Northern Ride – Planning

Trip to Boise and Back

On August 8th, I’m heading out to Boise for my first really lengthy motorcycle ride.

Mostly I commute on my Harley but I’ve done some lengthy rides. My first long distance ride was on my Honda 360 back in the 70’s. I rode to a gaming convention in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t all that long a ride, probably all of 4 hours but I was hating life after the ride. So much so that I cut short my stay.

These past couple of years though I’ve really been hitting the road which includes a trip to Daytona (2000 miles in 4 days round trip) and a trip to Deal’s Gap (1200 miles in 2 1/2 days) so it looks like I can handle around 400 miles in a day and maybe even 500 with some planning.

For this trip, it’s going to be around 2700 miles to Boise so I’m planning on 7 days for the ride. I have to be in Boise not later than Friday the 15th.

See The Route To Boise for the mapquest maps (stupid site) and some brief info.

For the return trip I’ll be heading to The Great White North. That’s right, a trip through Canada. Basically around The Great Lakes and then south home. That’s going to be around 3000 miles.

With side trips and lolly-gagging along, I expect to be home sometime on the 24th although I’d like to be home on the 23rd.

In planning this trip, I intend on hitting camp grounds at least two out of every three days. To save money but also to enjoy the outdoors.

I’ve been poking around the ‘net looking for equipment and lists of suggested stuff to bring along. There are some interesting items such as Microwave Ovens.

I’ve compiled and condensed the lists into these pages. While I’ve removed the duplicates and things I won’t be too hard up without (after all, I’m not conquering the wilderness; there’ll be a Wal*Mart everywhere, I just don’t want to have to stop and buy things all the time), I may still reduce the load a bit depending on how this weekend (the 2nd of August) ride with the proposed load goes.

Anyway, I’ll be adding information below either from the road (unlikely) or at each end of the trip since they have a computer.

One of the things I was planning on was to take a few pictures at minimum every hour. Especially at Sturgis and the surrounding countryside.

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