Had a weekend to ourselves and decided to do a nice two day hike on the AT. We started at Lehigh Gap and hiked up the surprisingly steep hill/mountain. After that it was about 4 hours of hiking before we set up camp. The hiking was decent but pretty typical of Pennsylvania, meaning that it was rarely flat ground, mostly stepping on rocks the whole way.
The second day wasn't bad at all, I was able to get us some tea going. The hiking was nice and relaxing , although the fog was very heavy.
After we finished our hike, we started walking back on the road trying to catch a ride, hitchhike style. I'd say it took about 30 mins but we did catch a ride with a guy named Dan. He ended up being from the Denver area that we rode through on our trip and he knew all the other places we went to.
When we finally got onto pavement in the Grand Canyon, we hit up the first diner we could find and laid out all our stuff in the parking lot (pic below) to dry it out. I cannot express enough, how much mud was packed into these bikes and our gear. Had come up with this brilliant idea to bring a powerstrip and have all our chargers already plugged into it. That way we could just walk up to any one outlet and plug in our powerstrip. Unbenounced to the restraunt, we were actually charging like 10 different things, lol. This is the only way we could keep our bluetooth communicators, laptop, camera, helmet cam and cell phones charged; and thank God we did, because the footage that we got from these things was amazing.
Anyways, so after we dryed everything we had, we got back on the road and headed toward Zion. Stopping at the nearest gas station to thoroughly wash the bikes off.
When The park was extremely well maintained and preserved. It had nice roads and they were in the right places to give you amazing views. Several roads had tunnels that cut right into the mountian.
The super informal history of this place that I remember is that the early mormon settlers found it and declared it to be a holy place where a person could personally veiw Gods wonders. I am not mormon but they were right. It literally looks photoshopped right in front of you.
The mountain peaks are so gorgeous and they transcend down to large rocky bottoms with enormous striations that curve diagonally down to the ground. Almost as if the mountains had just twisted right up from the earth only shortly before you got there.
After a good while in Zion, we got back on the road towards Bryce Canyon. But not before some dumb girl almost killed us both by driving with her knees, while on the cellphone, while changing a station, while driving uphill on the side of a cliff. This influenced me to take a more relaxed pace to Bryce because I literally thought I was about to have to lay the bike down just to avoid impact. Luckily she missed me and hopefully learned something (probably not).
So we plug away on the road and get to a tiny town called Hatch, and got some beef jerky and gatorade. We talked to the lady and ended up changing our plans from camping at Bryce Canyon, to staying in a cabin right outside of it. (Cabin $30, Camping $35) Plus the next day was going to be a long one (almost 300 miles), so we thought charging everything and sleeping in a bed would be a good idea.
It was only early afternoon, so we dropped off everything at the cabin and headed towards Bryce Canyon...
This was the only place that I feel like we skimmed over. We stopped at all the stops but we did not hike into the canyon. If we make another trip out there, further exploring Zion and Bryce will be on the top of our list of things to do.
So we make it into Bryce Canyon at dawn. We ride though and it was beautiful, but not nearly as breathtaking as Zion or certainly not as much as Sublime Point. I have heard that it is a great hiking area, and that is probably true.
Our way back to the Canyon was a little scary because it had become dark and the wildlife was quite active in Bryce. We had a couple close encounters with deer and some mountain goats. I got stopped by a park ranger who was more interested in hearing about our motorcycle trip then giving me a speeding ticket, so he just let us go. lol
Afterwards, we just head back to the Cabin because the next day we had to travel to Red Canyon, Capital Reef, up the legenday route 12 and then do a super boring long highway trip (triple digit speeds made it go by alot faster), and then end up in Moab, UT at Arches National Park.
waking up early on the Sublime Point plateau was a once in a lifetime experience. I knew it was special so I wanted us to be able to indulge in it. So I got up and made Jordann some coffee, myself some tea, and us both some oatmeal.
To quote Barney from How I Met Your Mother, it was "Legen- -Dary". Especially since all the condensation had caused low lying clouds, and we had one come up right on top of us. I got some hilarious footage of us both freaking out about being inside a cloud in the Grand Canyon.
We were so glad to have asked the Rangers if they would let us follow them out on the "easy" trail and them saying yes. So after eating breakfast and packing everything back up, we rode over to where they had set up camp. While helping them pack up their equipment, we learned about the controlled burns and vegetation maps they were plotting.
After getting packed up,we head out... but keep in mind that that torrential downpour had happened that night had left huge collections of water. But I will get to that in Part II....
This would start out as the easiest day and later turn into the most difficult.
We woke up at our campground in Page, AZ and said goodbye to the mormons lol (they were so nice). Got on the bikes and knew that we would not be near anything for a while so our 1 cup size containers with oatmeal in them, would not hold us over. Thank God we decided to go get something at Burger King, because although it is not the healthiest thing in the world, we would definitely need the calories later on.
So we grab breakfast and get on the rode. Its a pretty boring ride (long and straight) but as with all the desert rodes we encountered, the speed limit of 65 was locally translated into 85-90 mph. So we just blazed along until we got within a couple miles of where we would head south towards the grand canyon. We approached a very large mesa and I turned on my helmet cam (which I later realize, was not on). The roads going up the mesa were super fun (include the rode number). They were twisty and with every turn you got a better veiw.
Finally we get on top of the enormous mesa and head towards the park. BTW, the grand canyon national park is super huge and I am not talking about the actual grand canyon; the PARK is huge. I think it took us 30 mins to get to the actual visitors center. We saw several deer, cows, and maybe even some beefalo... they were too far away for us to tell. (beefalo are a hybrid species that ranchers created and it got out of hand, now the park is trying to find a way to control their rapidly expanding population. Basically its a cow/buffalo, and it looks like a cow sized buffalo)
We finally get to the visitors center and are a little cranky. The views there are ehh... and we were edgy. We decide to cancel our campground reservation and ask the ranger if there is a more spectacular view that perhaps not everyone gets to see. He quickly tells us about Sublime Point, and lets us know that they normally only recommend it for true 4 wheel drive trucks with high clearance.
So I am super excited and Jordann is excited about the view. We head back up the road a bit to begin the trek down the trail that leads to Sublime Point.
The trail starts out super easy and maybe a little sandy in some parts but overall its not bad. The entire thing might not have been as bad if the area hadn't received severe rain in the weeks before we came. What that caused was for the sand to be just dry enough to be like riding a motorcycle in a sand box and the rain to have washed away all the sediment, leaving rocks everywhere the size of croquet balls. Needless to say, this was not the environmet that you wanted to bring your wife into to introduce her to riding offroad on a 500 lb motorcycle. Jordann had a couple of days under her belt of riding offroad but nothing enough to prepare her for what was up ahead.
I think in total, she might have dropped the bike 10 times. Both turn signals were busted and she got a couple scratches on the fairings (which would end up costing us some serious $$$). Most of the time were from nerves and her just getting used to letting that big of a machine move around under her.
After 3 hours of arduous offroading we made 18 miles progress. We had 1 boil-in-a-bag, 1 nalgeen of water for cooking, and half a nalgeen for drinking. We were not planning on camping there, but we were also not expecting it to take 3 hours to get there.
Some of the cliffs you see are 300-500 ft high, and those tiny little green spots are full grown trees. When you start doing the math, you are blown away by the scale of things.
We talk about the storm and decide to camp.
As we arrive to the edge of the pennisula, we are just blown away by the scale of the Grand Canyon. We quickly get off our bikes and hurry over to the edge to get it all in. We wouldn't truly understand the scale until the 4th or 5th time looking at it. Not only is this probably the best view but its also one of the least obstructed. We had 270 degree of grand canyon to look at at all times.
