"The route. Each color represents a different day"
"Josh and the KTM 450 on top of Gooseberry Mesa, Utah"
For those of you who know me well, you know that I love things with 2 wheels, primarily peddle bikes both road and mountain. So several years ago, I set myself this goal of riding my peddle bike from my house in Park City, Utah to Rockville, Utah. Why Rockville? Several reasons. The destination is located at the very bottom of the state and Park City is located relatively close to the top. Rockville has always had special meaning in my life since this is the location of a beautifully restored old pioneer era home which my dear Grandma and Grandpa Simmons restored back in the 1970s. As a child, I spent many weeks and weekends down there with them. As a huge fan of Utah geography, I really feel like I owe most of this to them (my grandparents) as they had this home in such a beautiful part of the state next to Zion National Park. Grandpa also used to drive old highway 89 to Rockville and come in through the east entrance to the park. This also gave him the opportunity to stop at every branch of Zions Bank along the way and say hello. Let's just say, a drive to Rockville could take 12 hours.
So I set myself this goal to ride my bike to Rockville, but recently decided against it only because biking on I-15 is illegal and highway 89 is scary enough to drive let alone ride a bike down the shoulder full of rumble strips. So I reverted to plan B, outfit my motorcyle with the appropriate gear to make a multi-day trip. In planning the trip with my good friend Van, we decided we would stick to either scenic backways, dirt roads, or established ATV trails and routes. We would only ride pavement when necessary to get to a trailhead or turnoff. Turns out we created a 700 mile route from Park City to St. George (via Rockville).
You would be surprised how many little secret roads and trails this state is full of. In fact, after planning the route for this journey, I realized one could easily cross the entire country in either direction, east, west, north or south and probably stay off major highways and roads 95 percent of the way. (let's just say such a trip has not yet been ruled out :)).
So we started planning this trip right at the beginning of the summer. We decided we would ride all the way to Rockville via the west part of the state and return back home via the eastern part of the state. This would mean the trip down would consist of mostly mountainous terrain and high mountain passes. Then the trip home would cover the better part of Utah's sandstone and red rock country, riding primarily along Lake Powell's western shore and then heading north into the famous San Rafael swell, perhaps Utah's most rugged and remote country! So using google earth, sophisticated GPS mapping software, a Utah recreational atlas and many trail maps compliments of the BLM and US Forest service, the project of mapping our route began. We planned the itinerary and loaded every single mile of the path into our GPS computer which we mounted on our motorcycles. This would make navigation and mileage calculation between fuel stops safe and easy.
\"The KTM Cockpit"
As many of you know, I am sort of a tech geek. Of course everyone who knows us thought we would perish, get lost, crash or simply die of exposure, so I decided to use a little program on my iPhone which would send our GPS coordinates, altitude, and speed every 15 seconds to the internet. This way, anyone who cared about us or perhaps loves us could constantly track our position on a website I created. This little tool proved itself very effective and useful. You would be surprised how many co-workers, family and friends spent the weekend watching our position on the web. Allison called me the first day of riding and said, "hey, I saw you on the google map going 60 MPH @ 10,500 feet!". Now how cool is that :-)
Click here to read about day 1 of the trip
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