Advice on routes and where to stay in USA

[wader]

I'm contemplating a biking trip in the USA. Want to do a route that will take me through non touristy places, those weird and wonderful 'close community' type places etc. (i've resisted the non pc term of inbred)

Does anyone of a good route for this, a good place to hire a bike (don't think it will be economical to fly the GS there) and if staying in these places is possible/safe. Do they mind strangers pasing through!?

Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

[Droopy Dick]

From where to where?

What time of year?

What is the duration of your planned trip?

How much dosh do you plan to take?

 

[shuck raider]

Get yourself a cuppa and settle down for an hour or two to read Mike O's Inspection of the Colonies on this site, still the best travelogue on USA on the site. It's chronological so you'll need to start at the end IYNWIM

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=89

 

[slipknot]

Travel Guide to strange places in USA

Check Amazon books for The Loneliest Roads in America. I think that is the correct title. These are two lane roads replaced by interstates and will take you through many small, small towns. Some have died and others hang on. There are several routes running north/south and east/west and you can travel coast to coast and up and down the east and west coasts as well as across the middle on nothing. Miles and miles of nothing. You will find people very interested in you and your trip. You can camp free on most of the western ranches, just keep the gates closed and take your trash with you. There are motorcycle only campgrounds in the southeast, especially in the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. Great riding there and a lot of dirt roads and washed out roads for a GS. If you want a detailed list of some of the best roads send me a message and I'll put some stuff together. If you join BMWMOA, they have the Anonymous Book which lists members by phone number only, but with codes to indicate services they can offer. I've hosted one German fellow who spent several months in North America, Florida to Alaska, using this book to camp or sleep indoors, service his bike and get his picture taken with truly strange people. You will find gas is not quiet as cheap as it should be, now about 3.75$ per gallon. Walmart for very good oils at very good prices, Southwest Moto Tire for cheap tires and free UPS for two tires, anywhere in the continental US. A lot of riders have tire changing equipment and hydraulic lifts. Shop all the airlines and the airfreight companies for prices. I've heard of new routes offering really cheap freight just to fill the plane, worth the effort to try. Truck stops are good for a cheap shower on the road and the food in most of them is good. Avoid all fast food. There is always something better. Also the beer, unless you find a micro-brewery. Medium size cities will have very large alcohol stores that carry huge selections of beer, wine, etc. Either buy a radar detector or flow with the traffic. Near large cities you can cruise 80mph+. I'm assuming you've spent some time on the continent with driving on the right and are aware that when you have to execute emergency maneuver you're instincts take over and can send you into traffic. It happened to me in Wales. Beware. Also in different parts of the country and different cities the driving habits and the flow of traffic can differ from others. And very few people use turn signals in a lot of places. Drop me a line if you have specific questions.

 

[boxer]

Wader.

If you want non touristy places and weird come to Birkenhead and save yourself a packet.

If you want unforgettable then make sure you visit the national parks of the southwest.

Pick your bike up from Las Vegas after a few days R+R. Then take in Zion NP, Bryce NP. Next base yourself in Moab for Canyonlands and Arches NP. Before the returning to Las Vegas take in the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

Each to his own, but I wouldn't hire a Harley D again. I rented from Eaglerider through HC Travel.

This year flights were booked with Trailfinders and were much cheaper.

Whatever you decide I'm sure you'll have a good one.

 

[Sgt Bilco]

Ship your bike out if you are going for more than a couple of weeks. Check the HC Travel site, it`s cheaper than you think to ship to the East Coast.

I`m doing the Trans America Trail in June which takes in a lot of old time America so check out www.transamtrail.com.

You`ll be pushed to find real old school on the Wast Coast but a couple of hours out of Phoenix, LV, San Fran will find you in fantastic country.

 

[mje]

Wacky website

I found this website very useful for some weird stuff to look at:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

Only in America!

I am actually going to seek out the worlds largest ball of paint whilst I am passing Indiana in the summer!

 

[alimey4u2]

East coast, West coast, C2C, border to border, it's a big country you know ?

 

[sven]

If you want unforgettable then make sure you visit the national parks of the southwest.

Pick your bike up from Las Vegas after a few days R+R. Then take in Zion NP, Bryce NP. Next base yourself in Moab for Canyonlands and Arches NP. Before the returning to Las Vegas take in the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

That's great to hear - I've booked BMI Business Class flights (thank you Airmiles )for SWMBO and myself to LV from Manchester on 2/6/2009, returning 18/6/2009 and the national parks are top of the list

I just can't make my mind up whether to also head down to Arizona (Tombstone & the OK Corral specifically) or take in Death Valley, Yosemite and San Fransisco

Bike hire is too expensive though, so it looks like it'll be a Mazda 6 for £293 or maybe a Ford Mustang at around £500 :cool

 

[Mutley]

The 'Lost Triangle' in Northern California will certainly fit the bill

It's where the majority of the 'weed' for the hippy communities comes from and you'd also get the chance to see giant redwoods, Highway 1 and wine country

I went there and wrote about it here: http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124110

If you want to get further away from it you can rent GS's from Eaglerider as well as 4x4's with a trailer and dirt bikes

 

[Sgt Bilco]

That's great to hear - I've booked BMI Business Class flights (thank you Airmiles )for SWMBO and myself to LV from Manchester on 2/6/2009, returning 18/6/2009 and the national parks are top of the list

I just can't make my mind up whether to also head down to Arizona (Tombstone & the OK Corral specifically) or take in Death Valley, Yosemite and San Fransisco

Bike hire is too expensive though, so it looks like it'll be a Mazda 6 for £293 or maybe a Ford Mustang at around £500 :cool

I would head north to Death Valley etc. Zion and Bryce Canyons are only a few hours away and well worth the time

 

[Lamble]

I live there

I now live in the former colony and can assure you that it's not in the least bit hard to find the non-touristy places, as this is a vast country that hardly anyone bothers to travel around, preferring to fly over.
Time of year dictates a lot. For instance here in Washington State, there are times of year that you can not reach all the parts of the state, as snowy passes in the Cascades cut off the East from the West. The riding season tends to be three or four months long, unless you do the Nevada, Arizona and California thing and even then higher altitudes will see you caught out by snow (Tioga Pass Yosemite Park for instance).

Then there's the tornado corridor and that season...it all gets a bit extreme, however, I did ride across from Atlanta to Seattle, taking only back ways and missing large towns. Instead of 4k miles it ended up being 10k. 45 days and only 45 minutes of rain.
you can see the map and read about it at:

www.roughguidesintouch.com/lamble

I found everyone hospitable, even overly friendly (I'm an honourary Hells Lover, the black faction of the Hell's Angels...there's no one I know whiter than me!). Lodging is cheap, food not so much so unless you eat the chain restaurant crap..however you do get twice the amount for your money, so if you can eat the same thing twice in a day, ask them to box it.

There are places around the pan handle of Oklahoma, Texas and the Arizona and Nevada areas, where there's absolutely no one about. You can ride for an hour or so and still not have reached the point on the horizon that you saw an hour previous. It's something beyond any experience that you can get in the UK, unless you've run out of petrol and are pushing.

Take a dib into the BMWMOA site and you may find folks who will put you up for the night or provide local ride info.

If you do get as far as Washington State, then if I'm back from the Three Teas Tour, I'll be happy to have you stay and perhaps join me on the Ice Tea ride, summer 2009, following the Ice Age floods that created the scablands.

Cheers.

 

[Lamble]

I would head north to Death Valley etc. Zion and Bryce Canyons are only a few hours away and well worth the time

Yosemite, Mono Lake, Bryce, Zion and Moab.

Arizona is spectacular, but in a different way, that's not quite so impressive as the places above.
I'd get a car drive, the see if you can hire dirt bikes cheaply. Moab you certainly can. Yosemite not so sure. Try the US BMWMOA site and look at a bike swap!

 

[LiquidLAN]

That's great to hear - I've booked BMI Business Class flights (thank you Airmiles )for SWMBO and myself to LV from Manchester on 2/6/2009, returning 18/6/2009 and the national parks are top of the list

I just can't make my mind up whether to also head down to Arizona (Tombstone & the OK Corral specifically) or take in Death Valley, Yosemite and San Fransisco

Bike hire is too expensive though, so it looks like it'll be a Mazda 6 for £293 or maybe a Ford Mustang at around £500 :cool

A few friends of mine and I have been talking about a trip across the US in 2010 - as a couple of us are 40 then, still early days I guess... but I get the impression its going to stack up to be a very expensive trip if we are to hire bikes and ride across... which got me to thinking...

has anyone here got any experience of buying and selling bikes in the US? I'm wondering if we couldn't just buy them on one coast and sell them on the other? I know there will be a loss in value and other costs, but I wonder if it will be cheaper than hiring?

 

[Baz]

I hired a Goldwing from Escape Eagles with 6000 miles on it earlier this year. Picked it up in Las Vegas & dropped it off 16 days later with 3500 miles on it. Total cost to me @ £800 which included all taxes, insurances exces etc.

Not worth faffing about buying & selling IMO.

 

[Rushy]

I bought a lovely black GS over there just like my own back home for my 12 week trip because it was working out too expensive to fly mine out and back. I found it by asking around on US websites before I left.

It was a fullly kitted out used GS with loads of adventure stylee extras on it. I put around 12000 miles on it and sold it afterwards for about $3000.00USD less and needing a bloody good service and a new set of tyres. The guy I sold it to was a Seattle cop who was planning an Alaskan trip. I advertised it on some websites 2 weeks prior to my arrival in Seattle. I told people when the bike would be available and that I needed the money to help me get back home to blighty. I could have sold it five times over. I did an oil change en route and had new pads fitted but otherwise that was it. Cheaper than renting, cheaper than flying mine over PLUS I didnt put loads of miles on my UK bike devaluing it and incurring servicing/tyre costs.

I suppose it depends on how long you will be over there for.

 

[Rushy]

Sven,

I was in Vegas again in February and have a tip for you. You can see on the hotel websites how much more expensive it is to stay in LV at the weekend. After 3 nights ( Wed, Thurs, Friday) we checked out of the Venetian hired a Mustang and went to Springdale, AZ for 2 nights. It the perfect location to do Zion and Bryce as mentioned by Bilks and Lamble. We spent 1/2 a day in Zion when we arrived, left early the next day and spent the whole day in Bryce before returning to the hotel in Springdale . The next day we spent most of the day in Zion again and then drove back to LV for dinner and another 2 nights.

You could do Vegas, Bryce and Zion in the first 5 days of your trip giving you 11 days to do Death Valley , Yosemite (which is fab ) and then SF . Long drive back to Vegas tho'.

Ian

 

[Paul Rochdale]

During the summer of 2006 I shipped my bike out to New Jersey and rode 16,000 miles during the next three months to California and back - the best holiday of my life.

Have a look at the trip here and contact me if you want any advice.

http://groups.msn.com/FROMSEATOSHININGSEAANDBACK

 

[LiquidLAN]

Cheers guys! I think your right Rushy, its down to how long we are intending to go for and to be honest I'm not sure at this point... you know what these things can be like...

I'm guessing its going to be a month plus, but it's interesting to hear other people experiences... personally I'm a bit reluctant to ship my bike out and back - purely because I dont want to loose the use of it prior or after the trip.

thanks again guys, I'll keep an eye here and see what else comes up!

 

[Rushy]

You would do well to contact some BMW dealers and talk to them about a buy back deal . I was going to something similar and found Ride West BMW in Seattle very helpful . They just didnt have the right thing instock at the time. I only decided to go the the US 4 weeks before I left so didn't do a lot of planning and had already missed the closing date for the ship that my own bike would have had to leave on and flying it worked out to be too expensive. So at the last minute I turned towards buying one because my flights etc were now booked and non-transferrable.

If you are keeping the bike for one month and lets say 5,000 miles max then you might be able to do a deal losing say $1500 in the process which is about the cost of 2 weeks rental .