The Finale – The Beginning

The title of this post may be a little confusing so let me try to explain. A few years ago my group of motorcycle riding friends put together a plan for a “Bucket List Trip”. The BLT was a great, detailed plan that was going to be an epic trip – about 6500 miles as I recall. As with a lot of great plans, the execution was a lot different than what we had envisioned. I am not going to tell the story of that trip here. You should just go back and read my blog posts to see what happened and how it ended. This post is about the start of planning phase of what I consider to be my “grand finale”.

Here are some of the thoughts in my head right now. It will be a solo trip in the spring of 2026. A solo trip has been rattling around in my brain for many years. It’s time to get on with it or erase it from my thoughts. This will be my last “long” two wheeled journey.

  • Highlights:
    • Thank my wife for being so supportive of this craziness
    • No more than 2 weeks (16 days maximum).
    • Avoid major cities.
    • Avoid interstate highways.
    • Have an escape plan (make a U-turn and head for the ranch option)
    • Take time to breathe and remember what motivated me to do this in the first place.

Leave Indiana and head due west to the “Great River Road” (I’ve ridden the northern and the southern portion. Both were pretty disappointing but maybe the best part is in the middle.) Ride far enough south to visit some old “river towns”. (I’m looking for the kind of places that include old buildings that once served to support the Mississippi River traffic in the days of the steamboat captains). Once I’ve had my fill of that experience or the hot weather of the Mississippi Delta, I’ll head east far enough to find the Blues Highway and head north. I’ve ridden a portion of the Blues Highway but was not satisfied with the time I spent exploring some of the roots of the blues music. This is my chance since I will be solo and don’t need to please anyone but me.

I plan to shoot lots of video and finally publish some Youtube vids of this adventure. That’s been my plan on previous adventures but I fall short in both the recording and publishing aspects. I keep going back to something a friend once told me – “nobody wants to see the home movies of your vacation except you”. That keeps playing in my head.

I did a solo trip many years ago just because. I needed to be able to scratch off some of the New England states on my quest to hit all 48 of the “lower 48”. I had no GPS, just my old trusty Rand-McNally Atlas. I made it to Portland, Maine but had problems remembering why I did this. When it got hot or rainy, I struggled with the motivation to keep going. A trip like this takes a lot of preparation including mental. Hotel chains have made my kind of planning difficult by not allowing cancellations the day of arrival. One missed day or road issue puts the entire schedule in jeopardy. I would be paying for rooms that I had no possibility of staying in.

The research (to do list):

  • Order the maps of the Great River Road and the Blues Highway.
  • Order AAA maps to help plot the course.
  • Start making hotel reservations.
  • Check my sanity for planning this at my age – er I mean maturity level.

I’ll try to post updates as I make progress on the plan or decide to scrap the whole idea. Any suggestions would be welcomed by me.

When it’s all done, I’ll still be rambling but just closer to home and maybe in a different mode of transportation.