Motorcycle Cannonball Route

This is the route for this year’s Motorcycle Cannonball. In working on this route, we have tried to fulfill several criteria:

A coast-to-coast route across the United States. We start on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of aviation. Our finish, after about 3300 miles on the road, is on the Pacific Ocean beach in Santa Monica, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.

Approximately a two-week schedule. We start on a Friday in Kitty Hawk, and finish in Santa Monica two weeks later on a Sunday. The route is 17 days total, 16 days on the road, and one rest day in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The day off is the Friday a week after the start, a weekday when shops are open. The two days before the start in Kitty Hawk we will have registration, vehicle inspection, an optional practice run along the outer banks of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, a short classroom session, and a hosted welcome reception.

Most days 250 miles or shorter. Our goal was for all days to be at most 250 miles, but in the West there just aren’t enough cities at appropriate locations with sufficient hotel/motel rooms for a group our size. Only two days are longer (300 and 280 miles), and they are both after the rest day, on roads that are fairly flat and straight (across the great plains of Oklahoma and Texas). Also on the 300-mile day, we gain an hour as we cross a time-zone boundary. The typical schedule for a 250-mile day for the single-speed class, assuming the vehicles maintain 35 MPH on straight flat roads, will be an 8:00 AM start and 5:00 PM finish, for a total of 9 hours on the road. This schedule includes a 45-minute lunch break and three 15-minute refueling/rest breaks. Motorcycles in the faster classes will spend less time on the road.

Short days for the Start and Finish. The first and last days will each be a half day, with a late-morning official start in North Carolina, and an early-afternoon grand finish in California.

A fairly flat route. We will cross the Appalachians in the vicinity of the Great Smoky Mountains, climb Magazine Mountain in Arkansas, and summit Sitgreaves Pass in Arizona, but on a whole most of the route will have few steep grades. We cross the Continental Divide in New Mexico at a fairly flat pass.

A scenic and historic route. We will travel several scenic National Parkways, follow some sections of historic US 66, and have an overnight stop in Hot Springs National Park. We have spent quite a bit of work to provide a relatively short, direct cross-country route, while traveling the most scenic route possible. There is a whole other world out there when you travel cross-country and stay off Interstate highways.

Avoid Interstate highways. There are a number of places where the Interstate is the only road available, where the old road is no longer available. We have avoided most of these places, so the total distance traveled on Interstates will be less than 100 miles. That occurs only in the West; we get all the way to Albuquerque without a single mile of Interstate.

All paved roads (despite some of the historic photos on our web site).

Several hosted dinners. We have tentative plans for two overnight stops at motorcycle and automotive museums, including hosted dinners. And we are working on plans for additional hosted evening receptions, and also a farewell dinner after the finish in the Santa Monica/Los Angeles area.