Primary Objective Accomplished

Well, I did it. I crossed the United States on a motorcycle. It took fifty years from when I first planned it, but it is done, not bad for a man of 72. But then one is only as old as one thinks one is, and I am not going to quit being alive.

As I was traveling across the desert this view seemed to show the "road that seems to try to reach the sky."

I stopped at the Summit Inn at the opening of the Cajon Pass. Cajon Pass crosses the San Gabriel and San Bernandino Mountains that separate the California high desert from the valleys that form Southern California. Since the building of Route 66 in the thirties, first the dust bowl Okies, then the migrations of the forties and fifties streamed through this pass searching for the garden of Eden, the Promised Land. It is the Gateway to Southern California. In 1952 The Summit Inn opened as a motel, restaurant, and gas station right as the road started down into the valleys. Today only the restaurant, beautifully restored in the classic fifties diner style, remains; but for those who have a connection with the history of Southern California it is a symbol of everything this region represented during the second half of the Twentieth Century. I stopped to have a Root Beer Float.

So I am at Toni and Margie's in La Verne. I plan to decompress for a few days, and then I can arrange to see everyone I want to see in Southern California and start to plan what next. My intention is to go to Idaho and back through Kansas. So I will see. For right now I am ready for a rest.

Brothers

Much love to all who encouraged me, and helped me on my way.