Tully’s Second Adventure: Utah

Swedes call it resfeber, that pre-journey feeling of anticipation mixed with anxiety. I’m feeling it already, with departure still half a year away. Though Tulliver did exceptionally well on our thousand mile trip last year, I don’t have the history with him – nor the absolute confidence – that Barley and I developed over so many miles. Running into canine recalcitrance 2500 miles from home is a whole different set of issues from experiencing it a day’s ride from home. And yet, I know from my years riding with Barley that things will turn out, that when traveling with a cherished dog the goal is never a particular destination, but rather the journey itself. The British call it coddiwompling: traveling in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination. For all my extensive planning of routes over the long winters, when I finally hit the road I tend to coddiwomple…

The Rockies have a powerful way of tugging on my wanderlust!

If Tulliver and I make it all the way to Salt Lake City we’ll have a great time at the BMW Rally meeting new friends and getting reacquainted with old. Last year in Hamburg NY a few online friends who had never met in person were told to look for a big red dog in the beer tent. With his friendly demeanor and cherished orange  ball Tulliver was a big hit; that informal gathering was christened The Red Dog Saloon in his honor, and already plans are being made for another round this year. Even so, if storms, heat and humidity, or any other factors prevent us from getting that far, Tully and I will cut the trip short, find a string of nice spots in the Colorado Rockies in which to spend a week enjoying each other’s company before attending the smaller, more intimate Top of the Rockies Rally in Paonia, Colorado.

Tulliver did just fine at his first rally

I recall an enchanted evening three years ago, cuddling with Barley on the cold shoulder of Mount Rainier by the light of the stars and the burble of a nearby glacier-fed stream. Sitting next to the campfire while gently tugging Barley’s ear it dawned on me that what he and I shared – that incredible bond based on mutual love and respect – was older than time itself. Thanks to that dog I know what is possible and more importantly, how to cultivate it. I sense it flowering with Tulliver…and budding with Glenlivet. That relationship is more precious than any timeline or destination.

A bond older than time…

If conditions permit, the week between those two rallies will be spent meandering from Arches National Park in Utah all the way back to Colorado’s Front Range. Before we head for home we’ll pass through Colorado National Monument, the San Juan Mountains (including the legendary Million Dollar Highway), wander through abandoned mining towns, cross numerous high altitude passes both paved and unpaved, camp in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, and ride to the summit of Mount Evans at 14,265’.

The only plan that matters is having a good time together!

Stay tuned for updates on our training rides (once the snow melts) as we prepare for this trip. Right now, with Vermont locked up in winter’s icy grip, the bike and sidecar are being carefully dismantled, cleaned, and reassembled.

Friday, June 30th: One week remains till Tulliver and I head out on our Utah and Colorado adventure! Nothing is packed, though I believe all the pieces are present. I’d hoped to practice setting up the tent a few times before our departure, but that hasn’t happened thanks to our incredibly wet weather so far this year. As I type this, much of Vermont is under flood warnings after yesterday’s two inches of rain on top of already saturated soil. Tully’s tonneau cover has been modified with a larger zippered hatch to accommodate his much longer body. He is back to using his old memory foam mattress though, as the new bolstered version allowed him to lean out well past my comfort zone.

There is an art to packing for a trip like this, an art I’ve not yet mastered after repeated iterations. I get it right by the time the trip is over, but invariably forget the method in the year between each rally. And to be fair to myself, how things are packed varies depending on weather conditions, camping vs hoteling, whether we will be in bear country, and a few other factors.

Like heat.

While not experiencing the punishing heat wave that’s centered over parts of Arizona and New Mexico, part of our trip this year will take us through regions with highs in the high nineties or low hundreds. That’s too hot for my dog, and so I reserve the right to skip parts of our planned route and head instead for the coolness of the mountain heights. Even if it means we miss the annual family reunion that the BMW Rally represents.

That said, here is our planned route:

  • After our transit of the Midwest and Great Plains, we’ll visit the Morris Animal Foundation in Denver. These are the folks running the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, a well-designed prospective (as opposed to retrospective) study that hopefully will shed light on why so many golden retrievers are being lost to cancers.
  • The Peak-to-Peak Byway to Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Across northern Colorado to be at Flaming Gorge for sunrise
  • On to Salt Lake City via the Uinta Range and Emigrant Canyon
  • Two days at the BMW Rally at the fairgrounds in SLC
  • Capitol Reef National Park
  • Natural Bridges National Monument, Moki Dugway, Monument Valley, Valley of the Gods
  • Up Hwy 145 to Lizard Head Pass and Telluride, Colorado
  • Over to Ouray, then down US-550 to Durango, Colorado
  • US-160 to South Fork, Colorado, then Hwy 149 over Slumgullion Pass to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison
  • Over Kebler Pass between Crested Butte and Paonia to the Top of the Rockies Rally
  • Over McClure, Independence, Tennessee, Vail and Loveland Passes
  • Say goodbye to Colorado from the summit of Mt Evans, then head east
  • Visit friends in Tioga, Pennsylvania, and possibly attend the US Sidecar Rally in Corning, New York before heading for home

Remember, though, that in all my years of motorcycle travel I have yet to follow one of my carefully plotted routes!

WE RIDE UTAH AND (MOSTLY) COLORADO

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BACK TO OUR DOGS

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2010: A shakedown cruise to North Bay, Ontario

A planned week long trip not far from home (just in case!) with no goal other than to visit some old friends, see some new places, and figure out what contingencies I had neglected to address.

Vermont to North Bay, Ontario

One of the goals of this trip was to see whether I liked following a carefully researched route that was uploaded into Captain Bligh, my Garmin GPS. The advantage is that using Google Earth and ride reports from other motorcyclists I can program particular roads into my Basecamp routing software, then simply follow the spoken directions Bluetoothed into my helmet speakers. No fumbling with a map, no struggle to read road signs that in Canada are often in French, and packing more fun and scenic variety into a route than I’d be likely to find on my own. The chief disadvantage would be the loss of some spontaneity, though I always had the option of cancelling the route.

GettingReady

We set off in the rain. It became heavier as the ferry docked on the New York side of Lake Champlain, and by the time we reached the town of Malone it was torrential! There was nothing for it but to zip closed the hatch in Barley’s new cockpit cover and press on with him in the dark.

The rain slacked off as we crossed the bridge at Ogdensburg, and by the time we pulled up at the Canadian Customs portal just a few scattered drops were falling. The Canadian agent was a pretty blonde woman with bright blue eyes. She peered at the sidecar as we approached, then broke into a positively radiant smile as she noticed Barley behind the windscreen. We had a great conversation about dogs. She had an elderly golden and was dealing with her decline; I had lost several good dogs in the past few years and the recent loss of Tadcaster, my five year old soul dog, was still very fresh. We chatted for a good ten minutes as the line backed up behind us. Not one driver honked impatiently, as they must have thought we were being put through the wringer. Finally, the young woman asked if I had any weapons then waved us on with her best wishes for a fun trip.

We retraced our route of the previous year as far as Smith Falls, found a hotel and then a dog-friendly restaurant, turned in early and slept all night.

Up early as was our custom, we took a different and very scenic route northwest to the Algonquin Provincial Park, headed west to Huntsville with a couple of breaks along the way, then north to North Bay to visit our friends.

Anouk_Pups

The entire family was happily exhausted. Anouk, their Bernese Mountain Dog, had given birth to a litter of pups that night, finishing up in the wee hours of the morning. The pups were beautiful, hardly as big as their mother’s paw, squirming and squeaking as they jockeyed for a nipple.

Bear and venison sausage was the entrée for the night. Some conversation followed, but my hosts were slurring their words and clearly crying out for bed. I feigned exhaustion and turned in early, freeing them to get much needed sleep.

OntarioHay

Being from the country we tend to rise early, so by six in the morning we were on our way again. By back roads we headed north, avoiding the city traffic of Ottawa, then turned west onto the Trans-Canada Highway. It was a fairly straight and largely level route with excellent pavement, fairly decent scenery and an almost total absence of billboards. That’s a plus in my book!

NorthBay

After a few hours my GPS (named Captain Bligh after that exceptional navigator) announced that we should leave the highway in favor of a secondary road, and then a series of dirt roads. These instructions were not anticipated, but I had plenty of time so blindly followed the route transmitted into my helmet speakers via the wonder of Bluetooth. I figured if we got lost it was at least a pleasant place to be; besides, we had camping gear and enough food for a week. But Captain Bligh knew where we were, and expertly guided us to our friends’ rural home without any drama.

We had a fun visit with Charles and Charlotte, their children, dogs, chickens and rabbits. Charles and sons were avid hunters, so dinner that night was goose baked to perfection, with dessert made with raspberries we had picked in forest clearings behind their home. Yum!

Road2Charlotte

Barley got along with their two dogs – Maia, the mother of one of our other goldens; and Anouk, a Bernese Mountain Dog with oodles of personality – but didn’t really interact with them. Instead, he was hunting garter snakes along their stone retaining wall. Hunting is Barley’s form of recreation. While I carry toys for him, he is good for only a couple of retrieves before his nose guides him to a scent trail and the ball is forgotten, the hunt on. Sure enough, within half an hour he had found and killed a snake.

WE LIMP HOME

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