for this one with people breaking off on the return trip as they go by the turn offs to go home.

LOTSA LITTLE TRIPS   Simply ride to go see something or go to a major bike show.   These come up all the time, and some of us go and some do not.






MEGA TRIPS    Do these after at least one of the shorter trips above, breaking in the bikers and bikes to longer duty trips.

Start point would be MM's place, then heading out on secondary roads to Lancer's then going up to see Mount Rushmore and then going on over to see the giant Yellowstone caldera first hand, that huge beautiful scenic thing that will end us all eventually.    Dodge buffalo and elk crossing the road, stuff like that.  This would be a 2-3 week trip if done on bikes at a secondary road pace.

If you are interested in the Trace it always takes a lot longer than expected going 50 mph.  Also, the LEOs are relentless and speeding is not recommended.  I would recommended fitting it a portion of it to supplement a trip.


Best regards,

I really don't see any mega-trip in my immediate future.  I do however see the ability to take long weekends more often, and the ability to do it with very little advanced warning.  The trips where I leave on Wednesday night and ride all day Thur/Fri/Sat & a bit of Sunday will likely happen once a month if I can make it work.

I do want to drag the gang down to Suches, GA for a couple of days, we could begin at the Kick Stand Lodge, then go down to the Two Wheels of Suches and spend a night there and do some riding and Stewmills could meet us there - as he is only a few hours away.  They have great meals on Friday and Saturday night, good breakfast on the weekends.

Stewmills and I rode the Natchez Trace this summer and it was very pretty and it appeared to have a lot of primitive camping areas along the way that were dedicated to bicycle riders - we might be able to push the motorcycles out of sight and get away with it......or just go to the dedicated campgrounds/hotels/cabins.  The ride was very relaxing and pretty - it was not "technical" and riders of any skill level could do the trip easily.

I really don't see any Black Hills or Texas trip in my 2018 - but you never know for sure what the future holds.

Natchez trace trip has one good potential, and that is for being first trip of the year because you are riding dead south at a very low altitude you will find that the weather will tend to get warmer as you go.

Doable weather starting in Lynchburg Tenn. starts in the month of MAY, with barely tolerable lower 70's for a high and 50's for the low night temps on first week of May getting up to the 80's / 60's by the end of the month.   Early spring rains cropping up without warning is a thing with early spring, so LATER IN MAY would likely be somewhat more stable weather wise.


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A trip running straight up north running up on the very tops of the Blue Ridge mountains on the Parkway needs to key off of it being warm enough way way up on the North end of things to make it pleasant once you get there.

Having gone and looked, later on in the month of JUNE is the very earliest you would want to be riding up in Fort Royal Virginia area or higher.   You would start out balmy in NC and roll back 2 months temp wise as you rolled on up further North.  

Later in June would be relatively better than earlier.


MM, have you started a ride calendar for 2018 yet?

Here are some pics from the Trace.













Best regards,

 
Lancer, you said "Interested", but interested in which ones?  

If it was starting out at your house and going to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills then continuing on to Yellowstone Cauldera to meet up with the buffalo and the elk then maybe swinging down south a bit to do somewhere else interesting (or 3 or 4 interesting things) before going home to your house -- then PM me your phone number so we can talk.   We are the creaky ones, so we gotta plan to support each other's needs.

You see, this trip might pick up some more people on the way and mate up with Verslagen et al around wherever we actually camp at night.

You see, I have never ever gone "blubber bobbling" with the ladies in the Great Salt Lake nor have I ever been to Denver or gone deep into Mormon country.   I also got me a bit of an itch to ride my bike up Pike's Peak while we are in the neighborhood.   And I am sure there are LOTS of other things we might wanna look at or go do, but we need somebody local in the area to point them out to us.

Bucket Lists are real, and now is the time to tick us off some list items ....

Lancer, one thing right off the bat, when does it start to get miserable hot during the day in your neck of the woods?   We should go well before then, don't you think?


Use the free camping tool to click on wherever you plan to stop at and you will see free places and cheap places to stay pop up like mushrooms all around it ....   neat ain't it?

https://freecampsites.net

Mike, just use the camping tool ....    https://freecampsites.net/

We can get free stays just about anywhere, but what we really need the local Savager for is spotting all the neatest local things to do in the areas.

Lancer is gonna tell us when it starts to get hot and we are gonna go well before then, right?

Dave isn't going (unless he changes his mind) and it is you and me for right now, so the planning is kinda easy.   We get the "hot" word from Lancer, we aim about a month earlier and I show up at your house the day before we leave, or perhaps a little earlier so I can recover better from the trip to your house.

Once we get to Lancer's we rest for a day, then we roll on, catering to a pace that is comfy for old men to do (includes me of course, so I can use that term loosely) and we try to stay for free or for cheap everywhere we go.

The idea of
Retirement Trips
Is a
Theoretically good post.