Over here in the Colonies we have an east to west ride called the Trans America Trail or the TAT. It's a route primarily laid out on dirt roads. It was developed by Sam Correro.
For $300 you get the GPS tracks, maps and a roll chart. It's a total of 5,000 miles.
http://www.transamtrail.com/

Last winter myself and 2 buddies decided this would be a good thing to do. Due to fact that none of us had the desire to ride through Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma or any other "flat-lander" state we decided to ride only, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. I only committed to ride New Mexico and Colorado as I've ridden and raced off road throughout the western states but I haven't spent much time riding off road in Colorado or New Mexico.

Plus, I'm the kinda guy that likes finding his own trail...

I bought a 2003 640 ADV just for this ride. It has some miles on the clock but I got it for a song... It performed flawlessly. It didn't burn any oil and only used up 1 rear tyre in 3k miles! It's now for sale by the way.

The plan was to ship the bikes to Albuquerque, New Mexico and ride west. All went well. After 6 days I left my pals at the Colorado-Utah border and started the DAT (Dirks American Trail).

Day 1... and two

We picked up the bikes in Albuquerque . My plan worked perfectly as we shipped the bikes loaded and ready to go... for some reason it was still work!


Being the well read folks that we are the decision was made to have a cold one or two at The Library... What the heck we weren't leaving till the next day. Albuquerque is an interesting town...Home of Breaking Bad...nuff said.


The "librarians" gave us a proper send off... thanks girls it was a tuff ride and your kindness and understanding was appreciated!


Day Two
Up at 6 am and ready to go we headed out of Albuquerque in a blaze of happiness... In a short time we were out of the desert into the Santa Fe National Forest... amazing


Back down to the desert and across the Rio Grande


First night of camp just outside Taos in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains... 230 miles

Day Two...

After a good nights sleep and plenty of discussion of the librarians we were ready to roll. Today was to be a big day as we would cross over to Colorado a push as far west as possible.

The amount of old buildings and ghost towns were amazing... people lived there and moved on "when the well went dry"... so to speak. A lot of unwritten history








New Mexico beauty


Into the rain! August is monsoon season in these parts and this year was bad according to the locals


Stopped for a break in a non-rainy moment


It was really raining now... we pushed on to a town called Westcliff in the Wet Mountain Valley tonight was a night for a motel... wet cold and tired...
Drier...


360 miles today...

More to come...

The TAT is top of my list for an epic ride. You're doing exactly as I would, complete with a 640ADV.

Day 3

Up early looks like it stopped raining. MRE for breaky and on the trail

Hope we don't run into this guy out there


The plan is to make it to Lake City Co. tonight. There is supposed to be good camping around there and I brought my fishing pole. First stop was a place called Cotopaxi on the Arkansas river.


Locals?


Arkansas River


I found this guy in the middle of the road trying to commit suicide... I saved him and he pissed all over my glove as a thankyou


Pre rain photo of the day...


More rain uggg... the rain slowed us to a snails pace... rain and mud... our bikes were getting stuck in the stuff, it became very apparent we weren't going to make our destination tonight

I'm sure this would be a great view some other day!


Camping in the rain, cooking in the rain, living in the rain... I'm not a rainy kinda guy. luckily we camped next to a creek and I hooked a couple of nice Rainbow Trout.... Dinner!...in the rain


Day 3 total 80 miles

Day 4

Did I say I hated the rain? Woke up to sunshine Yippee!

Stoked the fire and cooked breakfast...


Breakfast of champions


We continued to push west and tried to make up for lost time in the mud.

We came across this falling down church. It had to be built in the 1800's. It's kinda interesting because there was no evidence of a town or anything just this church


I took the liberty of preaching the gospel to the sinners in the crowd... fire and brimstone I say!


Whilst brother Tim begged forgiveness (something about some sheep in New Mexico), preacher Mike of course gave a religious pass on everything


Back on the trail gotta at least make Lake City by nightfall

Ugg... more rain... at least we made Lake City and got a room without a view... It was nice to sleep indoors and take a shower. And dry things out...


Miles for day 4... 100 gotta do some miles tomorrow

Great stuff!

Cool.

I fancy doing this trip, makes a change to Route 66.

Really fancy an adventure.

Day 5 Part Two...

We crossed 4 passes on day five, Marshall, Cinnamon, California, and Ophir. We got rained on, hailed on and snowed on... in August.













California Pass....12,960 ft above Sea Level... the bikes were not loving it! But they all made it as well as their riders.


Stay tuned...

On the edge of my seat. Carry on.

Day Five... Part three... Off to Telluride.

It was really raining now. We went over Ophir Pass down to Telluride. No pics of Ophir Pass because it was raining so hard that I was in my "riding shell" and didn't want to come out. My "riding shell" is something I go into when it's to cold or to wet to come out. I just ride and hope for better weather, no photos, no nothing, just riding. It took a little longer to get down the pass due to the fact we ran into a guy on a Honda that was clearly out of his element and needed help. He was in a pre-hypothermia stage. Mike rode in front of him and I rode behind. Together we got him to the safety and warmth of his family.

It stopped raining at Telluride... for the moment


We found this kick-ass little bar to dry out at proceeded to look for room (or three)... tell um Mr. Cash


After a brewski, we determined that Telluride was booked up due to some kind of festival... no room at the inn.


The lines at the resturants were insane and we had to find a place to camp as it was 7:00pm and raining again. We opted to leave town in search of a campsite. We found one. I was soooo sick of MRE's at this point I went caveman ... "I'll get us a fresh dinner" was the cry! Luckily there was a stream nearby and Dirk went fishing!


I nailed these five Rainbow in less than an hour and we had dinner.


As an added bonus I bagged this little bugger. I believe they call this Rocky Mountain Lobster... Small but yummy!


Cooked over the fire



More to come...