Westward: The Journey Begins We decided we would ride into the sun on fully decked out sidecars from the Eastern seaboard of the continent. To test the Urals and ourselves, the trip would be over 2,000 miles west, from the hilly forests of the Northeast, through the endless, flat farmland of the Midwest, and on to our furthest destination from home: Butte, Montana.
We’d bang a left and head south into Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, stopping at some of the West’s most iconic locations: Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountains, and the Great Salt Lake. Then, we would put together an entire issue from the experience.
Departure morning was exciting and tense, mostly because of the nagging questions inside ourselves and from well-meaning friends and family. As we packed up the bikes, we all wore it on our faces. “What the hell are we getting into?” It was more than one motorcyclist that scratched their head when we told them our ambitions: 10,000 miles in just over a month on Russian sidecars. New territory for us and for most of our readers – sidecar owners are a small bunch. No stress the throttle and open road can’t alleviate, we thought. Our asses settled into their new homes and we began our journey, riding a perfect New England summer day through our backyard and into Vermont.
Our route took us through beautiful roads in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, through cornfields of Amish country, and into the heartland of America. Even with the throttle wide open, a slight headwind in the prairie land meant a top speed of 65 mph with the Urals.
We mostly refer to these personality traits as charming. To speak in “Zen” terms (since we were en route to Montana, the home of Robert Pirsig), the choice to ride Urals across the country when none of us had embarked on a journey of that scale on any kind of motorcycle was, admittedly, a romantic one. The Ural is aesthetically beautiful and carries everything you’d need for a proper adventure. But we’ll admit we weren’t truly prepared for the level of “classic” thought that was going to be required to parade these battleships around the country.
The first half of the trip – getting there – presented its challenges. Unexpectedly, we found the Ural’s leaving their mark on every gas station we pulled into. Apparently the use of synthetic oil inspires the Russian beasts to cause shrinkage to its seals. Oils gotta go somewhere. We made the decision to keep them topped off and happy until we made it west. Maybe then she’d purge herself of the man-made stuff and we’d be back in shape.
The adventure had begun.
Badlands National Park | South Dakota Our first real scenic destination, the name alone conjures feelings of wildness and intrigue. They are an otherworldly labyrinth of vibrant spires, massive buttes, and deep gorges all carved into the terra firma of the desolate prairie. They’re home to one of the world’s greatest beds of fossils. Ancient saber-toothed cats and giant rhinoceros-like creatures once roamed this godforsaken ground.
Black Hills | South Dakota Entering South Dakota’s Black Hills and Spearfish Canyon delivered 19 miles of towering pink and grey limestone sprinkled in evergreens and race tracks – the kind that make you drop below the posted 35 mph limits and breath in the entrance to the Great American West.
Devil’s Tower | Wyoming We rose an hour before dawn to make the 36-degree ride to the base of the tower to catch the morning light dance across the massive geologic formation’s anomalous eastern face. It may sound cliché or even hackneyed to say that this place has a peculiar and magnetic energy, but it’s the truth, and as the sun rose, the awe set in. It was a lone monolith rising defiantly from an otherwise vast and open plain. You can sense its lore. It’s not just a place that tells stories of humanity’s ancient inhabitants, but a place that tells stories about the birth of the universe itself.
Devil’s Tower is a 1,267-foot tall igneous rock formation that resides in the The Bear Lodge Mountains in the northeastern corner of Wyoming. President Theodore Roosevelt established it as the first National Monument in 1906.
This article first appeared in issue 22 of Iron & Air Magazine, and is reproduced here under license | With selections by Brett Houle, Gregory George Moore, Michael Hilton & Jason Paul Michaels
Selected photography may include works by Brett Houle, Gregory George Moore, Michael Hilton, Daniela Maria, Jenny Linquist, Becca Skinner, Kevin Bennett, David Mucci
