5 Favorite Roads

5 FAVORITE ROADS

A tour guide picks America's best

Burt Richmond and wife Diane run Lotus Tours, a Chicago-based motorcycle touring outfit (www.lotustours.com) that specializes in custom itineraries for the world-savvy moto-traveler. Richmond is at home whether in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, Sardinia’s traction-packed twisties or a mountain pass deep in the Dolomites, but he knows America, too. Here’s his can’t-miss quintet for the stateside rider:

1“lf you behave yourself, the Natchez Trace. The road surface is as smooth as a billiard table. It is well-mannered, leisurely with wonderful views, an almost musical flow. One of the most romantic roads in America.”

“Deals Gap-it’s more than a T-shirt. Getting there is half the fun-choose any road in the Smoky Mountains and you’ll ride in awe. But Deals Gap, a stretch of Rt. 129 that crosses the Tennessee/North Carolina border, is called ‘The Dragon.’ It has elevation changes, 318 turns in 11 miles. Scenery? What scenery? Culture? What culture (unless you count sportbikes as a culture)? This is a performance ride, pure and simple.”

3 “In Colorado, the road from Telluride to Cortez. You head out of town on 145, over Lizard Head Pass. There are ranches, an old train line, meadows filled with wildflowers, and big rocks-Wilson Peak and Sunshine Mountain, 14,000-foot peaks. The road tightens and twists through Rico, a neat little Victorian-era mining town, and for the next 40 miles you meander along the Durango River. The route leaves you in Cortez, near Mesa Verde and the best Anasazi ruins in the Southwest. Curves, ancient cultures...it doesn’t get better.”

“In Wisconsin, the alphabet county roads around Spring Green. We take friends there for a weekend ride every fall. It’s the unglaciated part of the Midwest; the roads aren’t laid out with rulers. You get a sense of rural America, within a day’s ride of Chicago.”

“If you have several days and find yourself in Northern California, there’s a loop that rivals the best of European tours. You take Rt. 89 north from Truckee to Mt. Shasta. It’s all National Forest flanked by volcanic peaks (Lassen and Shasta). Spend the first night in Weed. Then you pick up Rt. 3 at Gazelle and work your way over to the coast (it becomes Rt. 36). There are times, along that road, that you have no idea you are in America. South of Eureka you pick up The Forgotten Highway,

Rt. 211, as it meanders down the coast through Cape Mendocino to Petrolia and Honeydew. How could you resist something called The Forgotten Highway?”