Day: 85 – 87
Date: 26/06 – 28/06
City: Tonopah, Nevada
Miles ridden: 302
Cumulative miles:7199
We stored Sigrid’s bike at Tony’s place. The entry was a bit tight, so Tony walked the bike into the backyard for us.
After a short talk, we drove to Stanislaus National Forest. It was a great road (for a motor bike…) We stopped at a lookout and had a great view onto the cherry lake and the dam.
We also saw the Lorelei (German reference to a maiden at the Rhein river).
All the way through the park it reminded us of the Austrian Mountains. At some stage we could even see a bit of snow on the mountains .Ok, Wombat and Val will smile about this amount, since they are currently in Alaska, and will possibly have this amount of snow on the road in front of them…
After Lake Mono, the landscape changed into a desert and townships on the highway got a bit sparse. So we decided to stop in Tonopah, since the next larger town was at least 60 miles away and the sun stated to set. Tonopah was a mining town and opposite of our motel were some old buildings and some old mining machines.
It was nice to watch the sunset over the desert.
Day: 86
Date: 27/06
City: Bryce Canyon, Utah
Miles ridden: 379
Cumulative miles: 7578
Today we planned to go to Bryce Canyon by passing through a vast desert, so we started early. All of a sudden, a cow crossed the road. In this environment, a cow? Maybe it got lost; there was not much to eat in this plain. Unfortunately we were too slow for a picture. Close to the end of the plains there was suddenly an area covered with spiky bushes, it really stuck out in that vast landscape.
These bushes were really spiky, trust us, Sigrid and I tried it J
Then we continued and drove via the Extra-Terrestrial Highway and past Area 51, where we saw….. well we can’t tell you, but pictures say more than a thousand words 😛
After a safe flight, urh… ride… we arrived at Bryce Canyon and found typical American accommodation: a Teepee. It had a canvas floor and was pretty spacious inside, but I wasn’t too sure about the opening at the top. I’m pretty sure if it starts to rain we’ll get wet. Well the weather forecast did say no rain…
Lucky that we brought our camping equipment, so we could start cooking our tea, camping style.
We made pasta for tea on our cooker. By the way, Sigrid did all the work for the, I was just posing J
After tea, we started a little bonfire in front of our teepee. Since the wood was still a bit moist, it took a couple of hours before it was fully burned. Live can be hard 😀
Day: 87
Date: 28/06
City: Bryce Canyon, Utah
Miles ridden: 34
Cumulative miles: 7612
We slept very well that night, apparently the temperature went down to 6 degrees Celsius, but we didn’t noticed anything in our sleeping bags and on our x-pad mattress. After breakfast we hopped onto the shuttle bus to the park and got off at Sunset Point, which is where our walk started. We walked down the ‘Wall Street’, which was a trek that meandered down steeply, but the view was great. The first white dot on the right picture is me J
The way down was fun….. When we saw all the people huffing and puffing on the way up we decided to chicken out and take the easier and 500 feet lower exit via the Queens Garden walk. At the bottom was a gap, which led to the outside of the canyon.
The view from the gap was quite impressive as well.
Sometimes visitors have to stabilize some hoodoos, to stop them from falling. Normally I would have done that, but with just one arm it would have been a bit ambitious. 😛
The whole landscape looks different from the bottom, the hoodoos look bigger and the colour scheme seemed different than when we saw it from the top.
The Wall Street walk meets with the Queens garden walk, which led us to hoodoos that looked like Queen Elisabeth.
After that we saw some nice stone formation around the rim and in one part of the canyon there were suddenly these stack stone hills. We think some tourist started it and everybody now crossed that area added one or two of these stacks. They were all over the place, even in the trees.
But we are sure the Diddles and Bryce had nothing to do with it.
and then there was the way up.
Well, even taking the ‘easier’ way, we were still huffing and puffing at the top but the view on the way up was worth it.
After our ‘little walk’, we went back to our teepee at the campground. We went shopping, had a humungous ice cream and found a Trabbi (Iconic car of the DDR, ex east germany), in Utah, in the middle of the USA. Turns out that it belongs to the Crocodile Dundee from Germany. To be honest, I didn’t know him at all as we’ve been out of Germany for 20 Years. We didn’t have our camera with us (and ice cream in our hands) so we decided we’d take a picture tomorrow on our way out.
After all that walking, I had a power nap, …or two, its amazing what you can do if you don’t have to work (sorry, couldn’t resist 😀 )
In the evening we made our way through the rest of the park that we hadn’t seen so far. So we went up to Rainbow point
and stopped at every view point on the way back. Don’t worry, that is only a tiny portion of the pictures taken…
We ended up at Sunset point and watched the sunset. It was not as exciting as we thought, since the sun was setting from the back of the Amphi Theatre. On the way back we passed a dear with two youngsters, not afraid of humans at all… (or cars for that matter! :/ )
The next day we planned to get moving again, going up to the Staircase Escalante National Monument and possibly to Capital Reef National Park.
Hallo Ihr Amerikabummler!
Das sind ja wieder atemberaubende Landschaften auf Euren Fotos. Gehört es zu der geplanten Route oder habt Ihr die NPs als zusätzliche Schmankerl für die doofe “Ruhezeit”?
Übrigens: Wärt Ihr nach Good Old Germany gekommen, hättet Ihr ein ziemliches Kontrastprogramm gehabt – alles üppig grün, weil es ständig regnet.
Macht’s gut. Ich freue mich auf weitere Berichte von Euch.
Hugs Ria
wow wow wow…..this is so beautiful and your sense of humour shines through your blog. I feel like I am there with you, great pics, great description and a beautiful adventure.
Shxxx, i have to go to work today:-)
Hi guys, I am so glad that you have turned the corner on the little challenge that life threw your way! I love reading about your adventures. I expect to see an Indian come out from the rocks! Love the Tipee too. Take care and keep writing. love julie and jim
Hallo Ihre Reisenden, gebt es zu, die tollen Landschaftsbilder sind Postkartenbilder? Wirklich eine beeindruckende Landschaft die Ihr dort vorfindet. Dagegen ist die “sächsische Schweiz” nur das vorvorgeplänkel, allerdings durch den vielen Regen “grün”. Leider zum Motorradfahren sehr eingeschränkt. Mein neuer Vorderradreifen mag keine Näße.
Liebe Grüße aus Berlin
Peter
See what you might have missed if you hadn’t stopped for medical reasons!
The previous musical evening and the beautiful landscape views are a wonderful trade for a pink wrist 😉
This is the most stunning scenery so far. Incredible. Your doing a better job than the advertising agencies/bureau’s. It’s like we’re right there with you.