Iron Butt Quest

I have long known about an organization that verifies/audits and will provide certification for riding a motorcycle 1000 miles in 24 hours. That never appealed to me but I found out a couple of days ago they have another deal for National Parks, National Historic Sites, National Recreation Areas, and National Monuments located in the United States and Canada. The goal is to visit 50 of them in 25 different states. For the Gold Certificate you have to include Alaska, California, Florida, and Maine or Canadian parks northeast of the Maine border.

You purchase a National Parks, etc. Passport. All the locations have a rubber stamp at the Visitor Center counter and you stamp the passport to prove you were there. I guess some folks get a little obsessive about it, see this for instance. Seems like it might be kind of fan and since we are planning to tour America this year it will give some direction to the trip.

We have also discussed trying to hit all 49 mainland states. Not sure about that but we have a lot of time. I read a blog from a guy who did the four corners of the country by riding to the most northwestern, northeastern, southwestern and southeastern paved roads in the country. He did it in 42 days riding some 17,400 miles. Our only objective at this point is to be in Sturgis, North Dakota the first week in August and to be in Vermont in the fall. That leaves a lot of time to see the rest of the country and be back to Arizona for the winter again.

The trip to Alaska can’t be attempted before the first part of June and so we are thinking that we will cross the Canadian border around June 15.

My brother was giving me a bad time about how frequently we change our plans, I need to remind him that we started this blog by saying we have options, not plans. Heh.