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No not that LA - this LA. We're heading to Louisiana. As many of you know, we have now visited 47 of the 48 contiguous states by motorcycle. The only state we're missing is Louisana. We planned to hit Louisiana in 2005 on our Four Corner's Trip but had to by-pass it becaues we got there just as Hurricane Katrina passed through. All the roads were closed and, even if we could have gotten through, gas was hard to come by and motel rooms were completely full. Even staying well north of Louisian we still found many motels nearly full with refugees from the storm and many gas stations had only one grade of gas and were limiting consumption.
We don't have any special plans for Louisiana other than to visit New Orleans and probably take in the sights and sounds of the French Quarter. Of course, we'll also stop if we come across anything else that interests us along the way. We're not even sure of the route yet, we'll probably just plan it day to day depending on the weather and if there's anything we want to see along the way. We'll especially keep our eyes open for any National Parks we haven't visited - especiall since we are both 62 now and can get our National Parks Senior Pass.
I feel like we're pretty well prepared this year. We just had a very nice visit with my sister and her husband who were visiting from Pennsylvania. They drove here, stayed a few days, did a 9 day cruise to Alaska, and then stayed for a couple more nights before heading out for the drive home. The 9 days gave me plenty of time to finish the entertainment center I have been working on for Mike and Karin and then doing a full service on the Goldwing. I did just about everything from changing the oil and filter, to new brakes all the way around, and even replacing clutch and brake fluid. Should be good for many more miles. The only thing we may have to do during the trip is a new front tire - maybe we can work that in with an oil change in either Cleveland or Chicago. Oh yeah, after Louisiana we're heading north for a few days to visit the folks.
Not sure what the weather will be like but we still have our Gerbing Heated Vests that we bought a few years ago. These are without a doubt one of the best purchases we ever made for motorcycle trips. Before purchasing them, we tried all kinds of things for the cold from added layers of clothing to scarves and neck bands but none of them really helped a lot. Now we can put on the vests, crank up the heat, and we're good to probably 40 degrees.
Like previous trips, we are planning to track our route using the new GPS data logger that I designed and built and Linda will be taking pictures using our digital camera. We'll try to post a map and the pictures each evening but I'm not sure about the running commentary - it will depend on when we get in, etc. I'm sure we will post a few comments if we encounter something really interesting but may not be as verbose as in previous years. Since the data is automatically logged, we'll probably also post elevation and temperature profiles for each days ride along with the map.
Just to refresh everyones memory, there are links below to each day of the trip with a starting and ending location for that day. Clicking on the link will take you to a page for that day with stats for the day, an interactive map, and pictures for the day. 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, a satellite image background, or a hybrid view. The map also incorporates a few new features this year. You can double click on a spot to center and zoom in on that spot and you can also use a scroll wheel to zoom the map. 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. Finally there is another link below for a Trip to Date Map. We will update this each evening as well to show an interactive map of the trip to that point. To do all this, we will be using my Volt Meter/Logger, a Canon A620 digital camera, and a very cool program named RoboGEO. If we do separate web pages for a special reason like a group of pictures for a National Park, we also use Web Picture Creator. We also use Fast Stone Photo Resizer to resize the pictures for faster loading and a few other VB6 programs that I wrote to combine GPX files or extract data from the GPS files.
| Day 1 - 9/06/2009 | Everett, WA to Ontario, OR |
| Day 2 - 9/07/2009 | Ontario, Or to Nephi, UT |
| Day 3 - 9/08/2009 | Nephi,UT to Gunnison, CO |
| Day 4 - 9/09/2009 | Gunnison, CO to Dodge City, KS |
| Day 5 - 9/10/2009 | Dodge City, KS to Gainesville, TX |
| Day 6 - 9/11/2009 | Gainesville, TX to Alexandria, LA |
| Day 7 - 9/12/2009 | Alexandria, LA to New Orleans, LA |
| Day 8 - 9/13/2009 | New Orleans, LA |
| Day 9 - 9/14/2009 | New Orleans, LA to Kosciusko, MS |
| Day 10 - 9/15/2009 | Kosciusko, MS to Clarksville, TN |
| Day 11 - 9/16/2009 | Clarksville, TN to LaGrange, KY |
| Day 12 - 9/17/2009 | LaGrange, KY to Westlake, OH |
| Day 15 - 9/20/2009 | Westlake, OH to Naperville, IL |
| Day 18 - 9/23/2009 | Naperville, IL to York, NE |
| Day 19 - 9/24/2009 | York, NE to Rawlins, WY |
| Day 20 - 9/25/2009 | Rawlins, WY to Mountain Home, ID |
| Day 21 - 9/26/2009 | Mountain Home, ID to Everett, WA |