The Big Picture.

 "All paths are the same, leading nowhere.  Therefore, pick a path with heart!"
                          - Carlos Castenada


The Four Corners Tour 2016 follows last years adventure, Tour the Rockies in which KC and I hauled our bikes to Denver, had Sherry and Karen fly in for a week of playtime and then followed this with a 2400 mile tour on the BMW GS's from Denver to Glacier National Park and back to Denver.  This year's adventure follows with a similar structure...our wives fly into Phoenix, we all tour northern Arizona in KC's sumptuous (ever tried air conditioned massaging seats??) Ford F-150 for a week, the girls then fly home and (finally) KC and I do a motorcycle tour centered around the Four Corners region of the great southwest...New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona.  There's a "cherry on top" on our way home...details to follow.

I've done a rough route plan for the Four Corners portion of the trip in Garmin Basecamp and the map below shows this.

Garmin Base Camp route map

This year's agenda begins on September 15th with KC and I hauling our bikes and trailer from home in north Georgia to a storage facility in Albuquerque, NM.  On September 18th our wives will fly into Phoenix, AZ. Since neither Sherry or I have seen the Grand Canyon, the primary focus of the first part of the trip will be to see this.  We'll also spend time in Sedona, AZ...another place we've never seen... and do other fun desert stuff.

After the girls have returned home on September 24th,  KC and I will drive back to Albuquerque and park the truck and trailer.  We'll then ride our BMW 1200GSA's from Albuquerque, NM to Taos, NM to Pagosa Springs, CO to Telluride, CO to Mexican Hat, UT to Holbrook, AZ and back to Albuquerque, NM.  We are using Garmin Basecamp, Butler Motorcycle Maps and a book KC had on riding in Colorado to plan our route on the best motorcycle roads in the Four Corners region.  The highlights include:

-New Mexico's Enchanted Circle
-Colorado's Million Dollar Highway
-Utah's Monument Valley
-Arizona's Painted Desert

The Four Corners ride should take us about six days.

Now for the "Cherry on top"...

After the Four Corners ride, we'll load the bikes back onto the trailer and haul them to Clarksville, AR.  There's nothing special about Clarksville except that its right on I40 and right on the edge of a maze of blue ribbon motorcycle roads scattered throughout the Ozark Mountains.  So, we'll base out of Clarksville, AR (bottom center on map below) for three days riding the bikes in the Ozarks with our friend Jim Dennis, who's riding from Atlanta to meet up with us.  My Butler Map for The Ozark Mountains reveals a staggering number of high quality motorcycle roads (Red=Good roads, Orange=Better roads, Yellow=Best roads) in the area and anyone who's ridden there RAVES about it. 

Butler Motorcycle Map of the Ozarks

It's been on KC's, Jim's and my bucket lists for a long time and we're excited about adding this to our tour.  From there we drive back home...a total elapsed time of roughly three weeks.

We will begin our drive west on September 15, 2016 and should arrive home around October 4, 2016.  Or so....