How to Read This Blog

First, thank you for your interest and for taking the time to read this and look at the photos! Since this is about a trip, if you intend to read it, may I suggest that you start with the oldest posting first so that you can get a sense of how preparations were made for the trip and then how the trip proceeded. If you do choose to follow the suggested sequence, please use the menu to the left to navigate through the postings. The easiest is to first click on May, go to the bottom and then read the last one first and so on. Thanks again and I hope you enjoy your time here.

Day Eight – Last Leg Home

The hotel served a free continental breakfast starting at 5:00 am but I was well on my way before the first waffle was ready for a hungry traveler. As is my norm when I am traveling I had filled the bike up on arrival so that I would have one less thing to worry about the next morning so all I had to do once I was ready was get all the luggage on the bike, check out and hit the road.

I really prefer to leave only after having eaten a good meal but on this day I had over 800 miles to travel and waiting at the end of all those miles was my own sweet bed so I passed on the breakfast in favor of getting a head start on the day.

My first stop of the day came at around the 200 mile mark somewhere in Missouri where I stopped for gas, the bathroom as well as to change into my rain gear as the skies ahead looked rather threatening. It was at this stop that I received the ultimate complement for a road warrior. I call it the ultimate because it came from someone who spends the majority of his time plying the roadways of this country. I wear a fluorescent yellow vest over my black First Gear Kilimanjaro jacket. The vest has mesh portions to allow the jacket to vent in hot weather but it provides about 80% coverage in yellow on the torso and it also has highly reflective sections for nighttime visibility. The reason I wear it, though it may look nerdy to the tee-shirt-clad cruiser rider, is that it is kind of hard not to notice a bright yellow thing moving along the road and I would much rather every motorist notice me and laugh than have them swerve and curse because they didn’t see me. Anyway, a trucker that looked like he had more than a few road years on him and even more miles said “Damn! You can see that thing for miles! No way I could miss THAT! Smart! It is much better to have that than rely on that little square of light back there for visibility.” Coming from a guy who spends his life racking up hundreds of miles a day each working day it meant a lot.

I was not that far outside St. Louis but I was getting hungry so I decided that I would stop there for breakfast although I would only be through half a tank. I initially wanted to do the 200 miles between stops thing I had a managed the day before but things were not working out that way. I got into the northern part of St. Louis after rush hour and found my way to a Cracker Barrel without having to sit in stop-and-go traffic and ordered a huge breakfast as dinner the night before had just been a burger and a couple of beers and I was ravenously hungry.

I got back on the road in under an hour and had to stop for gas somewhere in Illinois. The plan, now, was to do the 200 miles between stops but with the sun rising higher into the morning sky it was getting hot, fast, so I stopped at the welcome rest stop in Indiana to take the layers off and got to chat to a guy on a Harley Road King who had gone to Kansas City for the weekend and was on his way back home just over the Indiana border in Ohio. He inquired about the best way to get around the traffic in Indianapolis due to the construction and I provided him the route I had used on my way out and planned to use on the way back in about an hour or so. He finished his cigarette, thanked me and was soon on his way.

One interesting thing about the interaction is that it made me think about the spontaneous conversations you have with strangers when you travel solo on a bike. Car drivers’ typical first question is on the cost of the bike next is the comfort of the bike and, if they have encountered rain on their way to that stop is a joke about the weather. Motorcyclists first ask where you are coming from and then where you going. The reason for the question is if they are headed in the direction you are coming from they can get some intelligence on the road ahead for themselves – road conditions, police locations, weather, construction, etc. The reason they ask where you are going is if they have come from that direction or along that route they will share any of the same intelligence with you. There is a special kinship that holds motorcyclists together and with that kinship comes a natural desire to be helpful in any way you can to a fellow biker.

After gathering and sharing information on the roads, the topic shifts to where you are from and then ends up with talk about the bikes – age, comfort, reliability, tires, etc. If the stop is long enough, you may start to talk about rides and war stories from the road.

I was also soon on my way with the intent of filling up somewhere west of Columbus in my last stop before turning north on I-71 for the last leg home. It was not to be!

About thirty miles shy of the Ohio border the freeway was backed up for as far as I could see, traffic totally immobilized. After filling up my water bottle (from the reserve I carry) I checked the map and saw that there was a secondary road paralleling the freeway a couple of miles to the south. I rode up a few hundred yards on the shoulder and executed a u-turn, got off on the next exit and proceeded towards that road. Quite a number of folks appeared to have figured it out and at the second town along the road the traffic here started to back up. At the first opportunity I turned back towards the freeway, figuring that having traveled a few miles I should have been clear of the accident that caused the backup. I was wrong, turned around to get back into the town I had just left only to find that the backup was worse than I had left it. I pulled over checked the map for another road, found one north of the freeway and headed for that and this time had more luck. Twenty minutes later I was back on the freeway and clear of the accident. All that screwing around cost me an hour that would have put me within spitting distance of Columbus.

I was tired, hot, hungry and frustrated so I rode until the bike was close to empty, an event that came up just east of Dayton, and, conveniently, there was a Cracker Barrel just down the road from the gas station so I fuelled both the bike and myself. Had it not been for the accident I would have arrived home at a decent enough hour to have waited to eat a late dinner here. As it was, the hour spent trying to work around the wreck and the hour getting dinner and gas delayed my arrival until close to 10:00 pm and I pretty much unloaded the bike, cleaned up a little, poured a well-earned drink and called it a day.

Although my bike is quiet and I sit behind a large faring and a huge windshield I still ride with ear plugs. After having spent well over 90% of my awake time over the past week with ear plugs, normally only removing them at gas stations or rest breaks on some remote road or view point, it took a day or so to adjust back to the world. We live in a world with lots and lots of aural bombardment! I was tempted to go back to the quiet peaceful world of ear plugs.

Another adjustment I had to make was normal human interaction. On the road, your interaction is an exchange – information for information or money for service (food, hotel, drinks) but once you get home you have pick up your mail, go to the grocery store, stop by the motorcycle dealer to schedule service and run other errands. Also, most of the riding having been done either on the highway or remote back roads, getting back to a more urban setting and dealing with traffic was a little tough – two or three cars an hour in New Mexico to thirty cars ahead of you in Cleveland, yikes!

Even though it didn’t go as anticipated, the last day on the road was a good day and a good end to an awesome vacation. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my blog and I hope you find some of the stories interesting and enjoy the photos.

Day Seven – Another Kansas Crossing

It was only a few months ago that I traveled east across Kansas in crosswinds that almost cured me of the desire to ride. Having never experienced anything like that I was tossed about, blown across freeway lanes and generally pummeled by the fierce wind for hours. With that experience I was mentally prepared for this trip across Kansas which started out in Denver a little earlier in the day than my previous one.

The day started well with me waking up in that comfy bed. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do that day but had not yet set a route so I wanted to take a look at the weather and use that as a guide. I had no idea how drastically that weather check would change my plans!

It was snowing in the Vail area, as it was in Dillon, my intended destination at the end of the day. I checked my itinerary and learned that my hotel had a cancellation policy of 4:00 pm the day BEFORE! At first I was going to say heck with it but I called and they were very nice and understanding and cancelled my booking with no charge.

My next call was to Michelle, my travel agent to let her know what I had done and also to give her the cancellation number so that she could put it in her system. I got her voicemail but I left a message with the news. I also let her know that I would be in Kansas City a day early and would need a hotel; could she see if she could get me in the place we had booked for the next day.

She called me right back and let me know that she had taken care of everything and I was expected in Kansas City that evening at the same rate and everything. If you are planning travel and want to use a good travel agent and have someone looking out for you make sure to book though Michelle. The link to her website is in the menu to the left. She does hotel, air, car rentals, cruises, packages and will even research a destination for you to the extent of finding restaurants, making reservations, booking shows, getting passes to amusement parks, etc.

I came upstairs to grab a quick bite and let my hosts know that my plans had changed and also to thank them for their wonderful hospitality. After a quick shower I got ready for the road (And made Terry late for work!). Terry gave me directions that routed me around the congested freeways in the downtown area and I was very quickly on the interstate headed east.

The weather forecast called for rain along my route so I rolled my eyes at the computer and mentally prepared for a long wet day.

That good night’s rest really helped and covered the first two hundred of the day’s total six hundred in one shot before stopping for gas. At my first stop I met a couple of guys on KTM multi-terrain bikes headed home to Kansas City; they had also been riding in the Rockies and had also been hit by snow the day before except that they came through Independence Pass and later in the day than me and they hit their snow before getting to the top and also had to wipe their visors free of snow. They left ahead of me and a couple of hours later I saw them as I passed a rest stop so I honked and waved, a as I sped past.

A couple of hundred miles later I stopped for gas and grub. I grabbed a quick lunch at Subway, tanked up and got back the road. The day was going well. There was a crosswind but it was nowhere near as bad as last time and I was making great time. Up to this point I had not seen any rain; some dark clouds here and there but no rain. East of Topeka I stopped to tank up and put my rain gloves on because the sky looked pretty threatening ahead. A couple of westbound Harley Davidson Road Kings pulled in and I planned to chat with them a little after they had gassed up; they were wet and I wanted to know how far back the rain was and how heavy, etc. I used the bathroom and when I came out I chatted with them and they let me know that the storm was moving east and the worst of it was already past Kansas City so I would only hit the tail end of it if it had not already passed through the area. As I was getting ready to saddle up the two guys on KTM bikes pulled in and I chatted to them for a little, sharing the news I had just picked up and learned that they would be riding to the east coast in a couple of months so I showed then a couple of good roads in West Virginia if they wanted to avoid the freeway. One of them had a GPS unit with weather radar! Holy cow, that guy was traveling like an airplane!! It confirmed what the Harley riders had told me and I bade them farewell.

The road was wet coming into Kansas City and there were a few sprinkles in the air but it was okay and what made the ride into KC really special was a complete rainbow with the full color spectrum. It has been many, many years since I saw one and I was grinning like a kid inside that helmet. It is the simple and free things in life that make it great!

At the hotel I found that Michelle had made sure I got a ground floor room so that I would not have to lug my stuff upstairs (Told you she was great!). I ate, reluctantly, at Steak and Shake, grabbed a couple of beers from the gas station next door and settled in for the night. Though the weather took my day in the central Rockies Mother Nature did keep things clear for me and all in all it was a good day. I made good time, I was not too tired and the bike ran well. The next day was 200 miles longer so I turned in with the intent of starting out early.

Formatting Fixed for Day Three

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read this blog. Those of you who have been following along on the trip know that I had some issues with formatting and photos on day three. I have had the chance to go in and fix that so please click on May in the menu on the left and take another look at Day Three where you can now enlarge the photos and get a better sense of the beauty of the land I rode through on that day.

Day Six

Please click on the photos to enlarge. Captions are below the photos.

One thing about entering a town in the dark is you really don’t get a good feel for it. Coming into Cortez shortly after sunset it was my impression that it sat on a featureless plain. The morning revealed something somewhat different. Like most mornings in Colorado, this one was cloudless. This Super 8 motel started serving breakfast at 5:00 am so I got downstairs and was fueled by about quarter after and then went outside to do my morning examination of the bike. The day before had been a tough one for it with the long pulls across the desert, the energetic sprint up the Vermilion Cliffs to Jacob Lake and back down after viewing the Grand Canyon as well as all the unpaved miles in the Garden of the Gods where it took a good beating. Up to now the oil level had not changed on the trip but this morning it could use some topping up and while I was attending to that the morning light began to work its way into the day and revealed a beautiful ridge line to the south, Ute Mountain to the west and Hesperus Mountain to the east and some hills to the north.

I always wonder about the reason for the placement of towns and it seems that the main reason for this one is falling on the intersection of the roads leading north to Utah, south to Arizona and New Mexico and east to Durango. Much like Socorro, this town has a main drag lined by motels, restaurants and gas stations and were it not for establishments catering to travelers there would not be much of a town to speak of.

I turned north off the main street onto route 145 which would take me over just one pass on the way to Montrose. As the road rises out of Cortez a stop to look back is rewarded by a view of the ridge that borders the town to the south as well as a good look at the north of Ute Mountain. Not a dramatic view but a quiet beauty that is particularly pleasing to the eye.


This is Ute Mountain as seen from route 145 just north of Cortez



This is the ridge line that borders Cortez to the south as seen from route 145 just north of Cortez, Colorado.


The first town I passed through was Dolores which is on the north bank of the Dolores River. I am not sure if the river was named for the town or if the town was named for the river; it is most likely the latter being that this is where route 145 first meets the river if you are northbound and for people headed north would have been the first large source of water after Cortez and the last for folks headed south so rather than talk about the place where the road crosses the Dolores River they just referred to the place as Dolores. That is my theory ....... you do get an awful lot of time to think when traveling alone on a motorcycle ....... not that that means you come up with anything meaningful. :)

One more thing about the town of Dolores that struck me as interesting; Dolores is located in Montezuma County and not in Dolores County which is just fifteen miles north. Weird!

The next town was Stoner with nothing remarkable about it other than the name which, being that it was founded before the sixties, is probably not the hippie hangout its name suggests.

Mount Wilson, elevation 14,246 ft. seen from the south on the approach to Lizard Head Pass.

The first pass of the day was Lizard Head Pass at 10,222 feet. I stopped here to take a couple of photos of the bike at the pass and also some of the surrounding mountains. Just up the road from here is Telluride. I have heard stories told of the beauty of this area but none of them prepared me for what I saw. Colorado has some beautiful scenery but the Telluride area is just absolutely stunning. I have a good friend who’s husband comes up here to camp and fish each year and has been doing so for many years and now having seen it I understand what draws him back year after year!

A mountain that is not identified on my map but it is the view to the south from Lizard Head Pass.

This is Wilson Mountain from the road north of Telluride.

This mountain is not named on my map but Telluride is in the valley that is on the other side.

After Telluride the road hugged the north bank of the San Miguel River providing nice easy curves that allowed me to take in the vegetation as it changed from high alpine to sparse trees in red soil and rocks. I turned east on route 62 which took me over the Dallas Divide at 8,970 feet where I got a pretty good view of the mountains around Telluride. As the road descended into Ridgway where I would take route 550 north to Montrose I had to slow to a crawl to get by a cattle drive that was using the roadside as a transit to a different pasture. I was pretty excited as it was the first time I had ever seen real cowboys; they really do wear spurs and chaps but none of them was armed with a six shooter! I have been around farms long enough to know a little about cows and one thing I can tell you about the ones on this drive is they were extremely displeased about the drive. To a cow they were each bellowing at the top of their lungs, their nostrils were flared, their eyes open wide and their heads turning every which way as they trotted along bumping into each other, trying to stay away from the whistling cowboys and the one at the back who was shaking a large beer can with pebbles in it.

Another mountain not named on the map but it is also in the Telluride area.

This is a different shot of the same mountain range. I do know that it is in the Uncompahgre National Forest and the streams from it feed the San Miguel River which flows into the Dolores River near Uravan, Paradox and Bedrock, Colorado.

As is this one. I like this photo because it almost looks like you can just reach out and touch the mountain.

Same mountain, different shot. I hope this gives you a feel for the way the view changes with each mile even when you are looking at the same thing.

This is Uncompahgre Mountain with an elevation of 14,309 feet.

Another shot of the mountain who's name remains a mystery to me.


I stopped in Montrose to munch on trail mix, use the bathroom and call my friend Terry in Denver to let him know my progress. From here I was to take route 50 east along the shores of the Blue Mesa Reservoir through Sapinero to Gunnison and then up the Tomichi River and up Monarch Pass which, at 11,312 feet was the highest of the day.

On the climb up to Gunnison I had the cruise control set at 10 over and was enjoying leaning into the curves. With the speed limit set at 45 it was a pretty relaxing climb as there were no switchbacks, just sweepers. My reverie was interrupted by a guy passing me on an older Yamaha. I figured he was a local and knew where the cops hide out but this being a major road I did not want to take any chances so I did not use him as radar bait. On the way down the other side I quickly caught up to him as he clearly had no clue how to ride the corners. Now, I am not all that skilled a motorcyclist but you know bad when you see it and this guy bordered on pathetic. Part of what makes motorcycling exciting is cornering. It is much different than cornering in a car and there are a bunch of decisions you need to make as you approach, as you negotiate and as you exit a corner.

The fundamentals of cornering are slow, look, lean and roll. Slow down to an appropriate entry speed, look into the corner, lean the bike over and then roll on the gas. The decisions you make as you do this include the following and you really should be going through this thought process with each corner; The first is what line you will follow through the corner – will it be an early or late apex, or, will you go down the middle of the lane? On a blind right hander you should hug the white line because cars tend to cross over the center line and you really don’t want to end up helmet-to-hood ornament. Next is slowing to the appropriate entry speed for the line you have chosen and you should be at that speed when you get into the entry window. The entry window is the point at which you look into the corner to determine several things – have you chosen the appropriate line, is there gravel or other debris on the road, have you selected a good speed, do you have enough margin to deal with any surprises? Having made those determinations and their associated decisions, it is in the entry window that you get off the brakes begin to lean into the corner and roll on the gas and enjoy the pull and the power.

This guy waited until he was IN the corner before he braked and then he braked most of the way through as he followed a zigzag path through the corner. To make matters worse these were gentle sweepers and he was going through them a good 15-20 mph slower than could be done very safely! I shifted down and passed him on the next straight; he was not happy about that and crowded me a little as I did not go more than ten above but the next corner came up in about a quarter mile and that was where I left him wobbling about. He did pass me when I had stopped to take a photo but we ended up stopping at the same gas station in Gunnison. Unusual for a biker, he did not pull up to the next pump so we could chat.

It started to rain a little before Gunnison where I stopped for gas and then stopped but the skies were a menacing gray, releasing the occasional shower on the ascent. Thankfully they were sporadic enough that the roads did not have a level of moisture that necessitated slowing for safety. I was concerned about keeping good time because I was meeting up with friends for dinner and rain was forecasted for the afternoon and I wanted to be out of the mountains before it came down. With the skies looking the way they were I decided that I would change gloves at the top of Monarch pass. It was in the 40’s up there and I stopped in front of the sign to take a picture. When I got off my bike it started to snow. I could not believe it and quickly went to work on the gloves and in the couple of minutes it took to change gloves snow had started to accumulate on the bike! It was melting when it hit the parking lot so I hoped it would be the same with the road. I hopped back on the bike and started the descent. I only went half a mile before the windshield was rendered opaque by the accumulated snow and I had to keep brushing it off my visor! Thankfully the snow only lasted for about two or three miles. A few miles later, when I was down on the plains west of Poncha Springs, I stopped to change gloves and saw a kid on a sport bike wearing just a tee shirt as he was headed up the pass. It may have been in the 80’s down here but he evidently had no idea to expect rain and snow through the pass. I hope he made it okay!

I stopped at Monarch Pass to take a photo of the bike on the highest pass of the day and notice that portions of the parking lot are dry.

It suddenly started snowing and in the time it took me to take the first photo, pull gloves out of my tank bag and walk around the bike to this side the snow was already starting to accumulate on the bike and the entire parking lot was wet plus, you can see the snow starting to stick on the embankment on the edge of the lot over the bike!

I turned north on route 285 in the Arkansas River valley and the ride up to Johnson Village where I would turn off onto route 24 offered great views of the following mountains – Ouray at 13,971 feet, Shavano at 14,229, Antero at 14,269, Princeton at 14,197, Yale at 14,196 and Harvard at 14,420. I wonder if those educational institutions paid a little money for those peaks to be named after them or, if it was simply the east coast establishment’s way of putting their stamp on the west.

This is Mount Shavano on the left at 14,229 feet and Mount Antero on the right at 14,269 feet taken from route 285 just north of Poncha Springs. Monarch pass is just to the left of Shavano and you can see that it is still snowing up there.

Though none of the next three passes held any of the drama of Monarch the cresting of each did reveal yet another highland plain bordered on all sides by snow covered mountains. At 10,001 feet, Kenosha Pass was the highest but I did not get the rain and snow I expected. After Kenosha the descent into Denver started and with each turn the sky got darker and more threatening. Just before the appropriately named town of Conifer I came up on a pick-up truck with a bunch of bankers boxes neatly stacked and strapped down ..... with the exception of the center one at the back. Somehow it had slipped and was hanging off the back with only the strap holding it on. I flashed my headlights at the truck and he eased over a little, I passed and pointed at the top case of my bike and then at his truck and then at the side of the road in a frantic manner and he slowed down but did not stop. I watched him in my mirrors for a mile or so but then decided that I should probably pay more attention to my own business than his so I wished the best for him and carried on.

This is just after cresting Trout Creek Pass, 9,847 ft., looking across the South Platte River valley and plains towards the mountains that I would cross on Red Hill Pass, elevation 9,986. For a feel of scale, the base of those peaks is about 20 miles away.


It started to rain when I go into Denver. I had to get on the freeway for a few miles and when I got off I called Terry again to let him know I had made it and would meet at his office. I got gas and then the skies opened up with a violent thunderstorm. I waited at the pump for a few minutes and when the rain did not let up I pulled out and had a rather interesting ride through the rain as I got myself lost trying to find a mall near Terry’s office where I would take shelter until he was ready to leave. I was not successful in finding the mall but I did make it to a bus shelter/information stand about a quarter mile from his office and took shelter in there where I waited for his call. Of course it stopped raining as soon as I found shelter but the timing was perfect because he called a few minutes later and directed me to his office.

We met up at the office and I followed him home where I could get out of my wet gear before we went to dinner. At the house we were met by his wife, Claudia, and their two enthusiastic dogs. We enjoyed a delightful dinner at a nearby restaurant and returned to the house where we watched the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Eastern Conference final series. Theirs is a beautiful house and they put me up in a nice bedroom in the finished basement with what has got to be the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in!! Boy, did I get a good night’s sleep!!

Day Five

Please click on the photos to enlarge. The captions are under the photos.

I had arrived in Flagstaff the prior evening tired and happy. The motel was on a four lane major road on the eastern outskirts of Flagstaff lined with many other motels and fast food joints. Being in the southwest I wanted to make sure I enjoyed the local cuisine so I drove down the road and identified what, if judged by the number of cars in the lot, looked like a good place to fill up on grub.

I checked in and found that my room was pretty large and I could easily spread out. I walked the quarter mile down to the Mexican restaurant and put my name on the list. As I waited I realized just how chaotic things were there what with them being short staffed and people waiting in the parking lot. I thought the food must be pretty good if people will wait up to 45 minutes just to be seated and then longer to get their food.

However, I was not one of those people. I was tired and I had a long day ahead of me the next day so I wanted to eat and get in bed as early as possible. I walked back to the motel and sat in the restaurant attached to the motel and ordered pot roast. It was not the best pot roast I have ever eaten and the beer I ordered was not that refreshing, but, hey, it was all cheap so no complaints here.

Back in the room I wanted to work on the blog but the day very soon caught up with me and I hit the sack for the night.

The next morning I left headed north around Mount Elden along route 89 towards Bitter Springs where I would take the road up to the Grand Canyon. A look back towards the south was rewarded by a great view of Mount Humphrey.




Mount Humphrey as seen in my rear-view mirror

A little more conventional view of Mount Humphrey from route 89 north of Flagstaff.

It was a quiet and peaceful drive north past the Waputaki National Monument, the terrain changing from grassland to red rocks. After crossing the Little Colorado River (more of a trickle) on the Ward Terrace on the Moenkopi Plateau I saw some beautiful formations up ahead on the eastern side of the road. These were the Echo Cliffs along Limestone Ridge on the road between Willow Springs and Marble Canyon.

These are the Echo Cliffs rising up to the east of the road.

A closer view of the cliffs.

And a little more detail of Echo Cliffs a little further down the road.

As I approached Marble Canyon I could see the Vermilion Cliffs which rise up to the Paria Plateau. At Marble Canyon, I stopped to take a couple of pictures of the Colorado River, use the bathroom and prepare for the climb up to Jacob Lake, the turn-off to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

Vermilion Cliffs as seen from Bitter Springs at the base of Echo Cliffs.

Jacob Lake is a few thousand feet above the Colorado so I decided to get ready to plug into the heated stuff. On leaving Flagstaff in the morning, I found that the rheostat had completely given up the ghost so that was tucked away in the luggage. The only heat option I currently had was to plug in and get really hot; that, being better than freezing my tail off would be what I would do once it started to cool down on the ascent. The thing I like about the rheostat is that you can turn it off without unplugging and also modulate the amount of heat you get.

A close-up of the Vermilion Ciffs as seen from Marble Canyon.

The Colorado River in Marble Canyon. This photo was taken from the Navajo Bridge. It is amazing that this little river eroded not only this canyon but also the Grand Canyon. Those cliffs on either side of the river are about 450 feet high!

Mr. Lee operated a ferry at the crossing point for some years.

A view of the Echo Cliffs framed by the Navajo Bridge visitor area.

The Vermilion Cliffs seen from the first scenic view turn-out about five hundred feet above the plains. If you enlarge the photo you can see the road that leads back to Marble Canyon.

As I have said earlier, the desert starts off cold in the morning and soon heats up, something it was now doing. I gathered myself back on the bike and skirted the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs for about ten miles before the climb up to Jacob Lake started. It was a spirited climb up through the nice sweepers with the vegetation changing from the red rocks to the now familiar ponderosa pines. As the scenery changes so does the smell. I had enjoyed the smells of the desert earlier and now the sagebrush and lemon grass gave way to the scent of pines – all the sensations being stimulated; aural by the bike, visual by the scenery and olfactory by the scents. With as quick as I was going, Jacob Lake arrived pretty quickly. It had been a three hour ride up to here so I filled up for the 40 mile drive into the North Rim. Up among the pines the road gently weaves through the Kaibab National Forest. About three miles into the forest there is evidence of a recent forest fire. The trees are completely burned and what had been wonderfully green turned into a scenery of charred tree trunks standing on barren ground. If you have not seen this, and, especially in juxtaposition to unburned forest you cannot really get a good feel for just how much damage fire does to a forest. Seeing this amount of damage, makes you understand why they spend so much money on roadside signage warning you not to throw your cigarettes out of the window, to drown your camp fires, and also the metered signage showing the danger level for forest fires on that day.

Almost 9,000 feet, no wonder it's cold up here!

This was the scene for about ten miles on the drive to the Nort Rim. Listen to Smokey the Bear when he talks about the dangers of fire in the forest!


The fire damage lasted for the next ten miles or so with the acrid smell of charcoal and ashes mingling with that of freshly cut pine (the forest service clears out the smaller pieces close to the road). This gave way to beautiful upland meadows surrounded by pines which changed back into ponderosa pine forest for the descent to the North Rim.

Here is that guy again!

The Grand Canyon is visited by over five million a year but less than ten percent of those visitors come to the North Rim because the drive is so long. They are truly missing out! This being Memorial Day I expected to find tons of people there but the wait at the entrance was only five cars long and once inside I actually found a parking right in front. There was plenty of parking available even though there were no vacancy signs posted on all the camp sites as well as the lodge. I walked to various vantage points to view the canyon and I will let the photos below tell their own tale.

Some parts of the canyon have white rocks that look neat with the green trees.

This is the lodge, taken from one of the view points.

Another mugshot.

The distance from the white rock in the foreground to the big one behind it is about a quarter mile.

I liked this view with the scraggly trees in the foreground.

To get a feel for the scale of this place, enlarge the photo to see the people above the point of the white rock.

Contrasting the white rock with the red in the background. My camera had a difficult time rendering the red so while I took lots of photos, only a few turned out with close to actual colors.

One of the things I really liked was the trees that grow on rocks. I have no idea where they get their water but they were pretty amazing to me and also like the way they look set against the blue sky.

I looked up and saw a crow in profile but he moved his head before the shutter came down. I still like the tree, though. Damned crow!!

This is my favorite tree on the walk to th view point. It was burned by an earlier fire but still defiantly stands proud, stripped of its leaves but still beautiful.

It amazed me how the trees pushed their roots down into the rocks. I guess you must be able to get water from a rock. Looks like a minor miracle to me, repeated thousands of times at this location.

If I were an artist I would name this "work" The Dancing Trees."

Even some of the trees are in pretty full leaf.

After walking about I went to the deli for a quick lunch. The motel did not have a continental breakfast so I had traveled up on an empty stomach and was pretty well famished by now. I hoped for some good Mexican but learned that the offerings were pizza and Chinese. Chinese?!?!?! Here?!?!?! Being hungry I decided to go for broke and had sweet and sour chicken on rice plus meatballs and beans. These were ingredients from different meals and the poor and wonderfully polite staff had a bit of a time, in addition to they amused disbelief at the combination, in figuring out how to charge me. With a yogurt it came to a grand total of eight something. I could have had a white tablecloth lunch in the lodge overlooking the canyon but I had places to go!

I dropped down off the Paria Plateau back to Marble Canyon where the temperatures had passed 90 degrees, a huge change from the 60’s and 70’s of a few miles back. I took all the layers off and opened up the vents in the jacket in preparation for the drive across the desert to the Garden of the Gods in Utah.

It was an uneventful drive to Page on Lake Powell where I filled up before heading to Kayenta, just south of Monument Valley, the location for many early western movies.

The road looks like it terminates in this rock on the route 98 between Page and Kaibito.

A cool rock formation south of Kaibito on route 98 in Arizona.

A rock jutted dramatically out of the plains just before Monument Valley.

A wide shot of the south side of Monument Valley.

While Monument Valley was not that monumental, the Valley of the Gods did not disappoint. To see the valley you have to drive through it for 17 miles on an unpaved road – crazy me did it on a road bike! But, the road was not too bad. I did have a couple of surprises; early on when I stopped to take a photo I spotted a desert fox about 20 yards away as it slinked between a couple of rocks. That is only the second time I have ever seen a fox in the wild and I was quite thrilled; you never know what providence will serve up, or, when!

One of the first views in the Garden of the Gods when entering the park from the south.

The color came out pretty well on this one.

It is interesting how you can see that the rock is slowly falling apart over time. When you are close up to them they are so huge it seems like they will last forever. I guess Mother Nature has different plans.

Scrubby plants and scrubby rocks.

I liked the sky against the rock but the color rendering was not very good on this photo.

The base of this formation is about a half mile back down the road!

I like the colors on these rocks; they came out pretty close to actual.


One thing about driving a motorcycle on gravel is the rules for cornering are quite different than on pavement. These are rules of physics, not some motorcycling guru. Not being on a dirt or multi-use bike I did not even want to test the rules so while I opened it up a little on the straights I slowed almost to a complete stop at the corners. The poor bike had already been down once on this trip and it really did not need another taste of the ground.

However, as tends to be the case, I got a little comfortable and was served a quite a little surprise. The road was alternately straight with steep little dips and rises. Every now and then cresting a rise revealed a sudden turn. I had earlier been driving pretty slowly as I got the hang of the bike on the gravel. Coming over this rise I was only doing about 35 but that was too fast to negotiate the corner without sliding out. One of the dilemma’s I faced was I could neither turn nor brake too hard because either would end in a fall. In addition, the road dropped of into a scattering of rocks that did not look any more inviting. Of the three options I took the second, leaned back, put both feet down and braked hard, stopping in a cloud of dust with the front wheel just inches from the edge of the road. Phew! Close, but not quite! I backed up a little so I could get the bike pointed down the road and continued, this time paying full attention!

It was near this formation that the road served up a surprise for me.

I liked the moon in the blue sky above these formations.

I did get one more scare; the road had those washboard rumbles that many unpaved roads have and at one point they got particularly intense. If you have driven your car on them you know that they shake it like crazy. That shaking is many times more intense on the bike and it wanders all over the place. Again, you cannot brake because with your wheel jumping up and down the chances of locking up and falling are greater so I just rode it out and slowed down. Then, I remembered reading that on gravel speed is your friend, judicious speed so I rolled on the throttle a little more and learned that the bike rides a lot more smoothly when it is skimming along the crests of the ripples. While this offers a smoother ride, it does zero for traction so is a technique only to be used traveling in a straight line and when you are reasonably sure you will not have to brake hard – even with two feet!

You can see the washboard on the road. This one is pretty mild compared to the one that surprised me. You can see with the harsh terrain that if you go down here you are in for a long wait for someone to come and get you. If you decide to walk, it is a long walk to anywhere!

When I was done with the Valley of the Gods it was pretty close to sunset and I still had quite a way to go so I stopped to change from the dark to the clear visor, filled up the water bottle and sped down the route 162 through Bluff, Montezuma Creek and Aneth towards Cortez, Colorado.

The shadows were getting long and it was time to open up the bike for the sprint to Cortez.


The area in which Cortez is found is called Mesa Verde and as I drove through the mesa it was pretty cool to watch the sun go down over Ute Mountain.

I did not make it before dark and this being Memorial Day, the only place open after 9:00 pm was Denny’s so that is where I got my second meal of the day. I gassed up and settled in for the night.