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Charlie Smith is hitting the road. And he’s taking readers with him.

On Tuesday, Smith plans to start a 21-day journey on his motorcycle, traveling cross country through the Northwestern part of the United States, tracing part of explorers’ Lewis and Clarke’s route, through the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, on major highways and back roads, to return along the length of Canada, from Vancouver to Montreal, and home to Plainville.

Smith, business partner of Raymond Mui at Shanghai Gardens in Attleboro and a former Plainville official, will have a sidekick on his travels which will include Father’s Day spent on the road astride his 1300 Yamaha Royal Star, possibly somewhere in South Dakota.

His 47-year-old son Chuck of Coventry, R.I., the oldest of his six children, will be riding alongside on his Harley Davidson Electra Glide. This will be their first long-distance trip together, one that they've been talking about for five years, the elder Smith said.

Smith will be transmitting submissions of his estimated 8,000-mile road trip to The Sun Chronicle on a weekly basis. He'll be writing about the people he meets, sights seen and other things in between, which will appear every Sunday in the Living Well section for the duration of his journey. His progress will also be mapped in articles and on the paper's Web site, www.thesunchronicle.com. He's no stranger to the task. For years, Smith said, he has carried a pocket tape recorder and camera in an attempt to capture the nuance of the people and places he visits. He likens it to Charles Kuralt's "On the Road" interviews with local characters who helped to define their communities and in a sense, humanity - but by motorcycle. "This will be On the Road with Charles and Charles," he joked.

He said the experience is more true by bike versus touring by car.

"I don't just ride through town," Smith said. He chats with folks in the local diner, hangs out with fishermen on a pier, will take in a local fair. He takes pictures of children posed on his bike and later sends them copies. "By the time I leave town, I know the gas station owner."

A gas station, in fact, is where it all started, when at age 14 or 15, as Smith tells it, he was hanging out at one when guys on Harleys drove up and asked, "Hey kid, want to ride?"

Having been a city kid raised first in Boston and then Providence before moving to Coventry, Rhode Island, he was game, Smith said.

"I was terrified initially," he said. The person he was riding with would consistently draw Smith's attention to the speedometer, the needle hovering at about 90 mph. "They wanted to see what I would do."

"But I fell in love with it," Smith said.

After that, he borrowed a motorcycle any time one was offered. He was in his mid-20s when he could afford a bike of his own. Weekend motorcycle trips for breakfast, where he hooked up with about a dozen others who shared his passion for riding, evolved into a 60-rider "Two Wheel Travelers" club for couples. The 120 riders and spouses would head out on three-day excursions around Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New York, among other destinations. That lasted until the 1990s, with members dropping out due to divorce or ailments, Smith said.

Most recently, he's been making solo trips, his former fellow riders saying they're too old to take to the road for long trips.

For Smith, a great-grandfather who will turn 70 in December, the road remains wide open. "I just get on the bike and go," he said. "It's my tonic. My medicine."

"I will ride as long as I can get my leg over that seat."

He cruises through Canada, where his mother's relatives live - Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, among his stops.

The hospitality he's been shown by strangers - like the time a fisherman he had just befriended threw him the keys to the cottage he owned and told Smith that he could stay there instead of a local hotel - continues to impress and amaze Smith. Through his journeys, he has established friendships that have endured, with folks insisting he lodge with them and share a seat at their table on his next visit. And in more than 30 years on the road, he's never run into problems with people. "I treat people as equals," and with civility, he said.

He's had only one accident, when he hit a patch of sand driving around a corner while travelling in Scituate, Rhode Island. He landed in a hay field. A farmer plowing a field with his son checked to see if he needed help and got his bike back on the road. The only victim, a bent mirror.

"It's an adventure" every time he takes a trip, having met dignitaries and regular people alike, Smith said. "To me, there's not thrill like it."

"It's the ultimate freedom."

The trip is an historic one for Smith in many ways.

A first time long-distance trip with his son, the duo will spend their nights both camping and in hotels. No reservations for lodging have been made because Smith said that they don't want to be constrained by having to be at a certain location at a specific time, possibly lingering longer in one place than another. Smith expects that they will travel between 400 and 500 miles a day.

Long into Indian culture, he bears tattoos reflecting his interest, and a history buff as well, their route will cover part of that tramped by explorers Lewis and Clarke almost 200 years ago to the date. It will be a 20-year-old dream fulfilled to bike in and through the Black Hills, Little Big Horn and to see the monument to Crazy Horse, he said.

"We'll be exploring and following in their footsteps in a sense."

Smith said the trip, coming now, means a lot to him.

"In my past life" with work and other commitments, "there was not enough time" for a trip like this, said Smith, who retired from the former Texas Instruments in 1999.

"I'm glad I waited because now, I get to do it with my son."

As for his son Chuck, a highway supervisor for the Coventry public works department for 25 years and the father of three, including a son who is currently on his second tour in Iraq and is scheduled to arrive home in July, the trip will mean seeing new sights and spending time with his father, whom he first rode with when he was 8 years old.

"I am looking forward to seeking the Dakotas, Mount Rushmore, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Ocean and Canada," he said by e-mail before the trip. "It will be great to spend time with Dad, away from our everyday routine."

"Life is fast, this will be our first time that we spend this much time alone," he wrote.

"Dad will be 70 this year and it is a trip he has always wanted to do."

For him, it will be fulfillment of a dream.