Southward Chronicles - The Final Chapter - Jeremy Kroeker and Elle West

Meet Jeremy and Elle…

Jeremy Kroeker lives in Canmore, Alberta and he’s a motorcycle adventurer, traveler and an author. And Jeremy’s girlfriend, Elle, who calls Alberta home, is also an avid motorcyclist and adventure traveler. 

Before we started following Jeremy and Elle’s trip in near real time, they were an involved couple, living in different cities in Alberta when they decided to go on a motorcycle trip from Canada to Ushuaia, Argentina. Both were experienced riders and had travelled before, and they both had a goal to ride to Ushuaia, having never been further south than Panama.

Not having spent any significant extended time together, mainly just weekends, they made the commitment to take a year off work and travel together. Well, they would travel together, but would each have their own motorcycle and just in case, they were each bringing their own camping equipment and gear. That way if they decided to go their separate ways, for whatever reason, they were each fully prepared. As Jeremy said, they were on separate, but parallel journeys.

They left Canada near the end of August in 2019, and we followed Jeremy and Elle, who described themselves as fiercely independent people, from Canada, through the United States and Mexico, to Guatemala, and finally through Panama where they would board the Stahlratte that took them to Columbia. Then they rode on through Peru and arrived in Argentina after five months of travel. 

In March, Jeremy and Elle were sideswiped and had a major change of plans. Completely unexpected, their trip had come to a grinding halt when the world pandemic shut down borders, forcing them to make a decision of trying to get back home to Canada or stay put where they were in Uruguay.

Although things didn’t go according to plan, they enjoyed their stay over the next few months and then in August, one year after they set out for their dream trip, Jeremy and Elle packed up their motorcycles and shipped them back home. They took a convoluted trip by air to get back to Canada and then locked down for a two week pandemic quarantine, mandatory for everyone entering Canada. 

In this final episode of Southward Chronicles, Jeremy and Elle share how they feel about the trip, about what it’s like to get back to ‘normal’ life and what the future holds for them - both for travel and as a couple.

Images: Jeremy Kroeker and Elle West

Backcountry Discovery Routes - 10 Year Anniversary

Image: Backcountry Discovery Route;  Photo Credit: Bill Weigand

Backcountry Discovery Routes is a non profit organization that creates off-byway routes - mainly dirt for adventure motorcyclists. They began with an idea and one route, and with a ton of effort and volunteer labour they have created one new route every year totalling 10 routes. How do they choose the routes, how challenging are they - do they rate them and how and who are they designed for?

Paul Guillien

Board President & Co-Founder of Backcountry Discovery Routes

Since his first time motorcycle camping experience in 2009 while riding on the Oregon Backcountry Discovery Route, Paul fell in love with riding motorcycles in the backcountry. In the following years, Paul led the way in creating the Backcountry Discovery Route non-profit organization. He’s one of the founding board members and currently serves as the President of the BDR. 

Backcountry Discovery Routes: https://ridebdr.com

Music Credits:

Title: Funky Folk
Title: Greasy Wheels
Title: various intros and stingers
Title: Drum shuffle 
Artist: house

Title: A Foolish Game by Snowlfake (MoEoStAr Remix) (ft. Snowflake)
Artist: MoEoStar
2019 MoEoStar Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Verify at http://ccmixter.org/files/MoEoStar/59070

Title: Brasilian Reggae
Artist: Juanitos
URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Juanitos/Soul_Africa/08_-_Brasilian_Reggae
Comments: http://freemusicarchive.org/
Curator: WFMU
Copyright: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/

Title: Soul Walking
Artist: Juanitos
URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Juanitos/Soul_Africa/06_-_Soul_Walkin
Comments: http://freemusicarchive.org/
Curator: WFMU
Copyright: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/