Al's space

Day 12 - Parker, CO to Omaha, NE - 553 GPS miles

This was an easy route. Hop on I-470 to loop around Denver. Get on I-76 East to the Nebraska border, then I-80 back home. Just for completeness, here's the map.

I tried to take back roads as much as possible, but I've been through this part of Nebraska many, many times, so efficiency was more important than scenic driving. This was pretty much what you might expect. Get on the slab, point the bike East, set the cruise control, go to the next gas stop. The only excitement happened at the end of the day. When I hit Lincoln, there started to be thunderstorms developing North of I-80. I was watching the NEXRAD weather radar on the GPS.

I took this image at a later time, but you get the idea of what it looks like. When I hit the rest stop at milepost 420 between Lincoln and Omaha, I could see the storms were approaching the Interstate and after riding 500 miles, my butt was sore. I stopped, stretched, walked around, then put on my rain gear and headed for Omaha. The rain stayed North and West of the Interstate until just after I pulled in the garage, then a pretty strong thunderstorm came through.

Here's a photo of my GPS at the end of the trip. Notice in the upper right corner, (under the 553.3 mi) it shows 3,232 miles for the total trip (and an 8 hour trip from Denver).

Day 11 - Durango, CO to Parker, CO - 362 GPS miles

Today was a mixed riding day of alternate routes.

Here is the map of today's route.

My original plan was to take U.S. Hwy 550, the Million Dollar Highway, from Durango to Montrose, then cut across Gunnison to Salida. There are several 10,000+ foot passes on this route. When I got up and checked the weather, the temperatures were in the high 20's to low 30's and didn't look like they would get out of the 30's. I haven't tried my heated clothing on the Beemer yet and didn't want to have them fail at 29 degrees on a 10,000 foot mountain top. I modified my route. Instead of going to Montrose, I decided to go through Pagosa Springs, over Wolf Creek Pass, through Del Norte to Poncha Springs, and then decide on the route. I waited until the temperature at Wolf Creek Pass made it to 40 degrees. That was about 9 a.m.

The ride from Durango to Pagosa Springs was terrific. It was still cool when I started out, and I knew I'd be climbing, so I started with my rain gear on as a wind breaker.
A few months ago I made a posting about a local trip I took to Pisgah, Iowa and stopping at the "Old Home Filler Up and Keep On Trucking Cafe" that was the theme of a C.W. Mcall song. Well, CW also had a song about downtown Pagosa Springs and Wolf Creek Pass. I didn't get many photos today, but to keep with the C.W. Mcall theme, I took a picture of downtown Pagosa Springs...

I wound my way up U.S. 160 to Wolf Creek Pass (10,823 feet). The trip up and then down the other side was a nice mix of hairpin and s-turns. I made it to the top about 11 a.m. The temp at the top was about 49 degrees. There was a group of 4 women that were riding their bicycles up to the pass. WOW. That takes some work. There was still quite a bit of snow above 10,000 feet. At the top, there is a great turnout with really sturdy frame for a "Wolf Creek Pass" sign, except ... there was no sign. Just a blank frame. I sould have taken a photo of the blank frame and used an image editor to fill in Wolf Creek Pass.

When I got to Del Norte, it was in the mid-60's, so I dumped the rain gear (as a wind breaker) and headed North. When I got to Saguache, it started raining pretty good, so out came the rain gear. The rain stopped about 10 miles outside of Poncha Springs. I stopped to gas up in Poncha Springs at a gas station/convience store/bar and put away my rain gear. While I was outside, three couples pull up on Harley's. My license plate wasn't showing (I had backed in), but one of the guys walks up to me and says "My name is..., we're from Omaha. Where are you from?". With the Omaha connection, we got to talkings. They were a group of attorney's from Omaha. They had trailered their bikes out to a friends place in Eagle, CO (by Aspen) and were heading to Pagosa Springs. Nice conversation, but time for me to go.

I started North towards Buena Vista on U.S. 285. My plan was to take U.S. 285 up through Bailey and Conifer into Denver. The wind between Poncha Springs and Buena Vista was out of the West and vicious. The kind that feels like the gusts will rip your helmet off or knock you off the bike. At Buena Vista, I decided I want head East so the wind would be at my back, instead of a cross wind. I think it was a good choice. This was the worst wind I'd ridden in so far. It was really, really ugly.

I headed East on U.S. 24 toward Woodland Park and Colorado Springs. The ride going East was good except for a couple small areas where the road swung either North or South and I was back battling the cross wind. As soon as I turned on U.S. 24 in Buena Vista, I started following a guy and his wife on an older Gold Wing Aspencade. Somewhere West of Lake George, the on coming cars started flashing their lights at on coming traffic. I figured it was a speed trap. Nope. A really bad accident. They had a 1/2 mile section of the road closed. There was one Life Flight helicopter on the ground and another one landing. They were re-routing traffic through a field. OK, this is going to be a new experience. I rode dirt bikes a lot when I was a kid, but I havn't been off road in decades and I've never ridden a large street bike off road. A conundrum. It was a long way back against a really wicked wind. I hadn't ridden through a field before. So the guy on the Wing pulls into the field and starts following traffic. OK, if a guy packing a passenger on an old Wing can do it, so can I. I made it no problem.

It started raining just West of Woodland Park, so I stopped in Woodland Park and put on my rain gear. It rained on and off from Woodland Park to Colorado Springs. It was only 4 p.m. when I hit Colorado Springs, so I decided to head up to Parker, CO. I took the back way to Parker on CO Hwy 83. It's really a nice two lane road of sweeping s-turns that goes from Colorado Springs through Franktown into Parker.

My daughter, son-in-law and grandson used to live in Parker before they were transferred for work. I have really fond memories of Parker. It's not really the city, but the great times I had there with them. It's interesting how, even though they don't live there any longer, I still have these pleasant memories that get kicked off when revisiting Parker. The memories seem to set off all those endorphins and dopamines that make the visit seem enjoyable. When they lived in Parker, one of the places we would go out for dinner was "Joe's Crab Shack". I had a nice meal there and some good memories.

After dinner, I turned in for the night to get an early start for the run on Omaha.

Day 11 - Kayenta, AZ to Durango, CO (with a loop through UT) - 218 GPS miles

A good, uneventful riding day with dramatic scenery changes about every 30 miles. Here is the map for day 11 (as always, click on any photo for a larger view).

Monument Valley starts on the North edge of Kayenta, AZ. I took U.S. 163 North out of Kayenta through Mexican Hat, UT to Bluff, UT. U.S. 163 runs through the center of Monument Valley. A couple things were surprising about this portion of the ride. The first and most obvious is the dramatic scenery. As I mentioned in a previous post, the photos only show a glimmer of the grandeur of Monument Valley. The photos don't let you experience the vivid, changing colors and the imense scale riding through the valley. The second suprising thing was how empty the road was. I saw some cars in Mexican Hat and Bluff, but while I was out on the road, I probably only saw 20 vehicles (mostly cars, but some motorcycles) over the 65 miles from Kayenta to Bluff.

Here is another attempt at a photo panorama, this time of Monument Valley.

In the photo, after you go over the hill, the road turns right and dips down slightly. In the movie Forrest Gump, this is where Forrest quit running.

I took this shot of a monument in Monument Valley in the mirror of my bike.

My wife and I have talked about this photo. I like it, she doesn't. She thinks it's too cluttered. She totally has a much better eye for photo composition than I do, so I'm sure she's right, but I still like it because it combines so many elements of the trip. It has a single monument in the bottom of the main mirror. It has a panorama of multiple monuments in the concave mirror. The sign has "Navajo" written on it (backwards in the mirror) reflecting Monument Valley is on the Navajo Reservation. It has the bike and it has me. In the photo, I have on my yellow rain gear. It was very windy and the temps were in the low 60's, so I was wearing my rain gear as a windproof/warming layer.

Here is a photo of some flags at a Navajo market turnout (wasn't being used at the time). The flags shows how windy it was.

At the North end of Monument Valley is Mexican Hat, UT. It's a small road side town (population 100) with a couple gas stations and a couple cafe's. The San Juan River runs through Mexican Hat and it was really flowing (almost raging). I believe it is fed by snow melt and it looks like there was plenty of snow melt happening.

This is the rock formation that gave Mexican Hat it's name.

I made it to Bluff, UT. When you drive into Bluff, you realize how it got that name. There is a bluff, probably 1,000 feet high and 10 miles long, on both sides of the town. I stopped for gas in Bluff. Here is a photo of the gas prices in Bluff. At the time, this was highest price I paid for fuel. Little did I know...

I took U.S. 191 South out of Bluff (well, just West of Bluff) to get back to U.S. 160 East at Mexican Water, AZ. I only saw one other vehicle (a pickup camper) on this 30 mile stretch of road. This scenery was terrific. Very similar to the Painted Desert. U.S. 191 hits U.S. 160 about 2 miles East of Mexican Water. Back on U.S. 160, there was a reasonable amount of traffic. Not too much, not empty. I took U.S. 160 East to Four Corners Monument. Four Corners sits right on the East edge of the Navajo Reservation (it's a big reservation). I didn't realize it was run by the Navajo. Here's the photo I took at Four Corners. No clue who the people are.

From Four Corners, I went to Cortez, CO and stopped for lunch. I liked Cortez. It sits at the foothills of the mountains. I thought it was really clean and well kept. I'm not sure what people do there, but it seemed very nice.

After Cortez, I headed to Durango. My daughter and son-in-law love Durango. I can see why. The scenery is terrific. It looks well sheltered by the mountains. The summer weather seems pretty mild compared to the surrounding areas. It looks like there is a ton of stuff to do. My daughter had talked quite a bit about downtown, so I stayed downtown just to check it out. Downtown is nice. The Animas River runs right next to downtown. Here's some people taking off whitewater rafting at the walkway a block from downtown.

I checked out the town and then checked in for the night.

Day 10 - North Rim Grand Canyon to Kayenta, AZ - 276 GPS miles.

This was another really scenic day. The views are so dramatic and change so frequently, you almost can't take it all in because of the visual sensory overload. Here is the route for the day.

Here is a shot of the from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon at sunrise. Every time the sun moves, the view of the Grand Canyon changes.

As I was leaving, I took a picture of the Beemer with the sign for the Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park in the background.

This is a photo of the valley leading to/from Grand Canyon National Park. The photo does not do justice to the actual view, but it at least gives a hint of the scale and grandeur of the drive. It does do a good job of showing the really great, smooth asphalt road to the park.

There was about a 10 mile stretch of AZ Hwy 67 where the forest had been burned. From checking on the web afterwards, I believe the fire occurred during the summer of 2006. It was surreal riding through a burnt out forest of Ponderosa Pine and Aspen trees. Here's a photo of the burnt out area.

As I left, I came back through Jacob Lake, down past the Vermilion Cliffs and across the Navajo Bridge, I turned on US 89 towards Page, AZ. I wanted to see the Glen Canyon Dam. Here's a photo of the dam.

I stopped in Page at a Jack In The Box fast food place for lunch. I had been keeping a cooler with ice in the right saddlebag. After lunch, I wanted to put my rain/cool weather gloves in the saddlebag, but it wouldn't open. The latches seemed to be working fine, but the bag wouldn't open. I pulled the bag off the bike, opened the latches and used the screwdriver from my toolkit to pry the halves apart. "Woosh". It looked like what happened wast that I had last closed the saddlebag at 8,000 feet with some ice in it up at Grand Canyon National Park. The bags have a pretty decent waterproof seal plus there was enough condensation from the ice melting, the the bag had an air tight seal. Page, AZ is at 4,000 feet. The only thing I could think is that there 8,000 foot elevation air sealed in the saddlebag created a vacuum inside the bag down at the 4,000 elevation that prevented the bag from opening.

I backtracked on US 89 to get back down to Tuba City. Coming down the hill out of Page, before it hits the valley floor, there is a scenic turnoff. Here is a photo of the Colorado River canyon South of Page. I'm not sure if this place is still considered Glen Canyon or if it has turned into Marble Canyon at this point. The cliffs in the background are the Vermilion Cliffs again.

I made my way on US 89 down to the US 160 junction and turned East on US 160. US 160 runs across East/West across the Navajo Reservation and Painted Desert. As soon as you turn onto US 160, it looks like you just landed on Mars. The ground consists of many different shades of red rock. There didn't seem to be much vegetation. Just colored rock. On this part of the reservation, US 160 is not a very wide road and I didn't see any motorcycle friendly turnoffs for photos, but it is definitely a place worth a visit. On my way to Kayenta, there were serveral terrain changes. At Tuba City, it was the Painted Desert. A little further East, it looked more like the grasslands of Western Nebraska and Eastern Colorado. Further East, it turned into horse country with low scrub trees. At Kayenta, it was back into the desert.

I stopped in Kayenta to stage my ride the next day into Monument Valley. Kayenta is a reservation town run by the Navajo's. For a really small town, there are several nice, big name hotels in there. Kayenta has a captive market. There really is no where else to stay going into and out of Monument Valley and since it's surrounded by the Navajo Reservation, the Navajo tribe can control what can be built. It looks like Kayenta is the overnight stop for tour buses coming into and out of Monument Valley. This was the most expensive hotel of my entire trip, including downtown Durango, but definitely not the nicest. Except for the cost of the hotel, all and all a really great day.