The Elephant's Travels 2014

And so, we came back to California to find a missing Elephant. As always, our journey was short on planning and cobbled together. The start is never a thing of beauty; more a matter of tucking in as many loose ends as we can find and getting started.We escaped from Australia's gravitational pull on 8 July and spent a hectic couple of weeks in London to re-acquaint ourselves with our grandchildren Erin and Conall and, of course, their parents, Mike and Sarah. Our arrival coincided with Erin's fifth birthday with the necessary party for 25 five year olds the main attraction.

The last day of an HU meeting is always the best and worst of it. The good bit is wandering around saying goodbye to friends old and new and enjoying the glow of their warmth and understanding. The worst is wandering around saying goodbye to friends old and new with just the dim hope that you will meet again on some distant road. Still, this is not so dismal a hope as it might seem. These are not people who sit around waiting for an invitation to the party. They are out bouncing around the world like pinballs and they turn up in the most unexpected places.

Spokane Washington was a substantial and not unattractive small city but in the blistering heat of summer and with lodgings at a particularly mean hotel, we were not enticed to take a long overdue rest day. We decided to move on, studied the map for options and found a minor road that met our needs. Washington 20 runs from the Idaho border at Newport across the state to Burlington north of Seattle. It winds up and over the majestic North Cascade Mountains well away from major towns.

During the Horizons Unlimited rally at Nakusp, Jo and I attended a presentation by Ekke and Audrey on their recent travels in Japan, and South East Asia. Twice during the presentation, and much to our surprise, Ekke flashed up pictures of a piece of cake of the type we call a slice in Australia. With great delight he pointed out that he was able to find nemo bars in Japan and Cambodia at places run by ex-pat Canadians. This brought applause, cheers and a round of general approval from the mainly Canadian audience.

After a relaxing weekend in Revelstoke, we rolled out on a loopy week around the area of Canada known as the Kootenay Rockies. These were short days punctuated with sightseeing and easy rides between attractive provincial towns; short days in a land of huge distances. The reason for this idleness was simple enough, we had committed to be in the village of Nakusp BC, just 80km from Revelstoke, by Thursday to attend a Horizons Unlimited Motorcycle travellers meeting.

Roads: old, new, rough tracks, super highways, wet or dry, they are at the core of a motorcycle journey. For Team Elephant, they have an almost mystical importance. We have looked for the best mountain road in the world in the European Alps, ridden the best sweeper in the world in Morocco and hammered ourselves for days across the endless corrugations of the Amur Highway in Siberia. Without the roads there would be no journey. Without the roads there would be no Team Elephant.

So, there we were, our map spread out over the bed, our route planned out to the south through another highly educational national park and to the north east the Beartooth Highway,  recently introduced to us and reputedly the best motorcycle road in America. It would be nice  to say we agonised over the decision but that was never going to happen. We put on our cheeky grins, drew another line on the map heading generally east and two days later blasted out of Cooke City heading toward the Beartooth with a full tank of pent up energy.
 

Despite all our bravado, Team Elephant can be decidedly woosey when it comes to weather. Although we don't let our schedule be dictated by weather, and we tend to get on and do what we had planned without regard to the weather, I am often guided by some advice my father gave me as a young man. One fractious night in the bar of a country pub, when I was about to slip off the bar stool at the invitation of a local, he put his hand on my arm and said: “Son, never rush into a beating.” Forty five years later it still seems like good advice.

As a matter of principle we stay off the Interstate Freeways which are extraordinarily efficient and extraordinarily boring . For our run north to Leavenworth, however, we made an exception, found the fastest roads available and charged up through Missouri towards Kansas City. Our window of opportunity for this visit was tight but we had not seen our friends Russ and Sue for many years and we were determined not to let this opportunity pass. With an early start we were finding our way around the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas and on to Leavenworth by mid afternoon on Sunday.

Near the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway the road runs close to the small city of Asheville North Carolina. We had been hoping to get to Asheville by the weekend of 2-5  October. Our friends Ken and Carol Duval had told us about the Overland Expo East which  was to take place on a property near the town. They intended to give several presentations  over the four days and asked if we could make it. The trouble was, we were in British  Columbia at the time, about 3 000 km north west.

Within a day of leaving the Black Hills we had crossed the Missouri River. We swept onto a long causeway almost unexpectedly. It was late in the afternoon, we were in a hurry and there  was nowhere to stop and take in the scene. Jo had only a moment to snap a photo from the back of the bike. Despite all this, the event didn't pass without notice. Two days later and 1000 km due east in the state of Iowa, we crossed the Mississippi.

Imagination was all important to a boy growing up in the working class entrails of a large city.  Books were the fuel for an active imagination and I remember one in particular. It had illustrated short stories which involved much daring-do and were set in places so exotic they were fantastic. In the middle of the 20th century it was possible to imagine that headhunters  still stalked the jungle of Borneo; that there were still places undiscovered. A favourite tale was set in the American Wild West.

Charleston, Old Charleston, is a wonderfully preserved and historically important city in South  Carolina. Our friend Ian is a Charleston native and we could have had no better host for our  visit. Ian knew the history of every building in the old town. Indeed, his own house had a wonderful history. It was built from Bermuda Stone which was limestone blocks that came to South Carolina as ballast in ships. The house was also, reputedly, once the dwelling of Black Beard the notorious pirate. I think Ian was a little bemused at my delight in this small fact.

If the town of East Liverpool, on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, had little to recommend it to the casual traveller that didn't seem important as we circled the potholed streets trying to find our way out of the business centre and onto Highway 39. What had led us there was the hint of a powerful story hidden in the most mundane detail of our long transit across the cornfields of  the fertile basin.

With Elephant in need of some attention and some pressing family business at home, our 2014 travels ground to a premature end in the south western Arizona capital of Phoenix. It is here, at the tender mercies of some friends, we have stowed the bike until we are able to return and continue. If our US circuit has been shorter than we expected, it has still provided us with much to think about.

The Colorado Plateau, all 337 000 square kilometres of it, rises up roughly centred on the junction of the four states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. It was pushed up three kilometres from below a great inland sea about 75 million years ago by the same forces that formed the Rocky Mountains but, unlike the mountains, has remained geologically stable.