Ride Reports > Dual Sport Ride Reports

The Trans-America Trail - 2014

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TN2Wheeler:
As some of you know for the last several years some MSTA buddies (Galen Diehl, Jon Duerhing, Rick Giddish, George Goad, Bill Hammonds and probably some others I've forgotten to list) and I have taken an annual motorcycle "adventure" trip. We prefer these adventures to explore remote areas and have as little pavement as possible. Last year it was down the Western Continental Divide from the Canadian border to southern WY (Pictures are here). The year before it was from eastern Tennessee to northern Maine (Canadian border again) through mostly state and national forests. In 2011 we spent about 10 days in southern CO and around Moab, UT (Pictures are here).

Which brings us to 2010 when we rode the Trans-America Motorcycle Trail   from eastern Tennessee to the New Mexico/Colorado border. From there we went on to STAR in Taos. That was 10 days and about 2500 miles. The eastern section of the TAT parallels I-40 to a large degree but after leaving TN it is about 90% unpaved. Pictures from that trip are here. When we completed that we all hoped to return to our stopping place at some point to ride the rest of the TAT to the Pacific Ocean at Port Orford, OR.

On August 29, three of us will be doing just that. Galen (PYGRYDR) and I were on the original TAT trip and we're adding Jason to our crew. We won't have quite enough days to get all the way to the Oregon coast this time either but we will carve another big chunk out of the TAT. FWIW, if Galen and I ever make it all the way to the Pacific we will have the dubious honor of having ridden completely across the continental USA on dirt roads and and jeep trails.  8)

This time the motorcycle part of the trip will be departing from Clayton, NM and ending up 8 days later close to Winnemucca, NV. That's about 1500 miles across the high passes of CO, UT and NV up to about 13,000 feet around Silverton/Telluride and then across the high deserts of UT and NV. Then we'll have a 1,300 mile return trip to Clayton on pavement. The outbound route as viewed in Google Earth is attached.

We've all been preparing our bikes and ourselves for the last few weeks. And while we don't plan to camp we do have to be prepared for spending a night out if necessary. Although it's not like being on the Serengeti or such, mechanical reliability and trail-side repairability are still very important. Help can be a very long and rugged way from a breakdown site. Jason will be riding a KTM950 Enduro, Galen, a Honda XR650L and I'll be on a Suzuki DR650.

All three of us have SPOT satellite tracking devices that will transmit our GPS coordinates via satellite to dedicated webservers in nearly real time. There is no data there now but beginning 8/29 any of you who are interested can follow our progress on Google Maps at this link.

More later...

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Brick:
Great stuff Jim... I look forward to "watching" your trip and I wish you guys well!

stevegrab:
Another big adventure to follow along with. Good luck and best wishes for a safe and fun trip. Just enough adventures and minor troubles to make it memorable, but not too much that it becomes a big pain.

PYG RYDR:
Follow our ride report here on Adventure Rider:

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=24855703#post24855703

TN2Wheeler:
Westbound and down.  Near Memphis. Spotwalla tracker is on.

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