Local residents Chad Wilkins and Greg Riffle recently completed a 21-day motorcycle trip through the United States and Canada to the small town of Hyder, Alaska. For Wilkins, this makes the 49th state he’s ridden his motorcycle through.
Wilkins explained that he made his first cross-country motorcycle trip 13 years ago, travelling to California. Since then, he’s made several more cross country trips, and is close to reaching his goal of riding his motorcycle in all 50 states.
The Alaska trip took Wilkins and Riffle through the Midwest, a handful of mountain states, and Alberta and British Columbia. Along the way, the duo took the time to visit a few national parks, including Badlands, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Glacier.
Wilkins shared that while they were travelling along the Beartooth Highway in Montana and Wyoming, they even stopped to build a snowman while the rest of us in Ohio sweated on July 3. He explained that there was still snow on the ground at the 11,000-foot altitude they were riding at.
After this, Wilkins and Riffle rode into Canada. They made a stop at Banff National Park in Alberta, which Wilkins said was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever seen.
“I call it goosebumps scenery, the kind of thing where you see it and it gives you goosebumps,” Wilkins said of the environments he and Riffle travelled through.
After several days and hundreds of miles, Wilkins and Riffle arrived in Hyder, the southeasternmost point of Alaska accessible by road. While there, the two men encountered several other individuals who had made the same journey as they had.
Wilkins said that along the way and while in Hyder, Wilkins and Riffle were given patches, pins and a Jesus figurine by people they met, as mementos of their trip. By the end of the trip, Wilkins had put 7,500 miles on his bike.
In the future, Wilkins plans to fly to Hawaii and rent a motorcycle to complete his 50-state journey. After that, he said that he may fly to Europe and rent a motorcycle to travel through some of the continent.
Email at aszczesniak@logandaily.com