Most of my family and friends have emailed me asking for details of the trip after I left their homes.

I figured that I should sit down and try and put into writing what was accomplished during my month long motorcycle ride around the country. If I don’t do it now I will have forgotten most of the details. Everybody expresses surprise when they find out that I made the trip alone. I ride my bike because I like to expose myself to the elements, may they be good or bad. This is hard to describe to someone who has never ridden a bike. The riding experience includes danger and discomfort, as well as pleasure and confidence from beating the odds. I ride with other riders on short trips around California, but who would want to wonder around the country stopping at friends and relatives houses and spending hours in city halls, libraries and genealogy societies around the country. Besides, only one person, on this trip, had to make the directional decision at the intersection.

I‘ll try not to bore you with too many, "And then I went to…" sentences in my daily log. I am riding my 1997 BMW R1100RT M/C starting with 67K on the odometer. Russ Drake

I started seeing a lot of Harley Davidson’s coming from the opposite direction. Gas in Barstow and lunch, I saw more Harleys. I finally figured out that the Laughlin Run was just finishing up in the Nevada border town of Laughlin. On to Needles, more Harleys. There were bikes and people riding in every form of dress, from full leathers to no shirt and a shorty helmet. I thought about the bees I had just passed. Half of the Harleys were on the road and the others were on trailers, motor homes, and large buses. These guys have lots of spending money.

Spent the first night in Kingman, AZ after a 632 mile day.

April 28: This morning started off cold. Thank goodness for the electric coat and handgrips. I didn’t put my long underwear on since I thought my leather pants would be warm enough. Wrong! I later wished I had. Somewhere between Williams and Flagstaff I think my butt froze (maybe it was just getting numb from the long hours in the saddle).

Hwy. 40, and interstates in general, can get pretty boring, but I kept myself occupied by looking at the geological formations in AZ and NM. I would also read the names of the semi trucks and check out the cargo on the flatbeds (anything to keep my mind occupied).

Road kill was also something that became very apparent as I made my way along the highway. You could always figure out how long it had been on the road by the distance in which you could start to smell it. Smells, ya take the good with the bad.

Since I was only flopping down for the night, I did not need a resort motel, so I looked for the older part of town and a 50’s vintage motel. These usually turned out to be owned by a person of Eastern Indian descent, with the thick smell of curry coming from behind the lobby.

After 713 miles, the town of Tucumcari, NM was my stop for the 2^nd night. The Deluxe Motel looked clean enough at $18.95 a night, and except for the 2 inch roaches in the bath tub the next morning, was acceptable.

April 29 & 30: Up early and cross over the line into Texas and a time change. In Amarillo I headed southeast to Fort Worth and a visit with my cousin Alan and his wife Linda. At this point, the bike needed an oil change. I had brought oil and a filter with me, so a quick pit stop was all that was required. Day 3 turned out to be a 457 mile short jaunt.

We caught up on the family news over a great Mexican meal. Alan works for American Airlines, so the next day I got a guided tour of American’s large maintenance base. It was very interesting to walk through a Boeing 777 and 747 in various stages of disassembly.

Back on the road again after lunch I breezed through Dallas traffic and up to Lonoke, Arkansas, where I found another no-tell motel and a KFC dinner. 418 miles for day 4.

May 1: The clouds were looking interesting this morning as I head east to Memphis, TN. Traffic was heavy, I guess, for Memphis during morning rush hour. It was just a pleasant drive for us in the Bay Area. What wimps! Everything is green and the rivers are running swift and high. All the way through Nashville and Knoxville, TN and the first rain looms in the distance. Off the bike and into my rain pants and gloves. Just down the road moderate rain hits me for about 2 miles. No more rain as I pull into Motel 6 at Newport, TN near the North Carolina state line. After a nice meal at a Shoney’s, I turn on the weather channel and find out that there is a tornado watch for some of the counties in TN. Of course I don’t know which county I’m in! Out with the maps and find out that the counties are in the western part of the state. Whew, I can sleep peacefully. A 568 mile ride for day 5.

May 2-4: The bike gets packed quickly and I head into NC to try and miss the weather. The road from Newport, TN to Ashville, NC is a twisty, divided, four lane highway that snakes down a beautiful pass, through steep canyon walls. The only problem is that the speed limit is 55. I just couldn’t contain myself, and 80 mph felt much better. About half way to Ashville my radar detector started to beep. On the brakes down to 55, and sure enough around the corner was a smoky in the middle of the divider. I looked at him, he looked at me and I just imagined what he was thinking: "What is a motorcycle like that doing 55 on this great road, on a morning with no traffic?" The wonderful world of electronics, I resume my comfortable pace.

All the way across NC through Hickory, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro and into Raleigh where I cut down to my friends Greg and Carol Gabent, whose house is located in New Bern, NC. Both Greg and Carol used to work with me at the Navy base in Alameda and were relocated during base closure around 1994. He works for the Navy at MCAS Cherry Point and she works for US Airways in New Bern. 456 miles for the day.

We spent the weekend washing the bike, doing dirty clothes, and catching up on friends and family. A guided tour of New Bern, North Carolina’s old town and houses was the highlight for Sunday. The Blue Angels were putting on a show at the Marine Air Base as we came across the river by ferry after a great meal.

May 5: I had always heard and read a lot about the birthplace of aviation, Kitty Hawk, NC. I figured that since I was so close and because it was the one hundredth anniversary of flight, a stop was mandatory. The Nags head, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk area is part of the outer banks of NC. All along the beaches were condos, fast food restaurants and souvenir stores. I couldn’t imagine trying to fly a homemade plane there nowadays. I was looking for the national park on the beach side of the highway, but the sign said to the west. I asked the ranger lady why the site was so far inland. She said "The wind had moved the hill inland and the ocean had deposited more sand on the beaches, so the site does not look like the pictures of the original flight in 1903." I walked up to the top of Kill Devil Hill and took some pictures. From the monument you can look down at the markers that note the distance of the first four flights. The museum was closed for renovation for the big celebration December 17, 2003.

Back on the road and I crossed over into Virginia. Spent the night in Suffolk, VA, 348 miles for day 9.

May 6: The main reason (excuse) for this ride was to try and find out more about my Drake family in the early days. Everything pointed to my oldest ancestor, Robert Drake being born in Petersburg, Virginia in 1775, but I had no hard proof to back up that myth. There is documentation of the fact that Robert Drake, his wife and four boys, along with Richard C. Mendenhall his wife, and Joshua Bennett, wife and three children, made the trek from Jefferson and Frederick Counties, VA to Zanesville, OH, in 1816. The problem was the two Petersburg’s in Virginia (one is now in W. V.) are not near either of these two counties.

Six months ago I had submitted a specimen for DNA analysis; the results sort of matched other Drakes that lived around the Isle of Wight County in VA. So I wandered around the Isle of Wight Co. looking at many of the sights that were noted in "Now in Our Fourth Century: Some American Families", by Paul Drake, J.D., published in 1994.

Roads in this area are just made for motorcycling: curvy, lots of greenery, little traffic and well preserved houses. I just got a glance of a road sign that says Nansemond Road (Indian name), but my mind thought that I saw "Nanosecond" and I am thinking it was a pretty high tech name for a road out here in the country.

I received an excellent tour of the oldest existing church (circa 1632) of English foundation in America, St. Luke’s in Smithfield, VA. The old courthouse is another treasure that still stands in downtown Smithfield. I wandered down to the county seat, the town of Isle of Wight, to look in the modern courthouse for records. There were lots of Drakes but none of them that I could fit to my tree.

Next stop was Richmond, VA, and the local library. The lady behind the information desk said that I should try and work with the local genealogy people in Jefferson and Frederick, Co. and gave me a listing for several of them. I was getting frustrated at this point, thinking that I’m never going to find anything of substance, about Robert, on this trip. The off and on rain did not help matters. I spent the night in Fredericksburg, VA. With all the research that day, the mileage total is only 181 miles.

May 7: It was my daughter Trisha’s birthday. Sadly I was 3000 miles away, so I called her and woke her up at 6:00 am to wish her a happy birthday. Many times when I have been traveling I would miss my other daughter, Angela’s birthday so I usually make one or the other sore at me.

Moving up I-95, I felt like a fish swimming upstream with all the commuters heading for Washington, DC. I saw the exit to Quantico, VA Marine Base and figured, why not see what the place looks like now. I was stationed there for 3 months in 1966-67, attending a school on how to repair heavy artillery for the Marines. I thought for sure that the Marine guard would stop me at the gate, but he just waved me on by. The base looked very different as I drove around: so much new construction, I couldn’t even be sure that I had found my old barracks building. Back on I-95 I took the next exit heading west towards Winchester, West Virginia.

Now that I was in Frederick Co., VA, the rest of the afternoon was spent in the City of Winchester’s courthouse and the Handley Regional Library. A cute little town -- has a town square around the courthouse and a closed off street with lots of old, restored shops and espresso bars. Unfortunately no information on birth or death records was available before 1853 -- way too late for my family. They did have some land transactions dating back to 1743 and marriage info dating from 1782 and I copied all of the entries for Drake, Mendenhall, or Bennett, down on my notepad.

It’s getting late so I began my search for the best motel rates in town. A sign that caught my eye said "Best rates in town, American owned". The room that was shown to me was quite small, dark and smelled like cleaning fluid. The desk clerk had to whack the side of the TV to make it work properly. I refused the room (a first for me) and headed down the road. I found a nice motel owned by a family of Eastern decent. The room was large, clean, smelled good and cost less then the previous place. So much for American owned!

With lots of maps spread out over the hotel bed, it was decision time. I still had lots of research to do in Ohio, and the days were counting down. I decided to head west after I finished my work in West Virginia the next day. I would have to eliminate my sprint up to New Jersey and save the research on my Mom’s family for another trip (is this an excuse for another trip?). Short riding day today, 133 miles.

May 8: This morning I traveled over to Charles Town, Jefferson Co., WV to continue my pursuit of the trail of Robert Drake. The weather was looking bad so I headed into the courthouse to look for documents. After about 10 min. of research, the lights went out in the whole building. Out to the bike to retrieve my flashlight, (it was pouring with rain) and back to work. Lots of Mendenhall family information, but no Drakes.

The next stop was Martinsburg, WV where I found that the Berkeley County Courthouse has nothing on births/deaths before 1865. I wrote down the marriage and Will information on Mendenhall Wills and marriages, but there was nothing on Drake. The county workers suggested that I go a couple of blocks away to the Belle Boyd House, home to the Berkeley County Historical Society and museum. Here I met a Mr. Don C. Wood, genealogist and historian for Martinsburg, WV. He asked me what families I was researching. When I mentioned Mendenhall, he said "Yes I know that family name -- in fact there is a fort up the street named after the family". I asked him if he knew where the town of Petersburg was located. He said that the town had disappeared many years before, but that it was located in this area at one time. Aha! At last I know where Robert came from. Don copied several old Mendenhall Will records for me.

After driving by the Mendenhall fort (small and not much left), it was back on the road and heading north, crossing the Potomac River. Into Maryland I followed I-68 through Cumberland then branched off and headed north again into Pennsylvania. I spent the night in Uniontown, PA after just 218 miles.

May 9: Leaving Uniontown, PA, the sky looked really bad, with dark, low black clouds. It was time to put on the rain pants and gloves. My jacket and boots are rain resistant, but my leather pants and leather gloves are not, so they needed to be covered with rainproof covers. I hit rain just before getting on I-70. At first it was just rain, and then it started pouring, with even small hail at one point. The semi trucks were no help at all. A faster line of trucks tried to pass those in the slow lane, then all of them hit a hill and none of them could pass each other. The rain was blowing off of the trucks so hard that the visibility and buffeting became almost impossible to continue riding. I dealt with this weather all the way through Wheeling, WV and into Zanesville, Ohio. It was still early in the day, but I didn’t care and headed for the Deluxe motel in Hebron, OH -- a place that I had stayed at during one of my previous trips (there is a little alcove where my bike fits into just like a garage). After slogging in and taking off my rain gear, I found out that I had a leak in my rain jacket. A dinner plate-sized wet spot soaked my T-shirt. Somehow the rain dripped off of my helmet and was driven into the neck area and down into my shirt.

It was Friday, so I headed for Zanesville, OH and tried to get in as much research as possible before the weekend. I wrote down all of the Drake and Mendenhall listings for deeds, marriages, deaths and births. It was back to the motel in the rain with a stack of documents after a day of 247 miles.

May 10: Spent the whole day in the John McIntire library in Zanesville, OH. The lady in the genealogy section was a great help and I made copies of wills and articles from history books about the families.

In the book "Past and Present of Muskingum County", J. Hope Sutor (1905), explains in some detail how the first settlers cleared the land, built their houses, dealt with the Indians and started farming this fertile land. It seems that the Bennett’s, Mendenhalls and Drakes were some of the first settlers in Jackson Township, Muskingum County, OH. Joshua Bennett built the first frame building. The Mendenhalls built the first saw and grist mill. The record book says that the settlers had to "cut and blaze their way through the woods a good part of the distance between Zanesville, and this neighborhood, taking two days to travel sixteen miles. A vacant cabin on the site and their covered wagons served as shelter until a log cabin could be built".

I never cared much for history in school: memorizing names and dates was not that interesting. Now, when I could go to the locations where my family lived, and read about their lives and how they struggled, the history came alive. I wanted to soak up all I could about what took place around the time that my family lived in the area and how they played a part in developing this part of America.

May 11: It was Sunday so I slept in and watched the weather channel. No rain today, the sun was up and it was a fine day to ride around on the back roads. Frazeyburg is the largest town in Jackson Twp. and so I drove through and around it trying to imagine what this place must have looked like in the 1820’s and 30’s. Over at the town graveyard are buried many dozens of my ancestors and their friends and neighbors.

Back at the motel, my buffet dinner tonight was across the street at the truck stop, lots of dull, tasteless cafeteria food (I think here is a good place for a plug for Hilary’s home cooked meals).

May 12: Back to Zanesville to pick up some copies that the city recorder’s office printed for me. I then headed over to Newark, the county seat for Licking County, OH. I spent the rest of the day checking for any information on my family in this area. One land transfer indicates that Robert Drake had property in Knox County, which is just above Licking and adjacent to Muskingum. This one little clue, indicating Robert’s possible location led me to make the decision to spend most of the next day in Knox County.

May 13: Up early and on the road to Mt. Vernon, OH, county seat for Knox County. A parking space awaited me right in front of the stately old city courthouse building. I looked in my pocket for change for the parking meter, but I only had 15 cents (25 cents for 2 hours, such a deal).

There were lots of Drake deed transfers, and I kept the clerks busy making copies as I looked through the many grantee/grantor books. The Records Center, containing births (1867-1908), deaths (1867-1908), marriages (1808-present) and will records (beginning in 1803), were downstairs in a large room. The lady that runs the center was very helpful and asked for my family names and gave me the indexes to all of the records.

I had struck gold! Here was the page and here was Margaret Drake’s will, from 1845, and an accounting of her assets. Now I knew for sure where they lived and died. I walked out of the courthouse with my binder filled with family papers. OH NO; I had forgotten to feed the meter. The meter maid had gotten me, and an envelope was sticking out of my seat when I returned to the bike. The instructions said to put a dollar bill into the envelope and stick it into the little red box attached to the meter. I thought I had better pay the fine or they might not allow me back into the county where my ancestors lived.

The temperature was just about perfect, so I left town to go look for the area in which Robert and Margaret lived. Jackson Township, in Knox County, is southeast of Mt. Vernon and I found some very small one lane roads on the way to the rural area. I traversed a gravel lane for about a mile and found the 80 acre section on the map. I took a few pictures of an old house and barn, even though I was not sure whether it dated back to the 1840’s. The area was very green, with gentle rolling hills and many trees near the fence lines.

Back at the motel after a very productive day of searching, I found that I had accumulated 588 miles during the 4-day stay in Hebron, OH.

May 14: I was on the road early and headed north to Toledo, OH where my cousin Gary and his wife Sue live. Just east of Columbus, OH is the town of Pickering, home to the American Motorcycle Association and the Motorcycle Hall of Fame museum. A great place to stop, but I had made the tour on my last visit. Traffic was light and I had made good time motoring up to Toledo. I was early, and my cousin was still at work. He suggested that I try a little road, just to the south called River road. The road has great twisties to ride and lots of great views of the Maumee River and expensive houses.

We caught up on family news over a great home cooked meal that Sue prepared. Later I was treated to an impressive tour of Toledo at night. There were more large churches than I had ever seen. Gary said "haven’t you ever heard of Holy Toledo", ouch! 211 miles traveled today.

May 15: It was goodbye to Gary and Sue as I headed west across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, through Chicago, heading towards Wisconsin. I made a few loops around the one way streets in Rockford, IL until I found my way west and north crossing into Monroe, Wisconsin.

Around 1845, the Drakes migrated north, probably because of the cheap, rich farmland that was available in a land that was yet to be named a state. They settled in an area south of Monroe, called Clarno and Cadiz, WI.

I stopped at a grocery store in Monroe and purchased some California wine as a gift for my new found cousins (whom I met on the genealogy web), Larry and Diane (Dink) Jones, who live in Oregon, WI, about 30 miles northeast of Monroe. I just showed up at their front door and they welcomed me into their house even though we had only just met. After the introductions, I was handed a glass of Jack Daniels (now I know we are related!), and we talked the rest of the day and through dinner about my trip and the family research I had done. When I say we are cousins, we cheat a little bit; one of the Jones girls married a Drake about 5 or 6 generations ago. As Larry and I are close in age, we hit it off well. Larry was in the Navy and I was with the Marines for a while and worked for the Navy for 30 years. He manages a fabricating facility for an upscale refrigerator company called Sub-Zero in Madison.

435 miles today from cousin Gary’s to cousin Larry’s.

May 16: It was down to Monroe (county seat of Green County) today, to mine the courthouse of family documents. Both Larry and Dink are both into genealogy so they help me dig for information. Towards the end of the day, Dink asked the woman behind the desk, where they kept the wills and other court documents before 1905. She said that the courthouse did not have room to store all the documents so they were given to a title company across the street and down a couple of doors. Here we struck gold again. I found the will for Jefferson Drake my gg-grandfather who died in 1902 and who is buried nearby. We also found commitment papers for one of my Drake relatives. Seems that in 1898 one of his sisters and his cousin tried to have him put away, but the doctors gave him a clean bill of mental health. He must have done something wrong to get them seriously pissed off at him.

May 17: Saturday we headed back down to Monroe to spend some time in the library. I found old obituaries, plot maps and biographies of my relatives. We had lunch at a place recommended by the librarian, on the town square, called Baumgartner’s. They advertise as the "Purveyors of the finest Wisconsin cheese". The librarian said that "you cannot do genealogy in Monroe and not have a beer and limburger cheese at Baumgartner’s". I had never tried limburger before but I knew of its stinking reputation. I figured, what the heck, when in Rome. Not bad cheese, maybe because it was made there fresh.

After lunch, we traveled just outside town to the cemetery where many of the Drakes and other family names are buried. The digital camera was great for documenting the headstones for dates as reference sources for my family tree.

May 18: After an intensive two weeks of family research, it was time to relax. Larry took me on a tour of Madison, WI, the state capital of Wisconsin. The college city (University of Wisconsin) is a beautiful place with two big lakes (Mendota & Monona) within the city limits. There were lots of boaters, swimmers, and walkers enjoying the recreational treasures.

We stopped at the Sub-zero factory for a private plant tour. Sub-zero makes the BMW of refrigerators for upscale private homes and commercial applications. I asked Larry what one of these cost for a home and he replied, "If you have to ask, you can’t afford it". Sub-zero just acquired the company that makes the BMW of stoves (Wolf). So later on that day when we tried to cook steaks on his Wolf barbeque, but it wouldn’t start. I bet the engineers at Wolf got a blast from Larry the next day at work!

Thanks to Larry and Dink for a great three days and putting up with their biker cousin.

May 19: I left Wisconsin in a drizzling rain, just enough moisture to be a nuisance. I was following a farmer’s pickup down a small country road when, as we passed a dairy farm, the truck threw up a whole lot of black stuff. Wet COW PIES, all over my windshield and helmet! When I stopped to get gas, just west of Monroe, I grumbled as I cleaned the smelly mess off of my helmet.

I crossed the Mississippi River at Dubuque, Iowa. I always like traveling through this little city that sits under a bluff on the banks of the Big Muddy. I headed southwest down into Iowa City and onto Highway 80 heading west. The drizzle was pretty much stopped now, with just a gray sky and a few black clouds. Through Des Moines, and into Omaha, Nebraska, traffic was light with mostly the (damn) truckers hogging the slow lane. Near Lincoln the signage on the highway was not the best and I wound up going through the city and south onto Hwy. 6 (which parallels Hwy. 80). This is a nice two lane road that passes through many small farm communities. I stopped in Friend, NE to see if I could find any indication of the Drakes that live there (one of the Drake website members has family there). This wasn’t a very big town. I cruised through Main Street and spotted a Drake body and paint shop just out of town.

The day ended at Kearney, NE after 687 miles.

May 20: This morning was very cold, and the electric jacket and heated grips were working at full blast. The bank in Kearney said 34 degrees as I got back onto 80 and headed west. My legs were a little cold, but the electric heat worked well where it was needed.

I stopped for gas in Sidney, NE and tried to limber up my stiff legs. As I was eating a Power Bar, a Harley Davidson pulled into the parking place next to me. The rider, a guy of about 70 years old, could barely get his leg off the saddle of this low bike. He must have been freezing to death just wearing a leather coat, Levi’s, leather chaps and boots. He had a shorty helmet and was wearing only glasses to cover his face. He looked over at me, and in a shaky voice said, "Say you haven’t seen a motorcycle shop around here have you?" I replied that I hadn’t. He said "The hell with these shorty helmets, if I can find a shop, I’m going to buy a warm full face model", as he eyed the cord going to my electric jacket. I told him to go inside and get himself a warm cup of coffee.

Nebraska turned into Wyoming and it started to warm up as I came down the mountains, crossing the Continental Divide after Rawlins, WY. Green River, WY looks like an inviting little town after 621 miles. As the sun went down, the various colors of the bluffs behind the town were highlighted, and I tried to imagine Indians sitting on their horses looking down at Tonto and the Lone Ranger.

May 21: Well I did not need to be in Auburn, CA until Friday for the club rally so I decided to stop in Salt Lake City, UT and do a little research. It was early in the morning and, as the Mormon Church in SLC is the Mecca for genealogists, I thought I would stop at their Family History Center, just across the square from the temple. This place is pretty intimidating for someone stopping here for the first time. Three floors of this giant building are just filled with books, microfilms, microfiche, and a mass of computers all available for your research. I only had a couple of hours, so my searching did not even scratch the surface. You really need a couple of days here to find out what is available and how to access it.

After lunch I headed west again across the vast salt flats to Wendover, UT. There was nothing to see in any direction but salt and passing cars as I drone into the sun. The map indicated that I was passing into Mountain Time, but the guy behind the motel counter said that the time does not change until west of town. A great meal in the casino topped off a day of 307 miles.

May 22: I left Wendover at about 0700, but then I was going southwest on Alt. Hwy. 93 so I gained an hour and it was only 0600. So, did I lose an hour of sleep or did I gain and hour of riding?

Hwy. 93 is a two lane road that goes on forever, through long sloping valleys and over 6,000 foot mountain passes where I could see snow topped mountains in the distance. The weather is great, somewhere in the 60’s and a clear, blue sky. I rolled into Ely, right behind a school bus. All the kids were hanging out in the back staring down at me and waving. I waved back and pulled into get gas before getting on the Loneliest Road in America, Highway 50. The Loneliest road doesn’t seem as lonely as the first time I ran this way in 1982. I passed quite a few vehicles going the other direction including one officer of the law with his radar going. Luck has it that my radar detector caught him and I was able to slow it down as I passed him. What a place to get a ticket, nothing for miles at a stretch. I wonder what he did to be assigned this beat.

Somewhere between Eureka and Austin, NV I glanced down at the map on my tankbag for a second and when I looked again, a prong horn antelope was running lickity split, just ahead of me in the other lane! He looked back at me and I think that the surprise in his eyes was as great as mine. He peeled off to the left and I slowed and moved to the right. He will have something to talk about around the campfire tonight.

At Fallon, NV, new home of the US Navy Top Gun School, I headed south on Hwy. 95 to Yerington, NV and my friends Don and Lori Langner’s place. They recently relocated from Walnut Creek, CA to their new digs called the Lazy Ass Ranch. Don and Lori worked at the Navy Base with me for many years and we have remained in touch with email and RV trips. After a great pizza feast, I retired to my room with their dog as company. Total mileage today: 462.

May 23: After Don fixed me the best breakfast burrito I have ever tasted; I headed out on the last day of my trip.

This day found me entering California and going over Hwy. 89 and Monitor Pass (8,314 ft.) through Markleeville and Luther Pass (7,740 ft.) back onto Hwy. 50 and over Echo Summit (7,382 ft.) and into Placerville, CA. After traveling on so many straight roads, for so many miles, I arrived at Hwy. 49 (the Gold Country highway) and had to re-learn how to handle corners.

I arrived at the fairgrounds in Auburn to attend the 49er Rally, put on by my club, the BMW club of N. California, in Auburn, CA.

My new bride Hilary was driving the 100+ miles from home and we decided to motel it for the rally weekend. No roach motel for her, so we found a nice place to get re-acquainted with a nice view of the pool.

May 27: It was home again after one month on the road. 7,786 trouble free miles (sounds like a commercial for BMW motorcycles), 180.87 gallons of gas (43.04 mpg average), 2/3 quart of oil used and no tickets, thanks Valentine (radar detector). It will take me two days to clean off the road grime from the bike and months to try and sort out all the family paperwork that I brought home with me.

Would I do it again? Sure! Maybe next time with a new bike???