Heart of the West Adventure Route: USA's convenient multistate wildland journey

Heart of the West Adventure Route -- the plug-and-play solution to the risks of planning an overland trip -- will continue in 2026 to provide wildland travelers a GPS-guided network of interconnected loops and routes that remains unparalleled in North America.

This premium service delivers convenient and customizable routing for travelers in SUVs, or on dual-sport and adventure motorcycles.

H.o.W. will remain an adaptable, GPS-guided 2,800-mile-plus loop along backcountry roads through some of the American West's most iconic landscapes. We've also chronicled optional routing that can extend the experience far beyond H.o.W.'s core six states. Using supplementary routing, backcountry travelers can journey from Canada to Mexico, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean or even the Mojave Desert for a fraction of the cost of guided trips.

Don't let weather, wildfires and work derail your wildland travels. Just ask for 'Plan B'!

As potential consolation for the risks posed by wildland travel's three dreaded "Ws" -- weather, wildfires and work -- we'll be offering 2024's clients exclusive free use of our GPS-guided "Plan B" data file with routing through the most beautiful part of Idaho, in the American West's northern Rocky Mountains.

Travel-season storms can make many of the West's dirt roads impassable. Wildfires can close backcountry roads, forcing travelers onto long highway bypasses.

Perhaps worst of all: Your phone ... and the office has your number.

For clients who suddenly must shorten or even cancel their journeys on our western wildland routes, we've compiled as compensation a free, plug-and-play GPX route file that can guide them along spectacular day trips that are second to none.

These routes -- all readily accessible from a single base -- traverse terrain that is more mineralized than clay-based, and thus more resilient to inclement conditions than many western regions.

The region is more open and less forested, and thus less prone to fire. It also is convenient to the airport and amenities of Idaho Falls, a dynamic small city just west of Wyoming and south of Montana.

The routes can quickly be accessed from a backcountry campsite or even a rustic motel.

Each route is selected and documented via GPS not only for its beauty, but also for, soils that are less likely to turn to mud when wet, abundant RV and tent camping opportunities -- both dispersed and in campgrounds -- as well as lodging, alpine hiking, fishing, and mechanized trail riding, a mountain setting that is authentically Idaho, proximity to Yellowstone-Teton country, Ketchum/Sun Valley, the Sawtooth Range and ghost towns.

So be assured that if the three "Ws" find you, our "Plan B" just might save your trip -- while still providing the memorable wildland adventures you were looking for.

Contact us soon at backcountrybyways at gee mail dot com! 

Sierra to the Sea Adventure Route: Motoring through the wildlands of Northern California

Note: The condition of Sierra to the Sea/Sea to Sierra Adventure Route (S2S) in Northern California could be uncertain in some places due to erosion and wildfire impacts. Travelers might need to improvise go-arounds.

Sierra to the Sea/Sea to Sierra Adventure Route (S2S) is our 825-mile, eight-day, GPS-guided backcountry motor route from the Sierra Nevada to the largest coastal wildland in the Lower 48, the fabled "Lost Coast."

S2S is focused on Northern California's most scenic, historic and remote unpaved backroads. The objective: To guide select overlanders, adventure motorcycle riders and other wildland travelers through some of California's wildest vehicle-accessible backcountry with data that is accurate, useful and current.

Tow strap, folding hand saw can keep forest deadfall from ending your wildland journey

Now and then we encounter forest roads blocked by deadfall ... trees felled by fire, age, drought, insects or wind. Often they can be cut away with the folding hand saw we keep in our moto and SUV tool kits.

Tow strap being used to move deadfall

Sometimes, however, they need to be pulled off the road using a tow or recovery strap.

We've never used our 30-foot-long recovery strap for its intended purpose: hitching to a second vehicle to be extracted from a hole of some sort. We find that good judgment, used preventively, is the better tool.

We have used the strap a number of times to pull deadfall either completely out of the roadway, or far enough to make room to pass. (Why 30 feet instead of, say, 20? We find that a longer strap can probably be made shorter with wrap-arounds; but a shorter strap cannot by itself be lengthened if necessary.)

Utah's Comb Ridge, Bears Ears shelter America's ancestral-Puebloan heritage

It is a privilege to experience the homeland of America's ancestral Puebloan people, whose centuries-old cliff-dwelling culture mysteriously vanished centuries ago, yet reaches out to us today at places like Utah's Comb Ridge.

Utah Hwy. 95 ascends the west face of Comb Ridge.

The dramatic sandstone uplift barely survived the Republican Trump administration's downsizing of Bears Ears National Monument -- authorized by Democratic President Barack Obama -- by 85 percent in December 2017.