I always try to get up to Jasper in the summer, and have for many years made it. So, I went online and got the last campground available in Whistlers campsite for Sunday and Monday night. I will head out after coffee on Saturday and run over to Creston/Kaslo/New Denver and onto Revelstoke. Then run up and down the Mt Revelstoke road, and then over to Kamloops and up to Jasper, stay for two nights, and then head back to Cranny on Tuesday.

Let me know if your in the area.

The weather looks good, so expect a heavy load of Picts....

.....I just booked a room in Revelstoke for Saturday night.... might have been damn close to the last one...

 

Cool ride. Nice pics. Looking forward to your next adventure.

 

What is this "camping" you speak of? You always staying in motels. 😳

 

I understand it's about communing with Nature....... Actually I always camp in Jasper.

 

Rocky,
It seems to me that you are on par with Clement Salvadori and should be submitting articles to to magazines. Give it a try sometime.

It's great that you are back on the road. When you briefly stopped I was afraid that I was going to have to get my own life. Thankfully, I can live vicariously through you again.

I, like many others, follow with anticipation of your next post. You obviously enjoy what you do and it shows. Great job and thank you sir.

Frosty

 

Thanks for the compliments. To mention me and Mr Salvadori in the same sentence is a hell of a thing.

 

This story started for me in 1993.... but it really started about 150 years before.... and it will continue long after I am gone.

I will start with my part. I was riding up the Oregon coast on my Sporster in 1993 and I stopped in a knife shop. It was a little store, run by an old guy, who clearly loved knifes, as that was all there was in the store. Now, I have always liked small pocket knifes, but I am no collector.

I was walking around his shop and I saw this small pocket knife. It caught my attention because of the inlay on the side of it. I asked him if I could look at it, and he took it out of the case, and started to tell me about the knife. If he told me where he got it, I forgot.

What he did do, was to get out a big book of knifes, and show me what the book said about it. It was made by the Holley Knife Manufacturing Company, of Lakeville, Connecticut in 1844. They are know as the first pocket knife company in the USA.

So, the knifes journey started in either 1844 or 1845.

Some how, it made its way from Conneticut to Oregon.... and then to me. Who knows its true history. Possibly was in the pocket of a Union Soldier in the Civil War, or maybe even a few.... or possibly even a Confederate soldier.

It might have traveled around the Horn of South America, on a train after the Transcontinental was build, or possible in the pocket of a traveler on a horse..... or maybe even it got there on the Oregon trail. If that is so, then it was on the Oregon trail again last year when I walked on it.

Maybe it stayed on the East coast until there where highways and it came West in a car..... or maybe even in the pocket of a motorcyclist.

It traveled with me on all my motorcycle trips, so it was in Alaska, the Yukon, rode over the top of Lake Superior. It traveled with me to Europe, and all over the Western USA and Canada.... several times.

It was no stranger to a gunfight. It was the one I carried into a fake gun fight in Cody, and almost a real one in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. And if it was in the Civil war, it might have seen some of the greatest battles ever fought on US soil. Maybe it was even in the Indian wars.

Who knows its true travels. But it would be a wonderful story to know.

Anyway...... it is gone. I did a hard target search...twice... and I cannot find it. The last time I remember seeing it was up on the lookout up on Hells Canyon. I used it to cut up a pickle... LOL...

Am I sad?.... No... after all, I had only borrowed it for a brief period of time of its own Journey. I had the great pleasure of having it with me on my travels, using it to eat, cut speaker wire, carve wood, and the pure joy of holding it in my hand for a quarter of a Century.

It is now on another part of its journey. My only hope is who ever has it, does not put it in a Museum somewhere, or a drawer where it is forgotten about for generations.

This knife was made to travel, to be used, to create memories.... and who knows where it will travel to, in the pocket of some distant traveler, going to some distant part of our Universe.

Travel well, good friend......

 

That's sad. I have been carrying the same knife, almost every day, for the last 19 years. It doesn't have the kind of history your knife has, but we have been through quite a bit together. I once lost it for 3 days. I was so happy when I found it. I hope you find it, like I found mine, when I wasn't looking for it.

You could just ride back to where you were cutting that pickle, and "take" us with you.

 

Lol. First one to the bench, wins.

 

After I had my Open Heart surgery 6 years ago, I was put on a Beta Blocker to control blood pressure. One of the side effects is that I have incredible vivid and complete dreams. I had one last night in which I found the knife. Maybe it just popped by to say so long.

Oh ya, in my hard target search.... I found my good reading glasses..... lol.