After a relaxing day, we set off for new adventures. Starting our bikes was easier this morning, turns out that dumping 64L of petrol and refilling the tanks solved the problem. In the end it really appears to have been dirty fuel that caused the problems.
Our first destination was a ride to the petroglyph in the Parowan gap. When we came closer to the gap, it got really cold very quickly. When we arrived, a gusty wind was blowing and we put our liner into our jackets.
The gap, the petroglyphs and putting the liner in
We took a couple of pictures and started to ride to Bryce Canyon NP. It was nice and warm with the heated liner plugged into the bike. It did get a bit windy whenever we hit the highway or were crossing some plains. We made a food and petrol stop and continued to Bryce Canyon, but first we passed through the Red Canyon. The pictures don’t do the colour justice; the red was much brighter in reality.
When arrived in Bryce Canyon, we went into the Visitor Centre where Sigrid met Bryce, a soft toy squirrel; she couldn’t put it down again.
I must admit it looks really cute, so we added him as a new member in our travel group. The naming was easy, we found him in Bryce Canyon so we called him ‘Bryce’. To tour around Brice Canyon is easy, a bus service drives you around, nothing to pay as it’s all part of the park fee. So we all hopped onto a bus and drove to Bryce Point, had a look and took some pictures. The view was amazing.
Wombat and Val continued with the bus to the next view point, Sigrid and I walked a bit further down to take some more pictures. We arranged to meet at the Visitor Centre when everybody finished sightseeing.
The next stop for us was Inspiration Point. The walk was a bit steep but the view was rewarding.
We had some delicious lunch (muffins, banana and water), then continued to Sunset Point took a couple of pictures, and here is “Bryce’s” first appearance.
On our way to the sunrise point, we meet a nice couple, George and Ruth Dunham from Winter Haven, Florida.
We talked for a bit while we walked to the Sunrise point. George gave us some hints on Alaska, they have been there before and suggested some nice area to visit. When we arrived at Sunrise point, we took a couple of more pictures, said goodbye and walked to the bus station. When getting back to the Visitor centre, Val was waiting for us while Wombat had gone to look at other viewpoints that were only reachable with your own vehicle. Val was a bit concerned that Wombat would not be back early enough for dinner and that we had to ride at night. So we called the restaurant to check, and they confirmed that they’d serve us until 9:00PM. That was enough time for us to get there. We looked at the sunset time and the estimated time to get home. When we decided to leave, Wombat arrived, just in time. We arrived at the motel at sunset, so all went well. Part of the ride was into the sunset, sounds romantic but is really a pain since you can’t see much of the road. Arriving at the motel, we still got something to eat.
Tomorrow we will visit Zion NP and ride towards Las Vegas.
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$/day. Reason for that seems to be the American Memorial Day public holiday. It seems like we have to pre book the next couple of days, at least until Sunday. Wombat and Val repacked their luggage and sent something back to Stephen. This gave me time to pack our panniers… with some of them I had my doubts that everything would fit inside…But with a bit of pressure and force, it did fit (don’t open the lit again! :P).
After we fitted everything in our pannier I updated our blog. We left the campground at 13:00 and went through the Grant Canyon, stopped a couple of times and had a look at some lookouts. The Diddles were a bit scared to look the other way, I guess they don’t like heights.
The whole ride to Kanab was awesome. The south rim of the Grand Canyon was amazing and so was coming down to the plains. We stopped at one of these old bridges
And had a look at a bridge crossing the Colorado river.
When we arrived in Kanab, we unpacked and went for dinner to a steakhouse and had an early evening. Well, sort off. I called Oma & Opa to congratulate Oma on her birthday. We talked about our last adventures and how Oma celebrated her birthday and how our Great-grandchild developed. After starting to write the latest blog, Hugo called and we talked for two hours on Skype and then I updated the diary.
After breakfast we had a look for accommodation close to Bryce NP. It looks like all the places are booked for the memorial weekend. Finally we found something below the 100US$ 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!
We packed up again. When I saw our stuff as well as Wombats and Val stuff on a bench, I was wondering how it would fit onto the bikes.
At the end of the day it did. A short farewell from Tod and Gaila and off we went.
Mike was coming with us too. He had wanted to get an oil change done in Flagstaff but the workshop was closed on Mondays, so he decided to come with us to the Grand Canyon. On the way to flagstaff I guided all of us through the University campus, because the GPS didn’t know that one of the roads was a one way street. We wriggled our way out of there. After twice running in circles, we drove further back and finally got out.
Back to Flagstaff, Wombat was expecting two parcels at the hotel, one from Garmin and one from Twisted Throttle. When we arrived, only one was there, the Garmin one. Sigrid and I went to the post office to get my battery charger for the helmet camera, which was there this time. So putting the name on the parcel seems to help…. Who knew? 😛
Getting back to the hotel, Val was looking at accommodation around the Grand Canyon. Nothing was available. After some telephone calls she found a camp ground, just outside of the Grand Canyon NP for just 26US$ including Wi-Fi and power in the tent. So we went to Tusayan and pitched the tents. We camped on a hill, the underground was a bit rocky, no mains power and only marginal Wi-Fi but we had the view. Wombat felt a bit dizzy when he pitched the tent, not sure what it was, luckily it went away after a couple of hours. After tea we went to the Information Center with the IMAX cinema across the road. There we enquired about the busses to and within the National Park. When we came back, we met our neighbours, 3 Germans (Father with 2 sons). They just came back from a long hike to the base of the Grand Canyon. They went down the Kaibab Trail, walked on the Grand Canyon and came up the Bright Angel Trail (the easy trail). All up 12 hours of hiking! So we’ll consider going down all the way, but we would have to set ourselves a time limit when we have to turn back.
Got up early (6AM), went to McDonalds for a short breakfast and then to the Grand Canyon. We carried plenty of water. When we arrived, we got straight to the bus. We arrived at the South Kaibab Trail at 8:30 AM, so we calculated that we should turn around between 11:30…12:00. We were amazed when we saw the Grand Canyon for the first time.
It was much bigger than I had it expected. The first decent was relatively steep; you can see the people from the top (little black dots in the bottom middle of the picture).
The walk to our first view point was partially in shaded, so it was not too hot.
After the first view point it changed and it was considerably hotter. On the way to our second view point, ‘Cedar Ridge’ we saw some cacti flowering,
And a squirrel that wanted to be a film star.
The time that we needed to arrive at the 2nd view point was good enough that we could make it all the way down. There were some warning signs that said that it would not be recommended to go down and up again at the same day.
After Cedar Ridge the path became a bit steeper
but the heat was still bearabl (While going down 🙂 ) We meet a couple of horse/donkey groups which were supporting the accommodation at the bottom with food and other materials and carrying some hikers up.
When we arrived at the 3rd point (Skeleton Point) we started to feel the heat and our legs. It took us just under 2 hours to arrive here. So we looked for a shady place, took a couple of pictures of the one bit of the Colorado river that we could see and talked to some people passing by.
All of them had accommodation booked at the base and it seems that the way down would take a bit longer than we thought. We had so far travelled two hours, the long trip would take us another 10 hours. I was not sure if we could manage that, since we were going only downhill and felt a bit tired already. So we decided to have a nice lunch (with Muesli bars and water) in our shady place. After an hour or so we started our return trip, it was really hard not to continue, particular after we could see the Colorado River. The temperature did rise considerably in the meantime; by now it must have been 35 degrees. So we started the same way up that we came down. The view was stunning
and we could look back onto the track that we just came (white zick zack) .
The temperature kept rising, so we decided not to push it and make frequently stops and water refills. After ~ 4 hours of walking (with breaks) we arrived he top again and we were happy that we didn’t go down to the river. That would be something for the next time, but we would book accommodation at the bottom and make it a 2 day trip (maybe on the way to Mexico).
We went back with the bus to the Information Centre and changed our clothes. By this time I was so tired that I had a power nap on the table/bench. Wombat and Val parked on the side of our bike so we left them a note that we would go to the sunset at Pima Point. We rode to the marked plaza, parked the bike, had something to eat (a banana) and hopped on the bus to the sunset. Looking at the sunset was great,
For the first time I tried the time lapse mode on my Video camera. It worked well, I’ll have to use it more often from now on. We had some Tonic water to celebrate our first sunset that we watched. And yes, it was tonic water, the champagne in the village was not cold :/
After the sunset we hopped on the bus back to the marketplace. On the way back, a lady ask us about the Diddles, so we started to chat. She and her partner travelled quite a bit and they recommended some places in Belize and Costa Rica to us. It turned out that they managed big jots all over the world. Anyway, we had dinner at the market place and rode back in the dark. We saw something that looked like a fox crossing the street but nothing else (lucky us). When we arrived at the tent site, Wombat was fitting his GPS to the bike in the dark. We had a beer and I was catching up on my diary. Then,….. I tipped beer over my laptop, *&^%$%#@#@@,.to cut the story short and reduce the amount of cursing, only some keys of the keyboard kept working, the rest was drunk and refused to work at all. I had a look at the keyboard (it could be easily removed) but there was not much to repair, it looked like a sealed unit. Ok, I had a shower and went to bed… possibly grumbling a little.
Sigrid and I discussed our options today; we had to find out if the laptop would work with a USB keyboard. After some mucking around we found an internet cafe where we could borrow a USB keyboard, it worked. So we searched on the internet for some rollable keyboards, didn’t find any which could be delivered over night (most of them are from China and it would take 2 weeks to arrive). So we opted for a normal USB keyboard, called into Flagstaff IT shops if they had them in stock and send Wombat the address. Wombat was in Flagstaff to pick up his parcel from the hotel. He bought a wireless keyboard that was smaller than the normal one, (he couldn’t fit the normal on into his pannier), which was great, since that meant that it would fit into our panniers as well. Below my precious new keyboard J. By the way, that ‘accident’ did show us that we really need a second laptop since we use it for our banking and I would not like to use a PC in an internet cafe for it.
Wombat fitted an additional carrier rack plate onto his back carrier and installed the new communication headset.
Knock, knock, can you hear me?
Oh, yes I can J
Sigrid and I did some blogging and email. In the evening we went to a Mexican Restaurant, Val and Sigrid had a Mexican coffee with all sorts of spirit and some cream on top, not sure if there was any coffee in at all 😀
Wombat was allowed to have a tiny sip as well.
After the dinner we went to see a movie about the Grand Canyon in the IMAX theatre opposite the road,
Day: 46 – 49
Date: 17/05 – 20/05
City: Mormon Lake, Arizona
Miles ridden: 32
Cumulative miles: 4133
Today is Sigrid’s birthday. When I woke up I congratulated Sigrid to her birthday, then we switched the Laptop on and logged in into Sigrid’s Skype account. We got a call from Simon, Niko, Anna, Silas, Oma and Opa and they congratulated Sigrid. Then we went to have breakfast and Val put the candles on the birthday cake that I organized earlier and lit them. When we arrived in the breakfast room we sang happy birthday for Sigrid.
After breakfast, Sigrid and I had a short pool/spa session and then started to pack. Back in the room Sigrid received another birthday call this time from Oma Inge.. During the time Wombat packed, a Red Indian accompanied him and told him stories.
After a while a second Indian came, saw that Wombat was occupied and came up to us and ask for a dollar to buy some food, so Sigrid offered him blueberry muffin. He was happy to get them and after telling us where he was from and that he is in the process of building a house, he left us, but Wombat was still stuck with his Indian. He only reluctantly left after a while. We got onto the bikes and left for Mormon lake. When we arrived it was a great atmosphere. At first it was a bit difficult to find a good camping spot. After some trial and error, Wombat located a nice area and we pitched our tent for the first time. It was a great feeling to finally camp.
After the tent was erected, we started to talk to people that passed by and talked to a guy from Alaska (not Fairbanks). Sigrid invited our new neighbours Tad and Gaila to a piece of her birthday cake. Tad and Gaila had been travelling for five weeks though the USA and where planning to travel to Mexico as well.
In the evening we started to wander around and found a truck with an Australian flag. We walked over and had a chat to the guy. He originated from Australia but was living in the USA for some years now. He and his partner were currently at the beginning of a round the world trip. His partner was from the USA and both were planning to get married on Saturday during happy hour. Going to the restaurant in the evening was a common idea, so we had to wait for an hour before a table become available. Sitting inside in the waiting area, Wombat and I tried to play Checkers, but we couldn’t agree on the rules. So we started to play chess, but we couldn’t finish the game since we got a table (bummer). We ordered our meals,
and got some freshly made bread with it. The bread tasted a bit funny, and looking at it we found that it was mouldy. We let the waiter know about the unwanted feature; she apologised and says she would inform her boss. The boss came, apologised and said that the food was free for us. Cool! We should always have some mouldy bread in our pockets. That would be good for our budget 😉
A guy with a guitar was going around and singing some songs, not very well but entertaining. When he arrived at our table, I ask him if he could sing happy birthday for Sigrid, so he got the attention of the restaurant and asked everybody to sing with him. Sigrid was a bit embarrassed but happy.
Next day in the morning there was the opening ceremony for the expo, and when we looked around we recognized some people that we have seen on the Horizon Unlimited DVDs
CD.
On this day we went to plenty of courses, e.g safety during traveling, risk mediation, cooking in one pot. The picture below is from a guy who was famous and cooked privately for rich people, until he decided that’s it and started traveling around the world on a motorcycle with sidecar. He gave us some nice recipes for one pot cooking.
And there was Mexico for beginners, we took some photos instead of taking notes, below are some examples.
This course gave us the confidences that we could do it but we should have a look where we cross the border and that we should avoid Mexico City. The rest of the country seems to be ok. It was a busy day. Mike arrived in the afternoon; he came a long way from New Mexico.
The last course was held by a couple that talked about the mishaps in Africa, and a very sad story about how the woman killed a child through an accident and the aftermath of that. It was a very emotional finish of the courses for the day. Then there was the happy hour, we had a couple of beers, Val bought some burger and we watched some Video’s.
The next day we were busy throughout the day attending all sorts of interesting courses, mostly about traveling Central and South America. At the night was a happy hour in the tent area, and just behind the tent there were some animal enclosures and one of them had some Bison’s. It looks like the Diddles were not really sure about the safe distance to these huge animals J
And then there was the wedding. It was very basic but nice.
On the last day breakfast was done by the exhibitors, we were walking around, talking to the exhibitors and scoring some breakfast.
Back to the tent, we thought we might make a group photo from our camp group. From the right, Gaila, Tad, Sigrid, Mike, Val, Wombat and me, and of course the Diddles, Wombat and Rudi.
In the evening there was an organize BBQ in the tent area and as special extra: A Solar Eclipse!
Tad organized some glasses for us so we could watch it and even take some pictures.
After the Eclipse, we meet a couple from Brisbane, Carol and Ken. They had arrived from traveling South and Middle America in the last couple of Month. We got plenty of information from them. When it got too cold in the tent, we moved into the restaurant and keept talking for hours. Mike was there as well, and in the end I adjusted our travel schedule and added Bolivia to it 😀
Yippee, two recovery days! Unfortunately we didn’t sleep very well… The hotel was close to a train line and large trains in front of our window were honking their horns the whole night, every 30minutes or so. Some train drivers must have really enjoyed it, they seemt to try at playing a song with their horns. I guess they thought “if I can’t sleep, nobody can sleep” 😉
The next morning, we talked to the manager and changed rooms. Then we had a swim and called Garmin to exchange our GPS /again/. The day started so hard that we needed a long sleep 😀.
I had ordered an additional battery charger for my helmet camera a couple of days earlier, which should allow us to charge it while we are on the road. It was our first attempt to use the general delivery option available from the post office. That is, to have it sent to a post office and pick it up later. Unfortunately the first attempt did not work….Looking at the tracking information, I realised that my charger had been sent back. Some further investigation revealed the reason: There was no name on the address label, great… . So a little defeated I went to the bike shop with Wombat to purchase some bits for the bike. At the same time we booked our bikes in for our 4000 mile inspection and ensured that we could drop them off before 17:00. After that, we went to another shop to see if we could get spare parts for Wombats broken Zumo 550. The back to the hotel to get the girls and drop the bikes off. The people at the shop were very helpful and we discovered that Scott (whom we had met in Blending) had announced our arrival there. This improved the mood of the staff towards us. Thanks Scott 🙂
We took a taxi home and roughtly planned our west coast trip. After some nice dinner at sizzlers, where Brian entertained the staff by tipping over the lemonade glass and Bjoern seated himself between to benches, we went back and had an early night.
Recovery day two. We went to the gym in the morning (only 40min) and did some organization after breakfast, when I got a call from the guy who sold us the Contour plus charger. We agreed that he should sent it again, this time with my name on it. After that we had a short nap before picking up our bikes. Wombat and Val where planning to clean their bikes, Sigrid and I were keen to go to a hairdresser/barber.
So we went to downtown Flagstaff.
There were different painted tigers are over the city and some nice wall paintings.
In one shop we found a nice way of folding tolwels:
We passed the post office where Sigrid picked up her hat that the nice people from Iron horse had sent. Even nicer, they had added a pin from Iron horse to the hat. Sigrid was VERY happy 🙂
I found a unique barber shop and Sigrid a hairdresser. We both got a haircut.
The barber was very nice and had plenty of pictures on his wall from people all over the world who got a haircut in Flagstaff. After that we had a walk through the older part of the city, which had a very nice atmosphere.
Then we went to a shopping centre to buy some cloth to use after the car/bike wash with high pressure cleaner. It took us about 1 hour to remove most of the dead bugs and oil from both bikes. When we came home, the Garmin GPS had arrived, and this one seems to work, yippee!
Did I mention, in the morning I started to miss my video camera? We were hoping that I left it in my tank bag when we dropped our bikes off. I hadn’t.
So when we got home I frantically started to search for the camera, without success. I even went into our previous room and looked behind the couch, no camera. After we unsuccessfully looked through all bags and panniers where the camera could be, we started a more methodically approach. Put everything onto one side, empty a bag/pannier onto the bed, look for the camera, put everything back and move it to the other side of the room. After most bags and panniers where moved, we looked at our inner liner which lay in the corner. Sure enough, somebody had smuggled the camera into the pocked of my liner!
In the evening I prepared Sigrid’s birthday cake with candles and hid it in a drawer in Wombats and Val’s room. Will see how it works with the cake tomorrow!
We started to make our way toward Flagstaff and the Overland Expo. Our first stop was at the four state corners, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. It’s on a road but in the middle of nowhere. We took a picture with each of us being in a different State. Looks like the weather is the same in all four states today! 🙂
From here we stared to discuss our next target. One option was to go all the way up to Arches NP, but Sigrid and Val felt a bit tired and I could use some time for sorting things out as well, so we decided against it. Instead we opted for a rest day in Flagstaff. So the shorter route it was. This route went to the ‘Natural Bridges National Park’ and the it was breathtaking. Unfortunately the pictures don’t do it any justice, the road was much steeper and the cliff face was much higher.
After a short stop at the visitor centre, we started to do the round trip on our bikes. The natural bridges were created by ancient rivers which created shortcuts for themselves. The bridges were so old that the river doesn’t exist anymore. Below is one of the smaller bridges
And below the Sipapu Bridge
Panorama shot at the Sipapu Bridge, the bridge itself is on the right hand bottom part, a bit hard to see.
This is the oldest and the largest bridge in the park, the Owachomo Bridge.
We thought we would go to Flagstaff that evening, but we realised that the way to Flagstaff would lead us over the ‘Moki Dug way’, which is a step gravel road going down a cliff. Sigrid and Val were not very happy to ride dirt today, so we backtracked to Blending. At our accommodation another motorcyclist was asking if we were carrying a tube, he was trying to source one for his buddy who had a flat tyre. His buddy fixed it twice with a patch, but each time the patch came loose. So we spent some time fiddling around and my back tyre tube seemed to fit. We gave him our room number so he could tell his buddy to pick it up from our room. On our way to dinner we saw this sunset. Again, the picture doesn’t do it justice; the clouds were much redder J
We found a restaurant that had a mother’s day special, the meal for a mother would be half price. When we ordered, we discovered that Blending was a dry town, no alcohol at all. Now that was a bit of a surprise for us, since we were looking forward for a nice cold beer…. 🙁 After dinner we met a couple from Flagstaff, Scott and his wife who were just finishing a round trip through all the national parks in this area on their FJR1300 motorbike. Scott told us that he knew a couple of nice roads around here and could suggest some for us. So we got Wombat and Val over into our room as well and Scott started to tell us all about the roads the he would suggest. It was incredible, he was full of information and we found out that he had ridden nearly all roads on the west coast. So we picked his brain heavily. In addition Mike arrived; he was the guy with the flat tyre. He had a look at the tube, but it wasn’t fitting exact enough, so he would have a look if he can find a better one the next morning. If not, he would like to get mine. We found out the he travelled in Alaska quite a bit, so we picked his brain as well. The evening ended rather late, but we were very excited about the trip on the western side of the USA and we had plenty of information to digest while we dreamed.
Mike contacted us in the morning to get the tube. After breakfast we talked to Scott and his wife for a while before we departed. We went back to Bluff, had a look at the two rocks.
Sigrid and Val went into the shop to browse. I had a nice talk with a guy from Indiana about motorcycle riding, he envied us. Then we took off towards the Moki Dug way. We arrived around 1PM.
Sigrid and Val waited for us at the bottom and Wombat and I drove to the top and down again. Wombat used Val’s bike, it had the lighter panniers. The road started with bitumen, and then turned into gravel. Some corners had hardly any gravel, some a lot, and some had bitumen. We were lucky that nobody was coming the opposite way, so we had the gravel road for ourselves. There was no guardrails, the side of the road ended in a step drop. I was happy when I arrived at the top without dropping the bike. We took a couple of pictures and videos at the top and then made our way down.
This is the view from the top; the girls were waiting at the fork.
Getting down was a bit more difficult, but it seemed to be shorter. I was happy to arrive at ground level again. During the time Wombat and I were on that track the girls meet two guys; they were surprised to see two lonely girlswith dual sport bikes in the middle of nowhere ;). They made some small talk and suggested that we have a look at a off-road website. After a short break all of us set off to the Mexican Head where we had lunch.
The rock was not far away from the shop where we had lunch, so we used the zoom to take a picture.
And off we went on to ‘Monument Valley’, the view from the road was great – I particularly like how the road disappears into the distance.
We stopped a couple of times to take pictures of the monuments. While moving on the road the scenery kept changing.
At one place we stopped at an Indian art stall, walked up the hill and took some pictures from there.
Wombat and Val bought two necklaces from the kid running the stall.
A bit later we stopped, you guessed it, to take pictures!
When we departed, Sigrid dropped the bike the first time. Picture just before Sigrid dropped the bike; I didn’t dare to take one when it was happening. J
It all occurred while she practiced a new way to get onto the bike. This time,however, the bike was not leaning enough and the ground on the right side was just a bit lower. When Sigrid sat on the bike, it fell to the other side and Sigrid couldn’t hold it and had to let it go.
Luckily, she didn’t hurt herself. The bike was picked up in no time and there was only ego and cosmetic damage.
We progressed to Flagstaff. The weather so far was quite warm, but 20 minutes from Flagstaff it started to get freezing. When we arrived, we booked a family room (2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom) in the ‘Days inn’ for 65US$/couple/day. We met a guy from Germany, Christian, who was riding a Harley for 5 days before he exchanges it for a car and drives to his friend. We had dinner at the restaurant opposite the motel, we invited Christian as well so we had a nice evening talking about his travels so far and our plans.
In the morning we rode to Mesa Verde, two up, and stopped at the highest point of the National Park.
The view was just stunning. Val tried the binoculars as well as the binoculars for kids hoping to see something different 😀
Not sure how the panorama picture will show up on the blog, but I thought I give it a try.
We choose to visit the main attraction of the park, the ‘Cliff Palace’, so we got the ticket for an afternoon guided tour. I thought that Mesa Verde would only consist of the Cliffs Place, as it turned out there more than 100 other cliffs dwellings around. We learned about the history of the Anasazi people living here, and they only developed the cliff dwellings in the last 100 of the 800 years that they lived here!
View into two different Kivas. When it was used, it had a roof and an opening in the middle. It was the place of worship as well as a living room in winter. The stones in front of the fire place (aka hole in the ground) regulated the air circulation.
There was only one room that had a painting on the ceiling, and to see it we had to lean through the window and had a look upwards. Val had bruised her ribs a couple of days earlier and she was reluctant to come down with us and climb the ladders at the exit. So she watched from the top and took these pictures of us trying to get a photo of the ceiling painting.
The dwellings were secure since the entry and exit was very narrow and could be easily guarded. The way down was easy, it was created later on with tourists in mind, so it was just a normal walk way down. But the way up was the original entry and exit, and we could imagine that nobody tried to enter through this narrow passage as seen below.
After we visited the Cliff Palace we used a round trip to see other dwellings, below is one of them, the fire temple.
On the way home we enjoyed riding the nice curved mountain roads with the beautiful view again. Life can be hard 😀
Tomorrow we’ll start to make our way to Flagstaff and to join the ‘Overland Expo’ on the Mormon Lake on the 17 May.
We had a late start and tried to send something away using the US postal service. Wombat set his GPS to the address of the post office and off we went. When we arrived, we found out that the post office closed around, well, 2 Month ago. So we tried to send the package of using FedEx, but they couldn’t send our mail (you remember those E-Zpay tags we had to return?) to a PO box. By the end of that it was nearly 12:00 so we decided to leave it until Monday and start traveling. It was really hot (at a guess it was around 35C).
The night before we decided to change the GPS settings to avoid any highways. Turns out that was a big mistake! The GPS pretty much sent us through the middle of the town to exit it on the other side. And we got to stop at nearly every traffic light. We were melting. It got better as soon we came out of the city. After some time we stopped on a small bit of gravel on the side of the road. When I stopped I saw a turtle crossing the road. Before I got of the bike a car came and when I looked again the turtle was gone.
So I got of my bike to find the turtle lying on its back behind my back wheel, completely retracted. So we put it to on a safe place on the side and after a while the turtle head came out of the shell.
Failed suicide turtle.
When we arrived in Grenade, we swapped our room from a smoker to a non-smoker room. Since the new room was at the back of the hotel, we were allowed to park our bikes in front of our room.
Day: 35
Date: 06/05
City: Hot Springs, Arkansas
Miles ridden: 288
Cumulative miles:2359
We planned a long day of riding today. Nearly 300 miles. Parts of this trip were rather windy roads and the landscape was boring and flat. Lots of corn, rice or wheat fields. When we arrived at the Mississippi, we tried to take a picture before, after or on the bridge, but there was no way to stop. So we made a small detour to the township of Helena and road to a park. The Diddles and us saw the bridge from further away ~ Sigrid meanwhile was keen to put at least her finger into the Mississippi, even the temperature suggested having a swim in it (90F or 32C).
When we arrived at the accommodation, we were looking forward to washing our clothes. (I guess you have to be traveling to really understand that 😉 ) To our dismay, the laundry was removed when they updated the motel, but the web site wasn’t update (or removed!). We also found out the hard way that you can’t purchase beer to take home in Arkansas on a Sunday…
This was a relatively short day; we had a nice ride through the Ouachita National Forest with great views. It is sometimes hard to keep the eye on the road and have a look at the scenery at the same time.
In McAlester we found a nice hotel on a corner of a shopping complex, it looked very luxurious, but the price was ok.
At night we planned the route for the next day, mapped our route and looked for hotels. Finding a hotel seemed to be difficult, most of them were booked, and those that were not booked had very high prices. We couldn’t figure out why, since it was the middle of the week. So we decided to go to Elk City and have a look for a hotel when we are there.
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Day: 37
Date: 08/05
City: Elk City, Oklahoma
Miles ridden: 262
Cumulative miles: 2834
We had a short rest on a small petrol station south of Oklahoma. When we stood outside sipping on our coffee, a guy passed and mentioned that Wombats tyre looked flat. Looking closer, the guy was right; Wombats rear tyre was nearly flat. We tried to pump it up to see if the air would hold, but the air was gashing out. So Wombat starts to look for his plugs, but after searching for a while he realised that he must have left them at home. A lady from the shop came out and mentioned that a tyre place was just 100m down the road. We couldn’t believe it, the environment looked like farmland, not even many houses around. So Wombat started the engine and we pumped the tyre up, just to try to avoid riding on a flat tyre. And off he went, racing to the tyre shop. We jumped on our bikes and followed. By the time we arrived, the hole in the tyre was almost fixed. It turned out that the culprate was a bit of glass that probably came from a car accident last night when a young boy mixed up the gas with the brake pedal in front of the shop and smashed into the wall. They guys at the shop fixed the tyre within 5 minutes of us arriving, and we measured all our tyre pressures just in case. We were all fine.
Our heroes, they fixed the tyre in no time.
The rest if the trip was uneventful. When we arrived in Elk City, we faced the small problem of accommodation. Stopping at the first hotel, we ask for a room and they were booked out. We found out that the hotels are all booked because of the workers on the oil field. The oil companies book the hotel rooms for their workers, so there was not much available. Nevertheless after some telephone calls, we found some nice accommodation
With a Mexican restaurant just across the carpark, who also had great cold beer!
When we checked in, the receptionist asked if we traveling route 66 and if we have been in the museum across the road. We were a little stunnded. We’re on Route 66??? Are you sure?
Cool! So we adjusted our plans accordingly and added a visit to the Museum in the morning!
The internet didn’t work last night, so when we finally we got it working, Sigrid and Val booked a hotel that was 8 miles from the museum. The ‘8 miles’ must be as the crow flies.
A bit into our travel, it started to rain, so we gave our raingear a good test, it seems to work well. When we arrived in Birmingham, Sigrid called Garmin to see what our options with the broken unit are. The customer service representative suggested that we do a software update and deleted our own data, but the unit was still not finding satellites. So he offered to send us a refurbished unit for 350 US$ and when we sent our unit back we would get our money back. That was a fair deal. So we gave Garmin the address of our hotel and are hoping that the unit arrives before tomorrow at 15:00. At night we watched the recorded video from our ride on ‘the tail of the dragon road’ and went to bed a bit earlier than normal.
Next morning we set off to visit the Barber Motor Museum, as always taking the Diddles and the Wombat with us.
It was stunning! Not only are all the bikes in top condition, there was also facts and some additional background information about each bike. In the centre there were multi-story shelves filled with motorbikes, on this picture it looks as though they are toys!
The age of motorbikes ranges from the first invented (Maybach-Daimler Reitwagen)
to the modern bikes (i.e. Morbidelli’s V8 bike).
Val found as well a Christmas tree that she would like to have for here next Christmas.
There were all kind of bikes, just to mention some: Harleys ,Indians, electric bikes and some other exotic ones.
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At the outside of the museum is a race track, which was in realy nice condition. We could only see a bit of it from the museum, but below is a map which showed the whole circuit.
We stayed in the museum from morning to late after noon, but I guess I could go there again and still find bikes that I haven’t seen. It was a really worthwhile detour to see the museum.
When we came back to the hotel, I picked up the GPS from the hotel counter. I was over the moon, but it turned out that the ‘new’ GPS also had an intermittent fault, but more to that later. The hotel had a pool that we decided to try and it was great. Since the weather was relatively hot, it was a relief to get into the pool. The next stage will be the long way to flag staff with 2 national parks in it and the enchanted circle (if possible). We started to plan in the evening to get a rough idea of how it would work, and it looks like we we can do all that and not have too many long riding days. The planning took a while, we booked accommodation for the next day, but the rest of the day is still flexible.
Day: 31
Date: 02/05
City: Centre, Alabama
Miles ridden: 261
Cumulative miles: 1747
When I got up early in the morning, I realised that the GPS had stopped working and that Sigrid forgot her hat at the Italian restaurant we visited last night. Not a real good start to the day!
After packing up all of our stuff, we decided to do the tail of the dragon road with Mike and split up after that.
So we filled up the bikes and started to head towards the tail of the dragon road. After a couple of hundred meters I lost the cap off the pipe on the side of my bike, but Sigrid noticed it. After turning around and picking up the cap, we sped up a bit to catch up with Val, Wombat and Mike. After a while, Val and Wombat stopped. One of the pannier lids had opened. Looks like we have to close our gear a bit more carfully before starting to ride J.
Next we went to the Iron Horse campground. There we met Charlene and John, the owners of the campground:
Both of them ride motorbikes as well and John gave us some tips for when we travel Prudhoe Bay as he was there last year. We talked about our journey and he promised to send us some details of people and places along our way that we might like to see. We also discovered that last night John and Charlene sat near us in the Italian restaurant where Sigrid forgot her hat! Charlene offered to get the hat and send it to us, provided we let her know where we are. That was extremely nice! John took a nice group picture of us too:
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We departed and were heading towards the tail of the dragon. After a pleasant ride which I already thought was the tail of the dragon road, we arrived at the starting point of the road ~ a road house.
You can buy some interesting petrol at this petrol station too!
We had coffee and something to eat and, after some more pictures, started along the road. It was great fun. We rode it to our abilities and let the professionals pass us on some turn outs. Someone actually warned us that the police would be at the bottom of the road, but Wombat was leading and arrived there a tiny bit faster than expected – 40 in a 30 zone. The police pulled him over but he was lucky and could talk his way out of the fine. We were all happy to have ridden the tail of the dragon: 316 curves in 11 miles.
We continued for a short while with Mike and went our separate ways at a highway stop. We were going direction Birmingham, and after dinner at Mc Donald’s we stopped just 80 miles short of it for the night. We got a cheap motel, the rooms were just ok. As it turned out Val’s shower didn’t drain at all and the internet was not working as well, so not the best place to stop! Can’t win them all I guess 🙂
CD.
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