Our Top 3 National Park Rides
Today, we're highlighting our top three favorite parks for motorcycle rides. Share your favorites with us in the comment section below or on our Facebook page!
Location: Virginia and North Carolina
This 469-mile-long scenic road connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.
Features:
- Mountain views
- Wildlife
- Over 100 species of trees
- Rich in history
- Did we mention it's 469 miles of riding?
- Learn More »
Location: Southern California
"Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado, come together in Joshua Tree National Park." - National Park Service website
Features:
- 800,000 acres of park
- Camp, hike + more
- Desert wilderness
- Joshua trees (of course)
- Diverse wildlife - reptiles, birds, etc.
- Learn More »
Location: Northern California
Named for Lassen Peak, the largest plug dome volcano, it features many miles of riding through diverse terrain.
Features:
- 30 mile parkway
- 3 additional roads to remote areas
- Waterfalls
- Lake views
- Steaming fumaroles
- Numerous volcanoes
- Learn More »
About Riding In National Parks...
All National Parks have their own police enforcement. They write their own federal moving violation (and other) tickets, so speeding or hooligan riding there is a bad idea. One pretty afternoon crossing Joshua Tree I was pulled over simply for riding blithely along standing on my bike's footrests. Not going fast, just enjoying the incredible views from a slightly higher vantage point. When you ride this way, standing up, your rear-view mirrors don’t work, so it was a quite a while before I realized I was being pulled over. This was embarrassing. Several other park visitors drove past the Park Ranger and I, frowning at the scofflaw biker. Fortunately I received only a verbal warning. Laws are strictly enforced in all National Parks.
All of Blue Ridge Parkway is a National Park. When I last rode it I think the speed limit was only 45mph. For me at that time this was frustrating. It also seemed difficult to get on, or off, this road. Access points were limited. But the parkway’s pavement is manicure-perfect everywhere, and there are endless rows of pretty flowers planted along the shoulders almost the entire way. The earth right next to all those flowers was unblemished bluegrass, trimmed, mowed and groomed about as perfectly as the greens on a golf course. Hardly a blade of grass out of place. You almost need to see it to believe it. This is an unreal Disneyland of a road if you have the patience, and the views across the broad valleys are spectacular. And if, like Clark Griswold looking over the edge of the Grand Canyon for just five or ten seconds, you don’t have the patience, there are tons of fun and very curvy regular roads winding every which way around and through those mountains, with roadside scenes of houses, cabins, small towns and farms where real people are living real everyday lives.
Lassen in California has a smaller footprint, but you’ll never see anyplace else in the USA remotely like it. Lots of steeply banked corners pirouette you and your bike closely around small and not-so-small bubbling pools of turquoise, orange, white and yellow mineralized water, bubbling up from the dormant lava-hot volcano literally only a short distance beneath your bikes tires. If this place wasn’t a National Park, half of Hollywood's sci-fi exoplanet movie locations would have been located here. Like most National Parks, every so often you’ll want to stop on the shoulder and just take it all in.
- Mr. Subjective, 4-21
I spending an extra day in Palm Springs to chill before I face a child's birthday party! ?
I might aim for Bryce Canyon on the way home!