A plan is hatched !

It’s been quite a day today in one way or another. With the Visa issue now hopefully sorted it’s been time to get down to some serious planning. It’s exactly 8 weeks until my flight home and as the Jack London credo that I proudly display on my bike states; I will use my time!

So, where next is the question, or rather was the question. The answer soon presented itself as once Joel and I sat down with the full USA map and I started marking on it the places and things that I most wanted to see. Then Joel added a few suggestions of his own favourite places and it was just a case of joining the dots… A few calculations via Google Maps just to be sure that I wasn’t being totally bonkers and I now have the outline of the route I will be taking all nicely penned in on said map. It is by no way definitive but at least I know which direction to head when I leave my lovely friends Taz & Joel’s home town of Creston, BC; south.

As the good folks at the Porthill border crossing have told me that I can have my new visa from them, in my book it makes sense not to push my luck by crossing elsewhere. So first thing Tuesday morning will see me retracing todays route down to Bonners Ferry via Porthill. From there I will follow the first part of the scenic Selkirk Loop heading… west! Yes, I know it’s the wrong direction for Halifax but if you’ve been following this blog from the start, you really wouldn’t expect me to do things the easy way would you? I’m heading out to the west coast (again!) but this time at a rather lower latitude than in Alaska, to follow the Pacific Coast Highway down to California. I’ll probably not make it to LA as I plan to swing inland to Yosemite shortly after passing San Francisco. Then it’s into the valley of death… or more precisely, Death Valley before hitting Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon etc, etc, etc.

Not sure you'll see the projected route too clearly, but it should give an idea of where I'm heading!

The biggest problem I face is not the mileage, which is actually no more that the quickest route from Halifax to Prudhoe Bay, but what to miss out! Mount Rushmore is one of the more significant casualties, but there are literally dozens of others. As I sit here even now, looking at the map, so many iconic names just jump out at me; El Paso, Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City, the Bonneville Salt flats; the list goes on and on. One thing that is definitely reinstated is at least a part of Route 66. The overall distance I have to cover is a mere 5500 miles, according to Google but I’m reckoning it will end up closer to 7000. The most direct route back to Halifax using mainly interstates would be 3500 miles. Given that I have already done close to 15,000 miles it should be a walk in the park and hopefully, the new tyres that I recently fitted, should go the distance and I probably won’t even need to do another oil change. All I hope is that by the time I arrive back in Nova Scotia in early October, the weather hasn’t deteriorated too much