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  • Jerry and Cathey Shaw of Mt. Olive have traveled all 48 contiguous states and six Canadian provinces by motorcycle. They are shown here in 2008 at Bow Glacier in the Canadian Rockies.

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July 27, 2010

Mt. Olive couple tours U.S.A. on two wheels

By Mandy Shunnarah The North Jefferson News

MT. OLIVE — Jerry and Cathey Shaw of Mt. Olive have seen America’s jewels by visiting national parks, national forests, national monuments and everything in between by traveling the 48 contiguous states, and six of the Canadian provinces, on one motorcycle.

“I got my first motorcycle at 13 and I’m 57 now,” said Jerry of his lifelong hobby. The couple now owns a Goldwing motorcycle that allows Jerry to drive and Cathey to ride behind him while on their road trips.

The Shaws bought their first Goldwing in 1995 for fun and started taking trips to Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and Louisiana. After a few years, they went on their first long trip, which was following the Mississippi River from Mississippi to its headwaters near Bemidji, Minn., stopping at many of the small riverfront towns in between.

One of their longest trips was in 2005 when they traveled 7,136 miles to California via Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, Four Corners, the Hoover Dam, and across Death Valley and Sequoia National Park before reaching San Francisco.

For that trip, they didn’t pack a trailer, so they packed everything in the motorcycle. The Shaws like to travel with Jerry’s cousin and her husband, Jan and Randy Bittle of Millport, Ala., which usually brings the group to four people on two bikes.

Out of the 54 national parks, the Shaws have visited 27. “We tend to try to see the natural beauty of a place rather than a man-made monument. Most of the national monuments are in big cities, which we try to avoid because of the traffic,” said Cathey.

Before the couple got a global positioning satellite (GPS), Cathey read the maps while riding on the back of the motorcycle. On a few occasions, a gust of wind would blow the map out of her hands.

“We’ve seen a lot of beautiful places by getting lost. We found where the last few scenes of the movie ‘Dances With Wolves’ was filmed in Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota, by accident,” the couple said.

The couple has also visited the church where Paul Revere hung the lanterns in the Revolutionary War; where the Boston Tea Party took place; a bar where Butch Cassidy was arrested the first time for stealing horses; the Little Bighorn River in Montana where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his calvary were defeated by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians; and Presidio La Bahia outside Goliad, Texas, where Santa Anna gave orders to kill the 342 Texas soldiers in the fort.

“We’ve seen the park bench in Savannah, Ga., where Tom Hanks ate the box of chocolates in Forest Gump, and the Old Tuscon Movie Studio which served as the site for more than 300 movies and television projects since 1939,” said Cathey.

When they travel, their starting point and their destination is predetermined, but past that, the Shaws leave their adventures to spontaneity. “We don’t make reservations ahead of time, and some things you can’t plan for, like once when a bike and trailer had four flat tires over the course of the trip,” Cathey said.

Their favorite places to visit are out west.

“When you travel the east coast, even the Great Smoky Mountains, the Poconos or the Adirondacks, you don’t get that awe effect like you do in Colorado, Montana or Wyoming,” said Jerry.

“If I’m going to put all my gear on, I don’t just want to ride up the street,” Cathey said.

To remember their trips, Cathey makes scrapbooks. She has a total of seven, beginning with their first trip to Yellowstone National Park in 2002.

Jerry and and his brother, Herbert Shaw, are owners of Shaw Building Supply in Mt. Olive.

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