So why the 3 Flags Trip? Well, last year when we did our 4 Corners Tour, we rode a section of route 89A outside of Flagstaff that followed the Oak Creek Canyon. It was an incredible ride and, when someone told us that route 89 actually goes all the way from Canada to Mexico, we decided that this year we would ride that route - thus the 3 Flags. We even thought we would cross over into Canada from Washington and enter route 89 in Montana right from Canada.
Several things have changed since then. First of
all, crossing the border is becoming a major hassle that we would
prefer not to deal with unless we have to. Secondly it looks
like route 89 actually peters out in Congress, AZ and doesn't really go
all
the way to Mexico. Finally, on closer inspection, it appears
that some sections of route 89 either don't look very interesting or
coincide
with rides we have done multiple times before. But we didn't
have any great ideas for a new name so the song
name remains the same.
Actually we will start out on Interstate 90 since we have done most of the roads across Washington numerous times and we just road Steven's Pass and the North Cascades Highway a few weeks ago. So this time we will take Snoqualmie Pass to cross over the Cascades and will continue on through Eastern Washington. Once we get to Spokane, we will probably pick up route 2 and stay that first night around Sandpoint Idaho. The second day we will head for Glacier National Park and, after that, pick up 89 about 20 miles south of the Canadian border and head south towards Yellowstone National Park.
After that things get a little hazy. We will probably try to hit Dinosaur National Monument and Arches National Park since we haven't seen either of them and then keep heading south through Utah and into Arizona and eventually New Mexico. All in all we plan to be out about 3 weeks.
There are links below to each day of the trip. Although we will follow a similar format to last years trip, we have a few new things to try out. First of all, instead of just an image of the route, the route will be overlaid on a fully interactive Google Map. That means you will be able to zoom in on any section of the route, pan around the entire map, and do this over a street map background or a satellite image background or a hybrid view. We hope this will be more interesting. Secondly, our pictures will be geotagged - that means each picture will be tagged with the exact location where it was shot. Each picture will be indicated on the interactive map as a small pointer. Clicking on a pointer will display a thumbnail of the picture and, clicking on the thumbnail, will display a full size image of the picture. To do all this, we will be using our Garmin Forerunner 201, a Canon A620 digital camera, and a very cool program named RoboGEO. You can click on the Day 0 link below to see what this will look like and to play around with the map a little. The route is an actual ride we did a few weeks ago but the images are not from the ride. They are just sample images to show the idea.
Day 0 - 8/13/2006
Day 1 - 8/29/2006
Day 2 - 8/30/2006
Day 3 - 8/31/2006
Day 4 - 9/01/2006
Day 5 - 9/02/2006
Day 6 - 9/03/2006
Day 7 - 9/04/2006
Day 8 - 9/05/2006
Day 9 - 9/06/2006
Day 10 - 9/07/2006
Day 11 - 9/08/2006
Day 12 - 9/09/2006
Day 13 - 9/10/2006
Day 14 - 9/11/2006
Day 15 - 9/12/2006
Day 16 - 9/13/2006
Day 17 - 9/14/2006
Statistics and Wrapup
2000
- Sturgis
2001
- Kartwheels Across America