Inspired by the migrating birds of spring, I thought I would take a motorcycle ride and see some of the country. It is a good way to overcome the torpor of winter and kindle wonder during the season of regeneration. Some will say it is a dangerous and uncomfortable means of getting about, as if to dismiss the entire proposition, but I have seen the occupants of cars lined bumper to bumper take in the GPS device mounted to my handlebar, the canvas bag stuffed with gear strapped to my luggage rack, and the rain dripping from my helmet; their thoughts as we idle past one another betraying the yearning that beats in every human breast, however dimly, to unshackle oneself from the dullness of routine and strike out into the wilderness of change and uncertainty. They know where I am going and wish they could join me. My idea was to cross the plains of the American West on a pilgrimage to arrive at the quiddity of this place; handicapped by the knowledge that the ploughing, grazing, dynamiting, damming, dredging, paving, clear‐cutting, canal‐building, mining, and fencing of the land done in the name of progress robbed we the people of the New World of respect for the natural order of things; aware that my surroundings would be dictated by the artifacts of those transformations; determined not to let that knowledge ruin the adventure; hopeful as are so many who go on the road that somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. Rebecca Solnit tells us that Eduardo Galeano believed America was conquered but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time.¹ Before the feral house cats have killed everything, I packed the Yamaha for a long trip and, map and camera in hand, hauled off to look for America.

Whenever I am in the neighborhood, I enjoy a stop at the Joso Viaduct at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers near Starbuck, Washington. The bridge, built by the Union Pacific Railroad, crosses the Snake River, was completed in 1914, and is 3,290 feet long. Standing beneath it as the wind rattled some loose bits of steel against one another, I took a moment to think of all the train enthusiasts who would have given much to accompany me; in its heyday, the bridge was thought to have been the highest and longest trestle in the world. Although it is over 100 years old, it remains in daily use and is a magnificent sight.

After dinner with my brother at Tomato Brothers in Clarkston, Washington, and a night in my tent at Hells Gate State Park, I was looking forward to spending the morning riding a favorite stretch of road — the one with the sign on either end reading Winding Road Next 99 Miles. U.S. Route 12 along the Clearwater and Lochsa rivers is a little‐celebrated motorcycle road that, in my estimatation, is among the greatest few hours to be had in the saddle of a bike anywhere. My enthusiasm for the ride becomes reverential as I remind myself I am in the Nez Perce nation.

In June 1877, what is known today as the Nez Perce War began between a small community of Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph, and the U.S. Army. The Nez Perce were chased out of northeast Oregon into Idaho, and on July 11–12, 1877, the Battle of the Clearwater took place south of what is today Stites. The Nez Perce successfully fought off the U.S. Army, which was led by General Oliver Howard — a Medal of Honor winner — and, hoping to find peace further east, decided to leave Idaho via the Lolo Pass.

It took nine days for the group of about 750 Nez Perce to arrive in Montana. Having made a familiar stop at a roadside shack in Orofino for a latté and muffin that did their part to get the morning off to a good start, I took off after them. The road surface was not in the best condition, but, with virtually no traffic, I was able to concentrate with ease on safely following its directions as it hewed to the anfractuous paths of the rivers.

I caught up to Chief Joseph in the Big Hole Valley of Montana, which was a seasonal home to the Nez Perce and other Native American tribes. The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, whom the Nez Perce befriended, passed through the area on both its westward and eastward marches and gave the name Wisdom to a nearby river, inspired by Thomas Jefferson and the cardinal virtues. When the town of Wisdom, Montana, was established in the 1880s, it borrowed its name from the river.² On this Sunday afternoon, the 98 residents of Wisdom were very quiet. An unseen loudspeaker mounted outside one of the businesses played a scratchy tune, barely audible despite the empty streets. The only activity was a woman from the Hook and Horn Trading Post carrying a tray of coffee drinks down the sidewalk to deliver them to the saloon a couple doors down. The gas station where I had parked to take a break was closed.

On August 9–10, 1877, the Nez Perce and U.S. Army fought the Battle of the Big Hole. The Army, led by Colonel John Gibbon, surprised the Nez Perce, who were nevertheless able to drive the U.S. forces into a defensive position and then use the advantage to evacuate their non‐combatants to the south. The Nez Perce warriors caused sufficient losses to the opposing force that immediate pursuit by the Army was not possible, and so the Nez Perce were able to withdraw from the field. I rode on, knowing I would encounter the Nez Perce again the following day.

My planned camp for the night was at Bannack State Park. Bannack was the original capital of the Montana Territory and is a well‐known ghost town. I had, however, forgotten my toothbrush at home, and the community of Bannack appeared to consist of two trailers and a dog, so I drove into Dillon for a toothbrush. Once there, I could not fail to notice the Starbucks. Then I decided the Whistle Stop looked like a decent place to have dinner. After eating, I could not arouse an interest in riding 20 miles back uphill to camp in Bannack, so found a Best Western in Dillon and called it a night.

Monday was to be a short day of travel, so I was in no hurry to hit the road. This is the land of the Big Sky, and, although I am not a native of the state, riding at the hem of the Tobacco Root mountains encircled by that cloudy blue umbrella filled me with a sensation of ease akin to that of returning home.

Of note about the byways of Montana is that it is not unreasonable to expect to stand at the side of the road taking a piss without a single car passing in either direction. The town of Virginia City straddles one such line on the map. This was a boom town in 1863, filled with gold prospectors, and became the territorial capital in 1865. The first newspaper published in Montana Territory was begun in Virginia City. A prominent group in the history of Montana vigilante justice was based there. Thomas Meagher, the celebrated Irish revolutionary, whose statue on the front lawn of the modern state capitol in Helena is complimented by a similar statue in his hometown of Waterford, Ireland, lived in Virginia City as acting governor, but not before having been sentenced to death for treason against the English crown in Ireland, shipped to the prison island of Tasmania after his death sentence was commuted, escaping to New York City, and becoming a respected Civil War Union Army general. Virginia City today is a state museum. Although by the early twentieth century it was a ghost town, the historic district on this day was filled with people.

I was in Yellowstone shortly before noon, eating lunch at a wide spot in the road along the Madison River and chatting with a fellow from Quebec. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce had entered the park along the river on August 23, 1877, while the pursuing U.S. Army swung to the north, intending to intercept the group when it eventually descended from the mountainous terrain. After the Battle of the Big Hole, the Nez Perce had fought another engagement with the U.S. Army to the southwest of the park and were by then determined to cross the border into Canada, seeking an escape from the U.S. government. The Nez Perce would leave the park on September 7, 1877, eluding the waiting U.S. Army contingent via the Clark Fork River. The Nez Perce and U.S. Army would fight twice more, concluding on October 5, 1877, with the surrender in northern Montana of Chief Joseph and the remainder of his community, just 42 miles south of the border with Canada. The New York Times wrote in an 1877 editorial that, On our part, the war was in its origin and motive nothing short of a gigantic blunder and a crime.³ My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.

I spent the afternoon making a counter‐clockwise loop of the western expanse of the park to do some sightseeing. Beartooth and several other roads were still closed for snow; one Continental Divide sign was half‐covered with it; all that could be seen was CONTINENTAL DIVIDE. Bison seemed to fill the park, perhaps outnumbered only by the busloads of tourists at Yellowstone Falls. Graupel began falling heavily as I swung west in the direction of Norris Junction, and I saw 37° on the thermometer as I crossed the summit near the appropriately named Ice Lake.

After setting up my tent and sleeping bag in the Madison Campground, I rode to West Yellowstone for dinner at The Branch . The restaurant left me hoping it survives the vicissitudes of serving tourists for many years; as the food and staff made plain, considerable care has been given to answering the question, How do we do this correctly? Riding back to camp after dinner, I passed through an unusually warm patch of air and noted 57° on the thermometer, which was the warmest it had been all day. Arriving at my tent, the towering dark clouds in the southeastern evening sky reminded me that I was high in the Rocky Mountains where snow still ruled the roads, and I decided to plan on not being surprised if I awoke the following morning to find snow covering my tent. A group of French twenty‐somethings across the driveway from me invited me to join them for a beer. I had a Coke instead and chatted with them for a while, doing my utmost to make a favorable impression of Americans in general and motorcyclists in particular. Not sure whether I succeeded.

It started raining as soon as I got into my tent, and I listened to it for about a half hour before drifting off to sleep. Everything was frozen in the morning, and it was foggy and 32° when I hit the road at 7∶20 AM. I slipped out of the fog past Old Faithful and was treated to spectacular scenery at the shore of frozen Yellowstone Lake, where the Absaroka mountains dominated the horizon in refulgent majesty, in air so clear and still it seemed as if the atmosphere had been stripped away, and I was witness to a snowy meteor hurtling through the sunlit vacuum of perfect space. While bison grazed near the road, I made my way out of the park to the east and down the long fall of the Shoshone River into Cody, Wyoming, where the nice folks at Rocky Mountain MoJoe seemed happy to prepare a latté for me, accompanied by a tasty muffin. I sat outside in a warm breeze and checked messages on my phone in a reverie, as if I had earlier been vouchsafed a glimpse of the divine while profaning the occasion on the back of an infernal machine.

U.S. Route 14 through the Bighorn Mountains was one of the first stretches of road I had included in my trip plan, and I was eager to discover whether it would match my expectations. The mountains do not offer a gentle onramp; they appear to thrust straight upward from the Bighorn Basin on a foundation of rock first deposited 600 million years ago, and I was not disappointed with my choice to traverse them at all. Aside from the state dump truck that tried to kill me on a blind hairpin by eating up half my lane of travel (I was able to make eye contact with the driver, who clearly was thinking he was about to kill a guy on a motorcycle; heard his tires squeal as he jerked his wheel; smelled the burning rubber as we passed one another), the ride over the mountains was a blast. I ran into a downpour on the far side of the mountains outside Sheridan, which was as wet as I had been since leaving home. After crossing I–90, road construction on U.S. Route 16 accompanied by signs suggesting that long delays were to be expected prompted me to veer south to find I–90 again and use it to finish the ride for the day at Keyhole State Park.

As I was planning the trip, I realized that I was going to need to eat dinner before getting to Keyhole, as covering the necessary miles during the day was not likely to leave much time for saddling back up if I first went into the woods to pitch my tent, and although the park was not that far off the beaten path, it was far enough to call attention to its isolation. I had passed through the last town on my way to the campground more interested in calling it a day than in eating, so there I was with a ready place to sleep and an empty stomach.

Surfing the Garmin reacquainted me with my original assessment of the scarcity of restaurants in the vicinity. I knew from signage along the track into the site that there was a marina nearby, and, as someone familiar with marinas, supposed that where there were boats, there may very well be a bait shop. Perhaps the bait shop would feature an assortment of ice chest‐ready snacks. Well into twilight on a mid‐May Tuesday evening in the middle of a near‐empty state park in Wyoming, the second least densely populated state in the country, hoping to find not just a bait shop but a bait shop that was open and in possession of some food, I hopped on the Yamaha and rode it the quarter mile or so down the road to the marina. There next to the boat ramp with a neon sign announcing that it was open was the Keyhole Marina store, staffed by two lovely young women who were probably almost puzzled to see a customer, and just as the sign had said, open for business. I consulted with them about my dinner selections and came away with a tasty assortment of snacks and a beverage. No child with a Happy Meal delivered personally by Ronald McDonald would have been more contented.

Day five began with a sprinkle of rain after a dry night. By the time I had my gear packed on the bike, the rain had stopped, and I was on the road at 6∶40 AM. I had been able to see a portion of Devils Tower in the distance from the park entrance the prior evening, and it was in that direction I headed next. With a long day ahead of me, I did not linger at our first National Monument much beyond a stop to make a photograph. The butte sticks right up out of the surrounding ranch land, and I could not help but smile at the absurdity of it. It is just as freakish as it seems to anyone who has watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The State of Wyoming knows how to build a highway: beautifully engineered surfaces with plenty of shoulder. However, Wyoming roads are dirty after a long winter and wet spring, meaning in the drizzle I was riding through I was as well as I spent my time on the road having mud sprayed on me. My breakfast plan was to head east out of Wyoming into Sturgis, South Dakota, and roam around until I found a place that had the right amount of funk about it, largely not to offend any tidy natives with my unkempt gear but also because funk is conventionally a decent indicator for good. I ended up having no difficulty at all finding Sturgis Coffee Company, which met all my criteria for funk and served up a hot latté and muffin. Of course, inasmuch as this was Sturgis, it really did not surprise me that they were happy to see someone on a motorcycle.

Although I have never participated in the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, knowing a bit of its history prepared me to discover that Sturgis is an otherwise unremarkable frontier town in the western United States that has been transmogrified into a haven of chain restaurants and other commercial interests clearly aimed at the half million people who descend on it in August each year. In other words, much of Sturgis looks like a suburb of Los Angeles — only with mud — right down to the freeway that bisects it.

Deadwood, South Dakota, has long occupied my imagination as a place of consequence in the history of this part of the United States. Among its many claims to notoriety, it is, of course, where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered on August 2, 1876, and the hand of cards he was holding at the time has been immortalized as the dead man’s hand. As Deadwood is south of Sturgis and in the way of those intending to visit Mt. Rushmore, I felt no small surge of excitement at the prospect of finally getting to see it.

Deadwood looked like a bomb went off and no one bothered to notify the authorities. Dirt and crap were everywhere. The dead trees in the gulch it occupies (and from which it gets its name) were the weirdest damn thing to see and, in context, heightened the impression that an apocalypse had been visited upon the poor souls of Deadwood, from which no relief was to be granted. The historic few blocks of town are walled off behind the highway that bypasses them and were choked with traffic; everything else about the place screamed poverty and desperation. I lost all interest in seeking a moment of contemplation beneath the portico of some building in the heart of this place where history tells me formative events occurred, certain that to do so would be to invite an encounter with a sweaty, drunk tourist wearing a My Little Pony t‐shirt and abandon all hope of hearing the voices of those whose ghosts now wander the Black Hills.

So much for Deadwood: another fantasy sacrificed upon the altar of experience. It was time to speed toward Mt. Rushmore. I have vague memories of a visit to Mt. Rushmore as a child, but had not seen the monument since and was glad I included it in my trip plan. The visitor area was crowded but afforded many unobstructed views of the Borglums’ work, which I recommend to anyone with the slightest inclination to visit. I watched a woman take a picture of the gift shop and decided I had seen enough.

Back on the road, I pivoted through Rapid City en route to Badlands National Park. This area is filled with tourist attractions: bear adventures; reptile houses; God knows what else; most of which are likely not all that attractive. Billboards are everywhere, reminding me how grateful I am my own state regulates them mostly to death because they are a blight upon the landscape. The capacity of people to spoil their environment was on full display: cars rusting by the ton in residential yards; metal culverts tossed into stream beds and left to rot; unidentifiable crap scattered all over the place. Pig sties came to mind. Once beyond Rapid City, though, it did not take long for all of that to thin out to the point of vanishing. My route was southerly, causing me to cross Badlands Park in a manner roughly orthogonal to its primary east‐west axis, and I was in the park itself for just a short time, but the surroundings were beautiful. From there, I drove into the grasslands of South Dakota, with Nebraska at the edge of the map face up in my tank bag.

The remaining miles through South Dakota featured sweeping vistas in rolling terrain. The road was in good repair, but made plain that frost heave was no stranger. I encountered few cars, and many of those that passed were broadcasting in the Ka radio band, meaning my radar detector was kept busy for the afternoon. I pulled up in Valentine, Nebraska, at the dinner hour and found a good burger and pie for dessert at Cedar Canyon Steakhouse .

As the sun got to work the following morning, I was cruising the Great Plains of northern Nebraska. More than one farmer initiated a friendly exchange of waves from the back of a tractor with the fellow on the red motorcycle. Few of the towns through which I drove had a shady park inviting a stop to stretch the legs, but virtually all of them were mowing lawns and hanging flags in anticipation of Memorial Day. I rode through the Home of the Smallest City Hall in the U.S. without seeing the city hall. Midday came and went in a fruitless search for a roadside eatery. Though surrounded by one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, I realized I was going to have to settle for being hungry for lunch. I crossed the Missouri River north of Omaha into an Iowa afternoon of mid‐70s sunshine.

Unlike Nebraska, it seemed as if each small Iowa town through which I passed featured a shady park with a bench inviting a pause to revive oneself. I made one such stop and am not exaggerating to describe myself as having been enraptured by the smell of cut grass, the buzzing of insects, and the warm breeze upon which each was presented. I drank some water, sent messages to family to report my status, and let time go dormant. I eventually had to find I–80 to catch back up with the hour and overtake Des Moines and its afternoon traffic.

I set up camp on the shore of the lake at Rock Creek State Park in Kellogg, then eased down the road to Grinnell for dinner at Pagliai’s Pizza. I was back at my tent with time to enjoy the sunset and listen to the quiet.

In The Gentle Art of Tramping, Stephen Green wrote, And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet‐legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. I had stopped in Kellogg in homage to my father, for this was his home town, which I had not visited in over four decades. There in the peace of Iowa twilight, memories of my youth chided me for my transgressions as a man of his rule that what is alien is not wrong, it is an invitation to learn: of all the instruction a child receives from a parent, the most powerful of the lessons my father made clear to me was that while a fool refuses knowledge, the worse fool is the one who does not understand himself. So it was as I tidied up my belongings and prepared to crawl into my sleeping bag that I realized I had set out on this trip as much to spend a moment again with my Dad as I had to see the purple mountains’ majesty, and that appeal to a demiurge is not necessary to relieve ineffable sadness. Upon the land my father had trod as a boy, I slept with the comfort of knowing he would have been happy I had remembered what he had taught me.

Friday morning, a group of high school‐aged kids waiting for the school bus watched me make a photo of the post office, and there was little doubt their speculations about my activities led them to conclude I was some sort of weirdo. Though surrounded by people who share my ancestry to which I am proximately connected by lines on geneological maps, idling down streets that bore family names, any notion of introducing myself to those who would recognize my name eluded me, so the legend of a stranger on a motorcycle meandering through their small town remained to mystify. My purpose was private.

I let myself out of Iowa by the back door. The Garmin kept me headed in the general direction of Saint Louis, but I was otherwise interested in seeing the farms of Iowa, not its cities, and, where the intersection of county roads lacked any clue as to which way to proceed, I let whichever distant buildings looked more interesting beckon me in their direction. I turned around once or twice after deciding I had made a bad choice, but it was a pretty day and I was enjoying myself, so felt no urgency to leave, aside from knowing I eventually would. A fellow at a gas station in Farmington, just north of Missouri, confirmed that Highway 81 made a fine path into Missouri, and his advice proved sound. The road did not have the best surface, but the scenery fit, and it was in that way I had my first encounter with the Mississippi River, at Canton, Missouri.

Lloyd Lewis described the Mississippi River as the trunk of the American tree. Upon the capture of Vicksburg by General Grant and the Union Army during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared, The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea, in recognition of the significance to the Union of controlling navigation along the length of the river. It was Mark Twain, however, who wrote everything it is necessary to say about the Mississippi River. I wanted, actually, to get to Hannibal, where Twain was raised, and sit for a while thinking about how considerable the influence of his work has been on me, hoping perhaps that some ectoplasm would descend upon me to reveal his youthful apparition, which would beckon me to witness a recreation of the moment of his investment by the afflatus. Hannibal, however, much like Sturgis two days earlier, was a disappointment, if not a surprise: just a bunch of tourist dreck fouling a non‐descript town, with so many speed traps laid by local law enforcement that I had to shut off my radar detector to get some peace. I stopped long enough for lunch, then put Hannibal behind me.

Route 79 south of Hannibal — the Little Dixie Highway — produced a fine ride through the flood plain and limestone river uplands. I stopped at a picnic site to dip my fingers into the Mississippi and spent a moment of quiet in celebration of having safely brought myself to the shore of the Old Man River. It was eventually time to find a slab to use to cover the remaining miles to Saint Louis, where I would reach the turn‐around point for the trip: the Gateway Arch.

Saint Louis has a fabled place in American history. Once there, I wanted to get out as quickly as I could.

I knew of the construction that was underway in the vicinity of the Arch, and though I had no intention of staying long, I had expected difficulty finding a rational place to park the bike, even if only for time enough to get a photo. It was 86°, rush hour in the downtown Saint Louis one‐way, dead‐end grid on Friday afternoon of the Memorial Day weekend; my destination for the night was hours to the northeast, and, after circling the block several times looking for a sensible opportunity to hop off for a picture, I went to Plan B. While sitting at a stop light, I yanked my camera out of my tank bag, took a photo, and headed for the nearest freeway onramp to Illinois.

Finally across the Mississippi River, I decided to slip off the freeway and out of traffic to fill up with gas and have something cold to drink. The first exit was to East Saint Louis. As soon as I was beyond the gore, I knew the voice in my head that had told me, This is a good place to stop, had been wrong. What it should have told me was, Never take an exit to any place named East anything. One may as well take an exit labeled Shit Hole. Some of the more dystopian settings in Escape from New York were filmed in East Saint Louis; fire had destroyed some neighborhoods, and the buildings did not require much set decoration. It appeared as if little but further decay had altered the neighborhood since the movie was released in 1981. I lived for years in a twelve‐block square where a weekend without a deadly assault was newsworthy, and a running gun battle had passed beneath my first‐floor apartment window, so am not a complete dilettante on the topic of urban living. I acknowledge that people make their homes in East Saint Louis, and my opinion of it perhaps diminishes me more than the place diminishes those who live there, but I was glad there was a police officer taking a break at the gas station where I stopped, and made a point of parking next to him while I folded my map and drank my Diet Pepsi.

Intact and northbound, I may have believed someone who told me Santa Claus was real as I rode with the Mississippi‐carved limestone at my right shoulder and the Mississippi itself at my left, filled with barges being pushed along their way through the muddy water. What an amazing sight it was, all within a biscuit’s throw of the boy from Washington State who had come so far to see it. I felt jubilant.

People in my circle of acquaintance who do not ride a motorcycle are astonished that I exceed a hundred miles as a daily average on an extended road trip and that I do not fall off the bike from exhaustion at two hundred miles. Many wonder how I avoid boredom during a long day riding, and my answer is that every instant while operating a motorcycle demands complete attention, and an entire day spent engrossed in nothing but time, place, and mortality is impossibly rich with the vitality of living, surpassing all but a few experiences most are likely ever to have. Absorbed by everything happening around me from moment to moment, discoveries the preoccupied would ascribe to serendipity reveal themselves as boundless, asking only that I pay attention, for which reward is amply bestowed. I believe while on my ride on the Illinois River Road that Friday evening I was treated to the most enchanted few hours I will ever spend on a motorcycle, and that much was given me simply because I bothered to notice. As the sun swung downward through the sky, the loamy soil of farms lining the road enriched the smells of evening meals being grilled by families in their yards, waving at the motorcycle disappearing into the shadows. Streets lined with American flags pointed the way to pergolas in city parks festooned with bunting, while the highway between such interludes of remembrance seemed to have been abandoned by all but me, as if flying between outposts of human activity via uncharted worlds, a river running through them, on the neck of a metal bird swinging gracefully back and forth across the land of Lincoln, into the twilight defining refuge beneath the sycamore that rang with the gallimaufry of insect songs, into the sunlight that lent to the fields the colors of the cosmos, where I could see not just the trees and the rocks and the grass, but the shape of the wind, the mites in the dust, and the collapsing waves of the quanta.

Fifty miles short of my reserved camp site for the night, I was out of daylight with a visor covered with dead bugs. I found a Super 8 motel in Beardstown, Illinois, and stopped for the day. Dinner was a hot meal not far from the motel at Fiesta Grande , which was full of Latinos for good reason: they know when it tastes right. The motel, on the other hand, signalled a franchisee in trouble. Forty‐five miles from the state capital at Springfield, I could not get a cellular signal, so tried making a long‐distance call on the land line. The long‐distance service was blocked, and the desk clerk did not know how to activate it. There was no remote control for the television, and after manually turning it on, no cable signal. The fire alarm in the hallway outside my door needed a new battery, and spent the night chirping for attention that was never to come. The carpet was overdue for a visit from a vacuum cleaner. The bath soap appeared to have been manufactured with sandpaper. None of this helped qualify the motel as one of my happy places.

I was relieved to be on the road in the morning, the skin on my ass perhaps a bit reddened by the abrasive qualities of the bath soap. It was a perfectly lovely morning to be riding a motorcycle, with the temperature at 58° as I left Beardstown.

Speed changes in the river towns retarded progress, but almost every one of them was worth slowing to see. Savannah, Illinois, appeared to be some kind of Harley Mecca, as every goofball with his pirate suit from the surrounding 100 miles was there. Doing some math as I stretched my legs in Savannah, I realized that the Harley mother ship was only a couple of hours away in Milwaukee, so was less amazed at their persistent numbers as I crossed the Mississippi into Iowa and rode north on U.S. Highway 52. I was eating lunch in a vacant little roadside stop by the Mississippi near Bellevue, Iowa, when a white‐haired fellow pulled up on his BMW 1200GT. He was a local who said he was out enjoying one of his favorite activities, which was passing Harleys.

Despite its northern latitude, this region of the continent escaped glaciation during the last Ice Age; the terrain is rugged due to the absence of glacial drift, and the banks of the river are increasingly steep as one nears Minnesota. It was 77° as I crossed into Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien, which allowed me to remain close to the river as it carved its way into the bedrock outbound from its headwaters, and pressed on.

I passed a boy and girl sitting in the shade on an overturned canoe next to a pond on the side of the highway separating them from the Mississippi River, far away from the grown‐ups doing family holiday activities on the opposing shore of the pond. He was trying to figure out how to get his hand beneath her shirt, and she was wondering if she wanted him to. In a city park, I eavesdropped on a mother giving instruction on the act of pumping the legs to her young daughter in a swing, who, practicing, achieved motion, her mother exclaiming, You just learned how to swing! then, her excited child suspended in the amber afternoon at the instant possibility waited to launch her beyond the limits of the swing into the sky as a butterfly leaps from the petals of a flower, answering her ringing cell phone, failed to see as the enchantment scattered like dry leaves before the hurricane. I followed two old men on a pristine, bright yellow Honda Trike going too damn slow down the main street of their home town, tiny American flags sticking up out of the trunk, waving at all the other old men sitting on their porches watching the world go by, the frail rider in the pillion clearly the father of the son who was driving, making up a parade of generations I could not help but wistfully admire.

In Minnesota to end the day at Great River Bluffs State Park, I rode in and out of the park three times from its unmanned visitor station on its mile‐long gravel road, trying to find the camp site I had reserved. The park was packed with campers, and I could not get a cellular signal in order to pull up my email confirmation number, so had little information I could use to go evict someone from a site for which I had already paid. I finally gave up and continued on to the Comfort Inn in Rochester, where I ate dinner at the Viking Lounge, and caught up on email.

I was on the road again by 7 AM, and having a pleasant ride westbound along U.S. Route 14 under sunny skies. I crossed the Minnesota River at Mankato, the seat of Blue Earth County, named for the Blue Earth River, which has its confluence with the Minnesota River a few thousand yards southwest of the highway. Mankato was also the site of the largest mass execution in the history of the United States when, on December 26, 1862, thirty‐eight members of the Dakota Sioux were publicly hanged on a single scaffold platform.

A few miles west of the Minnesota River, the handling of the bike went soft, and even through ear plugs and a helmet at 70 MPH, I could hear a tire singing a sour note. Pulled over on the narrow shoulder as traffic sped past was as good a place as any to curse at the wrecked rear tire — which had evidently been losing air while I continued to drive on it long enough to render it useless — and at the gravel road at Great River Bluffs State Park. The patch kit remained under the seat as I raised AAA on the phone.

Farmers in the Midwest were late to plant their crops this year because of the trying winter and early spring just past and had until Memorial Day — the next day — to get seeds in the ground before their crop insurance would be voided. I was sitting in the grassy strip adjacent to the road waiting for the tow truck, watching one such farmer driving his tractor up and down his fields trying to beat the looming deadline, and thinking about how easy my problem with the tire was to solve compared to that of having to fight to make a living against acts of God himself, when the man in the tractor pulled to a stop just on the other side of his fence, hopped out, walked over to the fence, and asked me if I needed help. After explaining my situation, assuring him I had help on the way, and thanking him for troubling to check, he returned to his tractor and went back to work. I thought to myself, He had no idea how much of his time I might have needed and yet stopped to offer it. While his insurance ticks like a bomb.

I was not done getting lessons this day in how kind strangers may be to others.

Within 30 minutes or so of calling AAA, the tow truck appeared. The AAA operator had helpfully identified Starr Cycle, a Yamaha dealer, in North Mankato, with a Best Western hotel a block away from it, and affirmed that the bike could be towed straight to Starr Cycle. By 11 AM, the bike was parked outside the service garage at Starr Cycle, and I was checked in to a room at the Best Western hotel. I had shoved a note under the front door of Starr Cycle explaining the presence of the FJR1300 outside their service department, along with my contact information. My reckoning was that because it was Sunday on a long holiday weekend, I was likely to be in the hotel for at least two days waiting for Starr Cycle to come back to life and help me back on the road.

At 1∶30 PM, as I was watching reruns of I Love Lucy in my hotel room, my phone beeped with a new text message from a service technician who worked for Starr Cycle. He had stopped by his work to pick up a tool he needed for a project he was working on at his home, saw my distress note, and was asking if I wanted him to put a tire on my bike. That afternoon. After he called his boss to figure out how to ring up my purchase of a tire when the business was closed and returning home to make amends to his girlfriend for deciding to help me out in the middle of a holiday weekend, by 4 PM he had mounted and balanced a new rear tire on my bike.

The adjacent picture is of Jonny Krog. I have determined that not only is he a hell of a motorcycle technician, but he is also an extraordinarily generous person. First of all, I watched him pull the wheel off the bike, remove the old tire, mount and balance a new one, and reinstall the wheel. Holy cow. Dude can twist a wrench. He had the job done in the time it would have taken me to get the wheel off. And I am not sure, but I think he might have done the whole operation with one hand tied behind his back. I shit you not, the action was so quick it was blurry for a minute — that is how it appeared to me. It was mesmerizing to watch. No one of us, though, is our job, and Jonny would not have made his time and his skills available were he not first inclined to ask himself how he might help a complete stranger have a better day, at a moment where it could not have been convenient for him to do so, and then, having asked himself that question, answered it by pulling out his phone to send me his offer of help.

After reviewing the map and deciding that there was nothing more interesting further down the road before sunset, I spent the night in the hotel bed for which I had already paid and looked forward to a well‐rested start in the morning.

The tenth day was always going to be a long day on the road (and the flat tire had cut into the miles planned for the prior day), so I was on the road at 6 AM, intent on clearing the Dakotas before exhausting the daylight.

Stopped at Big Stone Lake in Ortonville at the South Dakota border, I heard rifle fire, and turned around to see an honor guard on the park pier doing a salute, then playing taps. It was a solemn Memorial Day occasion as the sun shone and the breeze blew in from the lake.

Eastern South Dakota is a harsh environment: flat and hot. It was interesting to contrast the communities of Illinois and Iowa, which seemed to relish their abundance, with those of South Dakota, where the prevailing inclination appears to have been, Let’s bulldoze 200 yards either side of the highway, then spend the next several decades piling up a ruined civilization. Across the state, at many points for as far as the eye could see, there was not a tree to be found; hailing as I do from the Evergreen State, it was difficult to conceive more barren surroundings. North Dakota was little different until I reached the buttes of its western counties, but there were few reasons to stop in the Dakotas other than for gas or in vain attempts to find shade beneath which to stretch my legs.

Into Montana in the 84° afternoon sun, my front tire was worrying me. Its wear suggested overinflation, and although I keep a fair eye on my tire pressure while on the road, there was no avoiding the evidence that it was suffering a problem despite my intentions. I realized I was going to need to have it repaired before I completed my trip, and, looking at the map, that meant bypassing my planned camp site for the night to ride in to Miles City, where I hoped to find a tire.

Northeast of Miles City is Circle, Montana, where Main Street has been identified as further from a Starbucks than any other Main Street in the United States. That is to say, this is empty country, and, as I passed the 84 miles to next services sign on the road to Miles City, I tried to put my worrisome front tire out of my mind. Doing so was made easier by the single massive, dark cumulous cloud building ahead of me. My path was directly beneath it, and, while it dropped a bit of rain on me, I was vastly more concerned about the energy it had to have been planning to discharge. I swore I saw the flash of a lightning strike in my mirror, but rode out from under it and back into the sunlight without complications.

I checked in to a Best Western in Miles City and walked across the street for dinner at the Boardwalk Restaurant , glad to have made it through the Dakotas in the single day I had planned and not pleased that I was once again in need of a new tire.

Riverside Cycle & Marine in Miles City opens early, and I was there in the morning to help them make their first pot of coffee. They had a tire in stock that fit my bike and were kind enough to bump me to the front of their service schedule for the day. I had them change the oil while they were at it. The owner is my age and told a story of being broke 25 years ago, happening almost by chance into the business where we were wandering around and shooting the breeze. Even if only half the things he claimed are true, his is a great success story. As they rolled my bike out of the service bay, I thanked him for accommodating me and was on the road before noon.

Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most beautiful drive in America. It had still been closed when I crossed Yellowstone the previous week, but was now open for the summer. As I blasted down I–94 toward Laurel I decided I could not resist making a detour to see it for myself. It meant perhaps adding a day to my trip, but I would not forgive myself were I not to go.

Beartooth Highway traverses the largest contiguous land mass above 10,000 feet elevation in the United States, through some of the oldest exposed rock in the world. The ride was thrilling. Snow plowed into heaps along the road chilled the air as the bike twisted its way upward to a summit, craning its neck to see the peaks of ancient mountains. The descent into the Lamar Buffalo Ranch of Yellowstone is a scene not to be missed; tree‐lined meadows filled with the creatures make it easy to imagine what this all must have looked like when their herds covered the ground. My ride to Gardiner through a warm, clear afternoon seemed as if I had the entirety of the park to myself, so few were the occasions I encountered anyone else on the road. Pulled into a rest area north of Gardiner to stretch my legs, the only other occupants had set up a picnic table next to their mini RV and were making dinner. I stood in the grass and listened to the Vivaldi playing on their stereo as the late afternoon sun danced on the waters of the Yellowstone River.

It was time to go home. I awoke in Bozeman to gray skies and pointed the Yamaha in the direction of the end of my journey. When I was in Clarkston by lunch, I knew I would be asleep in my own bed that night; in fact, I took the long way around to I–90 at Vantage to wring the last of the wanderlust from my system before I pulled into our garage 5,579 miles after I had last seen it. Before I could do that, I had to sit in a rest stop for an hour at Cle Elem while WSDOT blasted rock from the hillside at Snoqualmie Pass, then join the horde of other delayed travelers over the pass in the dark, where, naturally, it poured rain. At North Bend, with the rain behind me, I tempered my enthusiasm for the throttle and rode the last few miles to home as if I had not a care in the world.

Update June 4, 2014
In the weeks prior to my trip, the Midwest states had been beset by violent storms. Although I had little trouble with the weather while on the road, I was prepared to adjust my route were the weather to turn ugly. Just days after I returned home, Kansas First News reported baseball‐size hail had struck northeast Nebraska as severe weather with a potential for tornadoes moves through a swath of Midwest states.

My SPOT track for May 22 illustrates why baseball‐size hail in northeast Nebraska would have been unwelcome had this storm occurred then.

The most attention‐getting storm I have had the temerity to ride through was a display of lightning during torrential rain in Alaska in 2011. My guess is that baseball‐size hail would have assumed the top spot on that list.