Well, I guess it is my turn to do some writing. I am sitting beside our tent on a beautiful sunny day in Bryce Canyon National Park listing to Jimmy Buffet while Deb has an afternoon nap. There is an occasional waft of smoke drifting through the campground. On our ride back to the campground we saw more than a little smoke from a fire a few miles to the south-west. I'm sure that the park rangers will let us know if we need to leave the area!

After leaving Portland, Deb & I rode to Lincoln City and stopped for coffee and donuts to warm-up, and saw some beautiful photos of the coast. This would turn out to be the best view we saw all day. After the chill had left us and the rain stopped we headed south on US 101 along the coast of Oregon. The highway passed through some beautiful little towns, hugged the cliffs and skirted the beaches. After more rain and fog we stopped at Seal Cave - advertised as the largest sea cave in the world. Since we were getting chilly again we decide to stop and take a look. Seal Cave is an area where sea lions seek shelter from the winter weather. There is a video we watched in the cave showing hundereds of seals, lounging, barking and generally doing seal type stuff in the cave. After watching the video, I got the camera ready for some great photo ops. Well - there was one seal in the cave sleeping on a rock. At least they told us it was a seal - at the distance we were from it, it may have been an old coat or a pile of kelp. With all the rain, camping was out for the night, so we checked into a motel late in the afternoon and hoped for better weather the next day.

We waited for the fog to lift before heading out the next morning. It did lift about 50 feet by 10:00 am and four miles south we went up a hill and right back into the fog. At least there was no rain that day! Just as we were to turn inland we broke into sunny skies and got a beautiful view of sand dunes south of Dunes City. Even with the rain and fog this was a beautiful trip which I would gladly do again. Riding east we crossed several mountain ridges, then turned south to Medford to see our old neighbors from Indianapolis. Jay & Ginny put us up at their home for a week. I did some shopping for spare parts for our trip south and we both helped Jay & Ginny get set up for an art show. Ginny is an artist and had a show the Saturday we arrived and another the following Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Medford seams to be a city in transition. Once considered industrial and not very attractive, it is now a rapidly growing city with property values increasing at more 20% in the last year. There is a lot of new home construction adding to the growth. Located in a valley, the climate has mild winters and very little precipitation year round. Who knows, maybe we'll be neighbors with Jay & Ginny again some day.

Heading east out of Medford, we climbed to higher altitudes through some twisty mountain passes then turned south from Klamath Falls to California. As we were getting ready to decide on a stopping point for the day, we crested a hill a saw a breathtaking jade-green lake. There were several campgrounds in the Lassen National Forest on the east side of the lake. After setting up our tent, we went for a walk down to the shore and saw several white pelicans.

The next day as we passed through the city of Reno a truck got between us and, because our radios were working intermittently, Deb heard me say I was getting of at the next ramp and I heard her say she was still on the interstate. As I passed the exit while turning back onto the interstate I looked back over my shoulder and saw Deb going down the off-ramp. I noted some of the surrounding landmarks, got to the next exit and headed back on side streets to look for her. The radios at that point seemed to have quit altogether. I passed a Denny's restaurant and thought it was also a good time to have lunch, but felt that finding Deb before lunch would be better than searching for her on a full stomach, so putting my personal comfort aside I went on the search. Fortunately we found each other and I got my Denny's meal shortly thereafter.

Interstate 80 just east of Reno has beautiful scenery. In an arid area where the sagebrush is hardly able to survive, we were rained on. We decided that we should promote ourselves to drought stricken areas because so far one of the most common things we've heard is, "this is the first rain we've had in over a month".

"The Loneliest Highway in America", highway 50 in Nevada was our next route. It really wasn't very lonely after all with traffic passing by every couple of minutes. We spent a night in Austin, an old mining town with a wild west feel to it. It seemed like at least half of the buildings were either bars or churches. The next morning we headed south toward the Extraterrestrial Highway. This was much more lonely than highway 50. In Nevada, the state is striped with mountain ranges that run north/south with wide flat valleys in between. When you come down out of the mountain, you see a straight road in front of you that continues for 30 miles or so to the next mountain range. This continues over and over again for many miles.

The Extraterrestrial Highway seemed like a marketing gimmick that worked because it got us to ride it. We stopped in the town of Rachel to buy a postcard at the Little A'LE'INN, a one-room restaurant/bar/casino/souvenier shop. With a population of about 72, the few we met were "interesting". The cook was playing video poker while we were there.

We wound up spending the night in the town of Caliente in eastern Nevada at a cozy little motel with hot springs.

Our next stop was Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah for two nights. The scenery was spectacular with red pillar-like rocks called hoodoos. The altitude was between 8,000 and 9,000 feet so it was very cold at night in our tent. Once again, in an arid climate, it rained and hailed as we attempted to cook our dinner. We stretched a motorcycle cover between our bikes and sat on the ground underneath to eat. The second evening we were at the rim of the canyon and watched in amazement as the rocks changed colors in the fading light.

Zion National Park was our next stop. More red rocks and canyons but the perspective was different because we rode down into the canyon and the sandstone walls rose precipitously beside us.

Looking for a warm place to spend the night turned out to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. We arrived at our destination, Hurricane, Utah only to find all of the hotel rooms booked up so we continued on to the next town on the map, Hilldale. We saw a motel sign on a building only to discover it was now a beauty shop and dentist's office. The next town on the Arizona border, Colorado City, was one of the most bizarre things we had ever seen. This town appeared to have no businesses, just large houses. There was no main street, no restaurants, no gas stations, no motels, no grocery stores. We figured it must have been a Mormon polygamist community where visits from outsiders were not encouraged. Our only choice was to continue on to the next town of Fredonia, Arizona.

The ride was phenomenal because we rode east with the setting sun at our backs that lit up the hills. We finally found a run-down looking place for $30 per night. It was a large room with cable TV and full kitchen and lots of cats, quite luxurious compared to the tent.

We camped one night at Grand Canyon National Park. The canyon is awe inspiring. It exhibits four dimensions - length, width, depth and time. Some of the exposed rock is over a billion years old. The original name for the canyon was Kaibab, the Paiute word meaning "mountain upside down".

From the Grand Canyon, we rode south through the Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona. We spent the night at a hippy campground. It appeared that most people lived here year-round in an odd assortment of converted school buses, vans and trailers. One of the residents had a place called Dug's Tiki Bar. It was area under a canopy behind a box trailer with Christmas lights strung around the perimeter, a couple of tables, a couch and plastic patio chairs. We stopped by for a drink and felt like we were transported into another world. There was a balmy breeze blowing and several of the customers could have been stand-ins for Cheech and Chong, in fact we had fun watching them play a video trivia game called BuzzTimes.

We are currently baking under the sun Tucson getting service done on the bikes before heading in to Mexico.

We stayed in London, Ontario for four busy days at David's mom's apartment. Both motorcycles had their 18,000 mile service performed at Wolf BMW and David's bike received a new rear tire. We unpacked all our bags and left quite alot of things in David's mom's storage locker. One of the things left behind was the MP3 player. Even though it would have been nice to have, it was heavy and bulky and we had too many other electronic items - laptop computer with its AC and motorcycle adapters, 2 digital cameras with their cords, two radios, two electric vests with their cords, and a battery charger. All of this would take up a side case in itself. We also left behind our jeans, taking just two pairs of lightweight synthetic pants each. While in London, we had dinner with friends one night, David's uncle Geoff (great guy) came to visit, and David's sister Rebecca and her husband Russ stayed with us one night.

We said good-bye to mum on July 28 and crossed back into the U.S. at Port Huron, Michigan. We drove straight through the state to Muskegon and caught the ferry across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a 2.5 hour trip and cost $50 each per person and $30 each per motorcycle. It was worth the money to avoid driving the interstates through Chicago, but the scenery was non-existant as the ferry departed at 11:30 pm. The following day, we started out on the interstate but ran into a traffic jam about 30 miles outside of Milwaukee so we took secondary roads to Madison. It took much longer than it should have but the Wisconsin countryside is very pretty. We stopped at Deb's sister Carol's house and helped ourselves to ice cream while she and her husband were at work and then continued on to Deb's parents' home in the north central part of Iowa about 2 miles from the tiny town of Vincent, arriving just as it was getting dark.

All of Deb's family came for the weekend, sisters Terry, Cheryl and Carol, brother Mark, brother-in-laws Billy and Jay, nieces Shelby and Abby and nephews Lane and Cal. Only her brother-in-law, John was missing :(. One day most of us walked to the cemetery on the other side of section from the farmhouse which can be seen a mile across the corn field but because we walked on the roads, it was a 2 mile journey to get there. This is where all of the relatives on Deb's dad's side of the family are buried including her sister, Lorilee. One evening we had cousins over from a near-by farm, grilled steaks and had the most delicious home grown sweet corn. After dark, we built a bonfire; Shelby brought her guitar and sang, she is such a talented singer and song writer. After everyone left on Sunday and Monday, we spent a few more days just relaxing, went in to Fort Dodge one day to check our email, and do laundry. We visited Deb's aunt Eleanor who, at 85, just moved from her house into an apartment. A reporter from the Fort Dodge Messenger came out to the farm one day and interviewed us. The story was in the paper the next day; we had a big article on page two with colored pictures, it was pretty exciting.

We left Iowa on August 4 with no specific itinerary. We knew we wanted to see the Canadian Rockies and discussed several alternative paths to get there. The best one would have taken us directly west through the Black Hills of South Dakota but our timing coincided with the Black Hills rally in Sturgis and we wanted to stay away from the crowds. We opted to take a path that would follow the Missouri river more or less. It seemed fitting since this is the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that took place from 1804-1806. In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French and President Thomas Jefferson authorized an expedition to go out and explore this new territory. Although the expedition started up the Missouri river in St. Louis, we picked up the trail in Vermillion, South Dakota. We stopped at Spirit Mound, a place that the Native Americans would not go near because of fear of little spirit beings. Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery decided to check it out and didn't find any little spirit beings but commented that "from the top of this mound we beheld a most beautiful landscape; numerous herds of buffalo were seen feeding in various directions; the plain to the north-northwest and northeast extends without interruption as far as can be seen." We climbed to the top of Spirit Mound; it is one place that one knows for certain they stood in the exact same place as the Corps of Discovery. The view is quite different now, still spectacular but lots of trees dotting the surrounding countryside where homesteads had been developed and certainly no buffalo. Our first campsite was in a recreational area along the Missouri River near Yankton, South Dakota.

The following morning, we crossed the Gavins Point Dam into Nebraska and rode west along highway 12 for several miles. The countryside is pretty there too, with glistening gold wheat fields interspersed with corn fields. After we crossed back over into South Dakota, we topped in a small town called Avon. David wanted to stop at the hardware store to get a spare key cut for his motorcycle. He already had the blank; he just needed to have it cut. We were telling the guy at the hardware store about our trip so he called the local newspaper guy who came down and interviewed us. He said he would send a copy of the article to Deb's parents so we hope he does it. That evening we stayed in a campground along the Missouri river near Pierre pronounced 'pier'), South Dakota. It had a swimming area so we were able to get cooled down after setting up the tent.

As we traveled north, it continued to get hotter. We would start earlier in the morning and stop earlier in the afternoon to avoid some of the heat. Following the Missouri River provided us with a mostly scenic trip that could have otherwise been boring if we had driven major arteries through the states of South and North Dakota. It really gave us a sense of how vast the great plains were and just how quickly the country was changed. In just 70-80 years, the area was homesteaded, the buffalo hunted to near extinction and reservations for Native Americans established. We stayed at the Abraham Lincoln State Park near Mandan, North Dakota. Fort Mandan was the place that the Corps of Discovery spent their first winter and Toussaint Charbonneau and his wife, Sacagawea, joined the expedition. The park had a wonderful interpretive center on site in an air-conditioned building so we took our time and read every placard on every exhibit. Outdoor there was a cultural festival going on but it was too hot to walk around outside to see the exhibits.

The next day brought even more heat. We cut the day short and spent a night at a small campground about 15 miles southwest of Williston, North Dakota, where it was 101 degrees as we passed through town. We arrived at the campground at around 2:00 pm and quickly dove into the lake to cool down. We went swimming and stayed in our bathing suits all day, then waited until 9:00pm to pitch the tent. We learned that we could not set up our tent fast enough as the mosquitoes came out in droves and attacked us and in the time it took to erect and scamper into the tent we were covered with enough mozzy bites to give the appearance that we both had chicken pox.

In eastern Montana, we were driving along a gravel road with deep loose gravel where there are three tire tracks, the middle one being used by traffic going in both directions. We were riding in the center track and Deb decided to change over to the track on the right just in case another vehicle came from the opposite direction. Her tire slid out in the loose gravel and down she went. One of the side cases partially detached, the connection in the front still held but it bent the bracket in the process. David turned around and helped her upright the bike, dug the hatchet out of the bottom of one of his side cases and beat the bracket back in to shape so the case could be reattached. Deb cried but then decided to continue on. We made it to the next town about 15 miles down the road without further incident. Afterward, Deb said she thought we should have taken a picture because the wipeout happened in a very pretty place right next to a limestone bluff. Dave wanted to, and was reaching for the camera before picking up the bike, but decided that due to Deb's frame of mind at the time it was better to put this learning experience behind them as soon as possible.

We rode to Havre, Montana but were fortunate not to have very strong crosswinds that day because our route took us directly west and other times we had ridden west for short distances we were fighting strong crosswinds out of the south. Eastern Montana was very arid and everything was various shades of brown. We didn't see anymore of the fields of sunflowers so prominent in the Dakotas. Fifteen miles south of Havre are the Bear Paw Mountains. They are a small, low mountain range but provided beautiful vistas. We wanted to stay in the Beaver Creek Park, but after driving 10 miles in to the park to get to the headquarters and finding it closed, we decided to turn around and just get a hotel room in Havre. It was a chance to do laundry and check our email for the first time since leaving Iowa.

We left Havre well rested and headed toward Great Falls, stopping in Fort Benton along the way. It is a nice little town on the Missouri with a train trestle that has been converted into a foot bridge. We had a huge lunch of Montana pot roast and we were so full that we ended up skipping dinner that night. In Great Falls, we were a bit disappointed in the falls because they had all been dammed. Rainbow Falls didn't even have any water running over it. We stayed at the KOA campground and had a site with a beautiful view but it was $34 to camp, almost the cost of a hotel! This will make us a little leary of other KOAs. That night a storm came through that started with hail then changed to rained on but we stayed dry.

It was about 150 miles to Glacier National Park from Great Falls so we took our time packing up and due to the weather being cooler we didn't have to worry about riding in the afternoon heat. We arrived at the park and found one of the last camp sites in the Rising Sun campground on the east side of the park. It was cloudy and started raining shortly after we had the tent set up. The following day, the skies had cleared and we could see mountains that were hidden in the clouds the day before. We rode the Going-to-the-Sun Road in both directions. The views of the mountains and glacial valleys were hypnotic and the best way to see them had to be from the seat of a motorcycle because of it's narrow, twisting nature. Vehicles over 21 feet in length and 8 feet wide are prohibited. It clouded up late in the afternoon and rained again all evening.

The next day everything was shrouded in cloud and rain was forecast so we wanted to move to a drier camp site, but no vacant sites opened up that day. We spent third evening in the rain and the following day a nearby camp site was vacated and we carried our tent to the sheltered site under a grove of trees, started a fire at noon that we kept going until 10:00 pm. It was so cold and damp; the high that day was about 50 degrees. The nights were frigid, down to 33 degrees. One evening we met an interesting fellow named Tom from California on his way back from a trip to Alaska in his van with a 250 cc motorcycle strapped to the back and a cat named Luke that rides on the motorcycle with him! Dave stayed up late talking with Tom about motorcycles, travel and theology. Tom is a theology professor and amateur inventor.

After three nights at Rising Sun, we moved to Many Glacier campground also on the east side of park with many more spectacular views. We spent two days hiking up to lakes and waterfalls and weather was cool and sunny, perfect hiking weather.

After leaving the campground, we drove north on the east side of the park, crossing into Alberta, Canada at the Chief Mountain crossing.

Deb's last day at work was July 6, David's was June 30. We had to be out of our house by noon on July 8. After months of selling, packing and giving things away we finally saw the end in sight. On Thursday, the house was nearly empty so David was doing some final maintenance on the bikes. While attempting to lubricate the clutch cable on Deb's bike, he found the adjuster screw had seized and then broke. He put it back together and thought it would work until we got to Canada where he could get a part from the BMW dealer in London, Ontario. We returned to cleaning out the house. On Friday morning, David was moving the motorcycles from our driveway to the neighbor's driveway next door, about 20 feet away. He discovered that Deb's bike wasn't roadworthy and we had to order a part from the BMW dealer in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the last items we sold was Deb's car - to the neighbor. They let us keep our motorcycles in their garage overnight and take the car over to Dan and Lynn's house with whom we had already made arrangements to stay. The next morning we drove to Cincinnati to pick up the part and were back in Indianapolis by noon. David had the motorcycle repaired and we were ready to leave by early afternoon. Several of the neighbors stopped by to see us off. Deb was a little nervous with an audience considering she hadn't ridden the motorcycle fully loaded yet. We took two laps around the neighborhood and honked at everyone then left. We feel very fortunate to have had such wonderful neighbors for the past 13 years.

Our first stop was the other side of Indianapolis, about 15 miles from home. We stayed with friends Cindy and Sam on Saturday night and we had a wonderful feast with crab cakes, grilled steaks and homemade pies. The next morning it was another feast with pancakes, omelets and watermelon. We didn't know how it would be before we had another home cooked meal so we really appreciated their generosity.

On Sunday morning, we returned to Dan and Lynn's because we had dropped things off at their house while we still had the car and had to figure out how to fit everything on our motorcycles. We threw some things out and finally crammed everything we could onto the two heavily loaded motorcycles and left Indianapolis.

Our next destination was Handy Camp at Camp Woodsmoke, about 70 miles southeast of Indianapolis. This is a summer camp for developmentally disabled adults at which we had been volunteering for the past 6 years. There were 32 campers and about 50 other volunteers present, they were companions, cabin moms and dads, summer interns, kitchen crew, woodcrafts, the nurse, etc. Deb was an assistant camp director and cabin mom and Dave was the head cook, something he had never done before. No one starved to death although there were an unusually large number of peanut butter sandwiches ordered in lieu of the meal. It was an incredible week as always. Among the campers were many of our closest friends that we saw on a weekly basis through a Friendship Bible study program. They were what kept us on an even keel, teaching us that there is much pleasure in the littlest things in life, that it is ok to be vulnerable and never take anything too seriously. We don't know how we will manage without them. The campers each had a companion assigned to them, most of which were teenagers. The companions stuck beside their campers day and night for five days and saw to their every need. It never ceases to amaze us at how these teenagers live up to the challenges and exceed our expectations. The combination of the enthusiasm of the campers and the energy of the teens made it a really fun week. It was hard to say good-bye on Saturday when everyone went home.

We stayed at camp for part of the second week. This time we were kitchen crew but still managed to spend some time with the campers. One day, Dave borrowed a bicycle to go down to the caretaker's house and wiped out, injuring his shoulder and getting road rash on the right side of his body. I borrowed a car from one of the summer interns and took him to an immediate care clinic. The doctor checked him over and said she there was a very slim chance that anything was broken and sent us on our way. This happened two days before we were supposed to leave. He was still in great pain on Thursday morning but said he could ride. Several of the camp leaders were there to see us off and Pastor Paul said an emotional prayer for us and off we went.

The morning ride was very pleasant with cool temperatures and a deserted, winding road along a riverbank. By lunchtime it was hot and we stopped for lunch in Farmland, Indiana hoping for relief from the heat but the restaurant was not air conditioned. We continued on all afternoon in the scorching heat, finally arriving in Lima, Ohio for the International BMW motorcyle rally. To our surprise, even though it was only Thursday, 4,300 people had already registered and nearly every square inch of grass was covered with either a tent or a motorcycle. We searched until we found a spot at the base of an electric pole with a large huge transformer. After giving it considerable thought, we decided to keep looking and eventually pitched our tent right next to a picnic shelter. By the time we were finished setting up camp, Deb was in a foul mood and announced 'I just want to leave', in front of all of our new camping neighbors. After dinner we heard that a thunderstorm with wind gusts up to 85 miles an hour was headed our way. We scrambled to get the tent staked down and the rain fly put up. It got very windy and rained horizontally. The picnic shelter was crammed with people but most ended up getting wet anyway. It was kind of a bonding experience. The rest of the evening was very pleasant. On Friday morning, as Chain Gang members, we sold 50-50 tickets to raise money for a local children's shelter. The BMW riders were very generous and the prize for the noon drawing was over $1300.

We packed up and left the rally on Saturday morning. David's shoulder was still causing a great deal of pain so we stopped after 30 miles at the hospital in Findlay, Ohio and this time he had x-rays taken. The diagnosis was the same, no broken bones or dislocation, just a severe contusion. Since we hadn't got much sleep at the rally, we rode another 40 miles to Toledo and got a hotel room. It was the first time in over two weeks that we slept in a real bed with sheets and real pillows and it felt wonderful.

On Sunday, we awoke to a forecast of rain and severe thunderstorms. It wasn't raining in Toledo so we packed up and got on the road. Just as we pulled off the highway for breakfast, it started to rain. We stayed inside for about an hour and then continued on after it stopped raining. We must have been at the back end of the front because it was very windy the rest of the day. At one point we were in Pontiac, Michigan and planning to go north toward Lapeer but somehow missed a turn and ended up further east in Flint. We were annoyed but got on interstate 69 and made up the time pretty quickly. Just as we were getting ready to pay the toll for the bridge into Canada, a car behind us honked. Yea, yea, we're moving as fast as we can. It honked again. It turned out to be our friends Dan and Lynn from Indianapolis! How exciting. We just about got blown off the Bluewater bridge by the strong winds but after crossing through customs, we pulled over to the side of the road and hugged each other and took pictures. They were on they're way north to Kincardin and we were going east to London so we didn't stay long. It was our first border crossing of our trip and a very happy one indeed!