BMW Motorcycle Owners of Alabama - ABEES Touring Guide

All Around Alabama Challenge 2008

The 2008 challenge will test your endurance and navigational skills to a very high degree, even when using a GPS. To help you with your navigation, a detailed route sheet showing turn by turn directions including total miles and leg miles is available here. Also included is a Garmin GPS route file and the All Around Alabama information letter.

The trip is 1,267 miles in length and contains in excess of 200 waypoints. Many GPS units will not handle more than 50 waypoints so for your convenience, two GPS files are included. The first contains the entire trip in one route and the second contains the trip broken down into five routes to facilitate loading into your GPS unit.

Here are the All Around Alabama 2008 route and information files for you to download.

PDF	Word	All Around Alabama 2008 Instructions
PDF	Excel	All Around Alabama 2008 Turn By Turn in text form
GDB	GPX	All Around Alabama 2008 in one single Route
GDB	GPX	All Around Alabama 2008 in five separate Routes
Google		Complete Route Path via Google Maps ( 1 Map ) (reference only)
Google		Complete Route via Google Maps ( 11 Maps ) (reference only)

The ABEES Touring Guide is developed to encourage our club members to explore the wonderful and some times very surprising sites that the great state of Alabama has to offer. So, the next time you think to yourself, “it’s a great day for a ride, but where will I go”, just pick out some of the Points of Interest, Restaurants and Favorite Roads and Rides from your ABEES Touring Guide, get on the bike, and go exploring.

There are approximately 450 eateries and points of interest listed here. Also listed are some of our club member’s favorite Alabama motorcycling roads and rides, Club meeting locations and non Club gatherings; all indicated with a reference mark to point out the different categories such as covered bridges, wineries, Alabama’s oldest eateries, waterfalls and BBQ joints. Most of the eateries are from the “100 dishes to eat in Alabama before you die” publication, produced by the Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel in 2007. The others are our club member’s suggestions. The vast majority of the points of interest are gathered from the “INSIDERS Guide – Off The Beaten Path – Alabama” by Gay N. Martin. We strongly suggest that you purchase Ms. Martin’s book because it has a wealth of information about the wonderful places to explore in Alabama including directions, opening hours, phone numbers and well written descriptions of the points of interest. By having your ABEES Touring Guide and the “Insider’s Guide – Off the Beaten Path Alabama” with you during your travels, you will save valuable time by not having to search for the places you want to visit, and then discover that you arrived on a day they are closed or require reservations. Bogart’s Motorsports stocks Ms. Martin’s book.

Your Touring Guide is organized alphabetically by city, then place of interest. There is a brief description of each place listed, but for more complete information, consult Ms. Martin’s book or the internet. Also, please note that some of the places may no longer be in business or they may be located several miles from the designated city. As you visit places, you can enter the dates in the Date column, then go to the back of the Touring Guide and enter your notations in the Date & Notes section.

This Touring Guide does not take all the work out of your hands. It points you to a specific location of the state where the sites can be found. It is up to the rider (or navigator) to find specific addresses and plan their adventures. We encourage our riders to carry this guide, and Ms. Martin’s book along with you so you can have some extra fun and pleasurable times as you travel the State on your motorcycle. We hope that each of our members and friends will use this guide regularly and always take time for new experiences. When you find interesting places, please send a few favorite photos and a little story about your discovery to Gary DuBois (duboisga@ardmore.net) so it can be shared with other Club members. This Guide is not all inclusive of interesting places to visit or ride. If you would like to submit additions to the guide, please do a short write up about the point of interest and submit it to Bob Steber (bsteberbtr@gmail.com). Additions may include destinations in adjoining states as long as the POI is not further than 50 miles from the state line.