Tuesday, September 5
Day 5: New Mexico and Arizona

About an hour before sunrise I woke up to zip up my sleeping bag all the way and pull it over my head. It was cold. We were sleeping at 6,000 feet in elevation. I really wanted to put on my fleece but I was too lazy to crawl out from the sleeping bag and put it on and I knew that I was getting up at sun rise anyway, which wasn’t too long. My alarm went off in the early morning but there was no sun yet so I re-set it for a later time and when it went off again still no sun, the last time it went off the sun was already at the horizon. I jetted out of the tent, grabbed the camera and headed for the lake to capture some pictures of the sun rise but the sun was way over the horizon by the time I climbed down to the water. The air was still chilly, but not for long, with each half hour it became warmer and warmer.

When I got back to the camp site, Sandy informed me that when she got up she found a small praying mantis inside her tent, how bizarre. The camp bathroom had free warm showers, although there were only two showers in the woman’s bathroom and one of them didn’t work really well. We got cleaned up, packed up and left by 11AM. This setting up and tearing down of the camp site does take some time but camping is just so much fun.

It was a magnificent day already. We rode up towards the Navajo Dam to take some pictures, but since we didn’t spend the night in Mesa Verde I had to look at the map and adjust the route, I wanted to make it easy and quick; we were still behind, so we took 64 out. There was a bit of traffic on this road through New Mexico, but once we got in to Arizona the roads opened up a bit. With the open roads our speed increased also. Sandy was running a radar detector and I was leading on this trip, so I was watching her in my mirrors, if she backed down, so would I. of course I had no idea Sandy didn’t have the radar detector on right now. I went to pass a SUV swiftly and got back in to my lane just to find out there was a police car approaching in the near distance, hiding behind some other cars, I was shocked. Then he put his lights on. Sandy just finished her pass when I looked in my mirror to watch him turn around, but he didn’t. We got lucky. Sandy did turn her radar detector on right away and just in time too, two more police cars were heading in the other direction 5 minutes later.

So the whole time we’re riding, we’re watching and admiring a storm in the distance. As the road turned, it would be to the left of us and then sometimes to the right and then it would be ahead of us. For about an hour we watched it dance in the distance, big menacing dark clouds and spectacular lightning. Once we turned on to 98 North we started to get close to it, so close you could see water falling in sheets to the ground from the dark clouds. Then we started to smell the rain, this was the smell of dry earth sucking up moisture, we knew then we couldn’t escape it. We rode right into it, it got gusty and cold right away, the rain drops were big and even painful at times as I felt them though my textile jacket. Then close to Page, AZ we rode out though the other side of the storm, and back in to the heat and sunshine. The closer we got to the city the hotter it got, in town it must have been in the upper80’s or low 90’s.

We wanted to call some of the campsites and get more information about them but none of the phone numbers we had worked so we just got on the bikes and rode toward the Wahweap marina and campsite, stopping at the Glen Canyon Dam for pictures. It cost us $7 to enter the Glen Canyon Recreational Area, this road used to be free back in the day when I used to come out here, now it was a national park. Back then there was no marina, and there wasn’t a lot of motorized boats here either, the lake was peaceful and serene. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I remembered camping at Lake Powel and not seeing another person for days. Those were the days. Now it’s all built up.

Camping at the Wahweap was $19 for our camp site. For dinner we bought some wood, salsa, tortilla chips, turkey franks and hot dog buns at the camp store, then schlepped all that stuff to our camp site on our bikes. The sun was low on the horizon so we needed to hurry and set up our tents but first we needed to park our bikes. Although the road to the camp site was paved, the parking spots were sand, both Sandy and I tried backing her bike in to the sand pit, but we were having a lot of difficulties, even with the both of us. Our neighbor next door was watching and came over to help. He used to race motocross and seemed familiar with motorbikes. He parked our bikes pretty quick, backing them in so we could ride right out tomorrow morning.

It was another great night for camping, clear skies, mid 70’s all night. The only thing bad about this camp site was the sand, it was everywhere, in our tents and in our sleeping bags, but it was so beautiful here that I didn’t even care, we could see the lake in the distance from our camp site, the moon hung above us like a giant lamp. The bathroom was near by also but the showers were a short walk near the camp store, and they were $2 for 15 minutes.

Sandy got the fire going, I looked for sticks that I could cut and make skewers out off. Yea, you can’t get this close to nature at a Super 8, camping was awesome. After dinner we were beat and went to bed. I set the alarm clock again, knowing now when exactly the sun would come up, I was going to be ready to watch the sun rise tomorrow morning.

Wednesday, September 6
Day 6: Arizona and Utah

I woke up about half an hour before sun rise and discovered that I had left the tent zipper open about 6”. I though my zipper was all the way closed last night but I guess it was just stuck, There were no snakes, or tarantulas or scorpions in my tent though. We heard some coyotes hauling in the distance but the hot dogs we left on our picnic table were still there in the morning, they must have not been very hungry or are fussier eaters than I though them to be. We took off for a hike to the lake to watch the sun rise, it was still dark as we walked toward the lake. It seemed like forever, we waited patiently for the sun to peek from behind the other side of the lake. Immediately the black and gray rocks turned golden-orange as the sun’s rays saturated them. The temperature, which was in the low 70’s also started rising immediately as the run rose up in the sky quickly. After watching the dark blue water turn golden with the sun’s reflection, we headed back to the camp and started to tear it down, take our showers and get ready to leave, that took a few hours plus we had some breakfast and I had to adjust the route for today also. We were on the road by 11AM.

We took 89 south and stopped by a roadside Indian jewelry stand. I happen to love Indian jewelry and so does Sandy. Now don’t go thinking that we’re girls so we like to shop, because I don’t really like to shop that much, unless it’s for motorcycles or gear. While browsing the many tables or silver and turquoise offerings, we noticed the nasty storm coming our way. I guess there was a good possibility of us getting wet today, eh? It was hot too, in the upper 80’s or low 90’s. After the purchase of some new jewelry we headed to 89A north, pretty nice roads with amazing scenery and nice sweepers. I was suddenly very thirsty, I still had not replenished my platypus, so the next gas station which was in Marble Canyon, we stopped for drinks. By the time we came out the wind was blowing really hard, kicking all kinds of sand in to the air and the storm was coming straight for us.

We decided to wait the storm out and went next door to a gift shop to look at more Indian jewelry. The rain fell hard and fast and pretty soon it was over so we left and kept going northwest. The storm wasn’t quick enough, we still managed to buy some jewelry. There were dark clouds still ahead, it was far from being over. It drizzled some on the way but the big rain didn’t come until we hit the twisty mountain roads right outside the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. And it got really cold too as we headed up in to the alpine forest. The twisties were awesome though; we continued without stopping and arrived in Utah. The rain had stopped now but the sky still looked dark and dreary. Back on 89, there were phenomenal sweepers everywhere, I really enjoyed this road. The temperatures remained cool and the skies continued to be cloudy so we rode until sun set and grabbed a motel room in Hatch, UT. No camping in the rain for us. We got to park our bikes right outside our window. New Bryce hotel had a café attached to the motel but the owner said that the cook didn’t show up to work today so the restaurant was closed. We walked down the road a bit and found an amazing place to eat, really cute inside and outside and so many great meal selections, I had a Navajo taco, it was delicious. This was a dry county so sadly no beer for us. We returned to out motel and went to bed shortly, we were going to get an early start tomorrow.

 

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Day 1 | Day 2-4 | Day 5-6 | Day 7-8 | Day 9-10