In case you adore touring by motorcycle, but your destination is as well far from home to take your bicycle, a rental may be the ideal choice.

Motorcycle rentals are obtainable pretty much anywhere worth seeing, whether it’s riding from Chicago to Los Angeles on Route 66, by way of northwest Canada to Alaska, or even in the Himalayas or the Alps.

My decision was a Harley-Davidson for just a ride by means of an expanse of desert in southern Nevada, exactly where the scorching summer temperatures were matched only by the breathtaking vistas. Petrified sand dunes have been shaped right here more than the millennia into red formations with illusions of flames that give the place its name and sense: Valley of Fire.

My trip began in Las Vegas, in which I discovered three dealerships that offer you motorcycle rentals. The 1,500-cubic centimeter bike I rented is twice the size with the 750-cubic centimeter BMW I’ve driven for 33 years plus a tad bigger than the motor in at least one auto I’ve owned. But as I became accustomed towards the really feel with the huge machine, I was grateful for its power and weight, which kept the bicycle stable as it cut effortlessly through gusts of blast-furnace wind that whipped across the highway.

The trip was a family affair, with my wife riding with me; two of her brothers, each and every driving; and her sister-in-law, who proved being very adept at snapping photos whilst driving her machine one-handed.

Leaving the neon glitz of Vegas behind us, we stopped at a cantina for a drinking water break. Using the temperature already around 100 degrees and headed to 115, we essential all the bottled water we could sock away in our saddlebags, and we drank it at each and every feasible opportunity.

The shimmering two-lane highway led towards the park, wherever the roads cut sweeping swaths and tight S-turns through the highs and lows from the valley. We sidetracked to the White Domes Trail, which offers vistas of towering, multicolored formations molded around time by erosion.

Back about the major trail, we passed mountain ridges rising in the flatlands where creosote and burro bush have been the primary inhabitants, aside in the occasional coyote, roadrunner and lizard.

No set itinerary

The desert ride is only a taste of what the avid biker can sample on the rental. Businesses like EagleRider, Ayres Adventures and Alaska Rider present rentals and self-guided or guided tours over a selection of motorcycles.

Ours was a fairly simple rental, with no set itinerary and only a bicycle for 24 hours. My bills, which include taxes and $30 for supplemental insurance, came to $196.56.

But rental tours can get a lot much more elaborate in a market that appears as boundless as the American West.

Los Angeles-based EagleRider has a fleet of 3,500 bikes, from Harley-Davidsons, Hondas and BMWs to Vespa scooters, mentioned corporation marketing manager David Goff. The company has 85 locations worldwide.

EagleRider’s 16-day Wild West tour is a single of its most common, following a loop that swings by way of areas like Palm Springs, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Las Vegas, Yosemite National Park and San Francisco. The expense to get a guided tour, about $4,600, covers one bike rental, hotel rooms along the way and also a support van to haul the riders’ gear.

Another well-known run could be the Route 66 tour from Chicago to Los Angeles, which passes by way of locations such as the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, N.M., as well as the cemetery wherever Abraham Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Ill.

Ayres Adventures books tours in Africa, South America, New Zealand, Europe (such as the Alps) and North America (specially Canada and Alaska). Its 17-day “Escape to Machu Picchu” has an itinerary that sounds like it was borrowed in the Motorcycle Diaries, winding 2,500 miles by means of Brazil, Argentina and Chile before reaching Peru’s Lost City with the Incas. (The last leg for the Inca website is by bus and train; the ruins lately reopened following flooding.) The cost for the single rider and BMW motorcycle rental, which include lodging, breakfasts and 16 dinners, is $8,975 this season.

And Alaska Riders offers guided and self-guided tours in Alaska and Canada’s Northwest. Hoping to promote its international reach for adventure trips, the company designed MotoQuest Tours, which goes to 11 countries, mentioned founder Phil Freeman.

Maybe its most adventurous is MotoQuest’s 12-day “Himalayan Adventure” on dirt and paved roads in India, a ride that ascends 16,000 feet and comes inside a mile of Tibet.

“We make an effort to offer you tours which are for the adventurous side of life,” said Freeman.