A Ride Conceived

The seed for this ride was planted around July 26, 2013. Jim said, "This trip was in the making for almost two (2) years." At the time, we were on a ride that was named Canadian Crusisin' and had just crossed over from Edmundston, New Brunswick(Canada) to Madawaska, Maine. We went to Plourde's Harley Davidson store and learned that the store was located in the,

"most northeastern corner of the United States"

Key West, Florida, National City, California and Bellingham, Washington are the other three corners of the United States. Jim brought a Plourdes Harley Davidson shirt and it had a map of the United States on it and all of the four corners were clearly identified. At the store, we were informed about the Four Corners Park that was a few blocks from the Harley store. From there we went to the Four Corners Park. The stone marker at the park read:

"the most northeastern town of the United States, 

one of the four corners."

That same day, we rode for about 20 miles and found the beginning of Route 1 North. A historic marker in Fort Kent, Maine read:

"This site marks the beginning of the U.S. Route 1

which ends in Key West, Florida.
2,446 Original Miles.

U.S. Route 1 is the easternmost route of

main North-South United States Highway System"

We had already traveled to Key West, Florida in 2012 and took pictures with the maker there. That was the "Southernmost" part of the U.S.

The Large red, black & yellow concrete buoy marker read"

The Conch Republic

*90 miles to Cuba

The Southernmost Point

Continental U.S.A.

Key West, Florida

Home of the Sunset

At some point, Jim said that he was thinking, "We were at both ends of Route 1 and we were also at 2 of the 4 corners of the U.S. so we might as well see the other two corners. So, a seed was planted in 2013 and birth of this trip should happen very soon. We should be leaving in about 8 days or so.  There is still lots more preparation to do.

Creating A Blog

Again, I finally did it. First of all, I did not wait until the day of the ride to very quickly create this blog before running out of the door. This is my 5th travel blog, 4 of which are about the cross country motorcycle rides.  The other blog was about the 2014 - 2015 Waikiki, Hawaii vacation. It was necessary t.o take an airplane I started blogging in 2007.  For this blog, I wanted to write about some of the "before the ride stuff" and also, if possible to create something a little different, maybe better looking. Over the last few weeks, I had gone online and found several YouTube videos on how to start a blog.  I took notes as I watched in order to try ideas later. I did learn a few things, but this blog may still look similar to my other blogs. This is a free blog but there are many blog sites that will charge. There are pros and cons on using a free one. I decided to stay with this one, blogger.com which is operated by Google. Some of what I learned was: how to connect a link, how to work with the templates to expand your audience, how to make money using Google AdSense and also how to change backgrounds. I may also try to make adjustments on the width of this blog. This is exciting, I am on my way to blogging again.