Day: 52
Date: 24/05
City: Kanab, Utah
Miles ridden: 213
Cumulative miles: 4464

 

In the morning Wombat fitted the old GPS to Val’s bike, which included wiring it up. That meant that he had to remove the side panniers again to fit the wire:

During this time Val had a look at available hotels in Kanab, found something available but the best rate was 100U$/day. Reason for that seems to be the American Memorial Day public holiday. It seems like we have to pre book the next couple of days, at least until Sunday. Wombat and Val repacked their luggage and sent something back to Stephen. This gave me time to pack our panniers… with some of them I had my doubts that everything would fit inside…But with a bit of pressure and force, it did fit (don’t open the lit again! :P).

After we fitted everything in our pannier I updated our blog. We left the campground at 13:00 and went through the Grant Canyon, stopped a couple of times and had a look at some lookouts. The Diddles were a bit scared to look the other way, I guess they don’t like heights.

The whole ride to Kanab was awesome. The south rim of the Grand Canyon was amazing and so was coming down to the plains. We stopped at one of these old bridges

And had a look at a bridge crossing the Colorado river.

When we arrived in Kanab, we unpacked and went for dinner to a steakhouse and had an early evening. Well, sort off. I called Oma & Opa to congratulate Oma on her birthday. We talked about our last adventures and how Oma celebrated her birthday and how our Great-grandchild developed. After starting to write the latest blog, Hugo called and we talked for two hours on Skype and then I updated the diary.

Day: 53
Date: 25/05
City: Parowan, Utah
Miles ridden:
Cumulative miles:

After breakfast we had a look for accommodation close to Bryce NP. It looks like all the places are booked for the memorial weekend. Finally we found something below the 100US$ mark in Parowan, it even had a pool and a spa. Parowan is a ski resort, so it shouldn’t be too busy at this time of year and it was a bit off the track from Bryce NP. Sigrid and Val booked the accommodation and then we went off to fill the bikes up. That was the plan. At the petrol station Sigrid had a look if she could find some toothpaste and some other small things, but the station didn’t have any of it. So we were heading off to Bryce NP….well Wombat and Val were, I rode two metre when the engine stalled. I tried to start the bike but it didn’t start. After checking that there was petrol, I noticed that the bike would idle if I pulled the choke. But as soon I touched the throttle the engine would just die. It felt a bit like I did run out of petrol. After looking like a pig into a clockwork (German expression for looking busy but not knowing what to do) Wombat came back to check were we were. After describing the problem he guessed that we had water in the petrol, so after some revving the bike with and later without choke it seemed to run.

Ok, I hopped on the bike and was ready to take off but Sigrid’s bike developed the same symptoms. Wombat road back to Val to let her know what happened and I treated Sigrid’s bike the same way as we were treating mine. After a while it would run without choke and it would accelerate fine. Off we went. We met Wombat and Val on the way out of the town; they were just on their way to us. So they turned around and we were finally heading toward Bryce Canyon. It turned out to be more difficult than we thought; there were gusts of winds up to 60 miles/hour which nearly threw us off the road. I must admit, it was a bit easier for Sigrid and for me, since our bike were not packed as high as Wombat and Val’s, but it was a challenge to stay on the road. So after a while we found a nice stop (in Hatch) to have some late lunch. During lunch we decided to skip Brice Canyon because of the winds. We would arrive at our accommodation a bit earlier, have a swim and spa and a nice dinner. Or that was the plan. When we went out to hit the road, our bikes wouldn’t start again.
Sigrid went over to the petrol station and got some fuel & carbie cleaner fluid. We put it into both tanks. It didn’t seem to make a hug difference. Well after several restarts and revving we got Sigrid’s bike running, but I was concerned that we would flatten the battery if we would try that a couple of more times. My bike refused to start. So we started to release the fuel from the carbie bowl, just in case there was water or dirt in. When I undid the screw, the fuel started to run onto the starter motor. I let out quiet a bit of fuel, but after a while I looked where the fuel was running. Well it was running onto the starter motor, then onto the chain, ……wait, what? No! Not the chain!

When I realised that, I closed the screw, wiped the remaining petrol off (wouldn’t make any difference, but it felt better) and started to unpack my tool pannier. I got some fuel hose out and plugged it into the carbie bowl and let the petrol run into an empty bottle of coke. It took a while to get some petrol out. Wombat was suggesting to dump more fuel and fill up with high octane fuel. So I organised a bucked and drained 5 litre, pushed the bike to the petrol station opposite, filled it up with high octane fuel, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. So after a while we slowly got my bike running as well and finally off we went.

The ride was amazing, as were the winds! We went up to a pass that was ~ 10570 feet and it suddenly got rather fresh. We stopped on the ‘Cedar Break National Monument’, and we had a look at a lookout. It was an amazing view. We were standing on the rim of a cliff, and the cliff was red stone and it looked like an amphitheatre, but the seats where spikes and in the middle there was some sort of creek.

From there we progressed towards our accommodation through roads that reminded me on Austria. I guess it would be similar, since we are in the middle of a ski area. When we arrived Wombat and I oiled our chains, on my part it was just to try to compensate for the petrol that I let run of the chain before. Then we had a pool/spa session, the spa water was really warm. After that we went to the pizza restaurant on the side of the hotel, and…… it was closing. The lady closing up the shop enquired for us in the kitchen if we could have a pizza to take away, but the pizza oven was already switched off. So we asked if we would have a chance of scoring some pasta, and we got lucky. We got take away fettuccini, salad and garlic bread. Below is the team that provided us with food for the night.

We were waiting with a beer until our dinner was ready for the takeout.

While paying we had a short talk about where we are from and we mentioned that it is hard to find accommodation for the next days, because of ‘Memorial Day’. The lady (Rebecca & Bred) offered us to stay at her house if we didn’t find anything else, we were amazed! She introduced us briefly to her hubby and said that he would show us around at their house tomorrow. We accepted happily. We enjoyed the fettuccine, garlic bread and salad.

After dinner, Val saw a red illuminated P on the mountain – and the story is that this ‘P’ is illuminated once in a year, when the graduation happens, and that was just that day.

I took a picture of it. Then we talked to a lady who was living here before – she had moved to Arizona, but still felt home here – and then we dropped into to bed. What a day!