Here is another map of the entire route. The bubbles indicate the places that I had planned on spending the night.
My plan was to get everything packed Thursday night and then get into work early Friday to get off at 3 pm and hopefully be on the road by 4:00. Well as it always does, things took longer and it was getting late Thursday, so I decided to just get to bed and go in and work just 1/2 day and finish on Friday.
When I got home Friday I gathered everything that I planned to take around the bike. It looked like way too much stuff, but I feel like I needed all of it.
Here is all the stuff laying on the ground waiting to get packed on the bike
Everything made it on the bike (barely)
After loading everything up, I decided to take it for a test spin around the neighborhood. Instantly it felt way different and was kind of hard to control. After a few minutes I adjusted to it and it felt ok. I was a little nervous about driving so far with such a big load on the back.
Starting Mileage
Mike showed up about 3:45 pm. We said our goodbye's and got on the road a little after 4:00 pm. I wished Mike was more interested in motorcycles and he would have had one too, but I was grateful that he was willing to come with me, even if he was just following in his car. Most of my pictures are thanks to him taking them behind me. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have very many.
Heading towards the freeway
Traffic was already crazy going through Salt Lake City. It took quite a while. There was a small rest stop in Kaysville that we pulled off at to just rest for a minute and relax after all the traffic.
We continued on I-15 until the I-84 split off. I'm not a big fan of Interstate driving, but these first couple of days we just wanted to quickly get up to the Canada border and then out to the coast.
Entering Idaho
Our destination for tonight was the KOA in Jerome, ID I had hoped to make it before dark. It was close, but we got to the KOA about 8:45 pm. It was a nice sunset as we were getting close.
When we got the KOA I was pretty tired. I think the late nights lately had really started catching up with me. We got our tent set up and then jumped in his car and headed into Twin Falls to a Wendy's for dinner. I was exhausted but also excited to be out on the trip. I was hoping to get to bed early, but we stayed up late talking. I knew I would regret it the next day.
Route for Day 1 (243 miles)
