Day 5 Part II (zion, bryce canyon)

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. 

Day 5 from sublime to Zion (part 1)

 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....

Day 4 (the route to sublime point)

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.

day 3 part II

After Navajo National monument we hit the road and headed toward Antelope Canyon near Page, AZ. I was really excited to see that the guide wasn't going to take us to the canyon in some pansy GMC suburban but instead in an Austrian pangeizer (spelling?). Portal axles and a torquey little 4 cyl!

Our guide was great, he kept insisting on that everyone take the same pictures in the same place because they were "hot photos".

Well we got done with the antelope canyon, and headed for our campground in Page, AZ. We were told to go into Page and try a burger joint called Dam Burgers. It was fantastic!
Later we set up camp and this would be the first shower we have taken since leaving Philadelphia. As we settled in, a truck full of mormons decided to set up camp right next to us and park their boat right in front of our site. They ended up being nice but had 3 kids so needless to say, it was an early morning for us.

Day 3 part I

Day 3
Jordann had already planned out a perfect campground that overlooked monument valley. This was our view (pic left) from our tent.

We get up in the morning and are relieved

As we headed out to Navajo National Monument, we were excited to have the helmet cam to capture monument valley in its fullness as we left. (add short vid of mon val)

As we approached the entrance to Navajo National Monument, we noticed an offroad path to the visitors center. The path in its entirety was 9 miles. Not even after 1/2 mile we realized that this was not a grated or gravel road. Instead it was atv trails with 1ft deep sugar sand. Poor Jordann had very little offroad experience at this time and this was way too hard of terrain to throw her into. She did okay though!

"I didn't know if I could ever get the hang of it because I kept falling down because of the deep sand. I remember all the videos that we had watched about riding offroad and I just couldn't make the bike act like I wanted it to. When I hit the brakes it would slide out from under me." ~ Jordann

Finally we get tired of the super difficult sand on our heavy bikes with barely off road tires. So I zoom WAY into the GPS and find a path leading back to the road. As we started heading that way we noticed a large clearing and we had to ride about 150ft up a solid rock area. This was definitely different terrain (think terribly pitted and potholed cement). On the other side we were met by a couple desert hadden dogs that chased us for about 200 yds. At this point we realized that we were on Native American land and were technically "in someone's yard", even though there were miles of desert around us with nothing but sage bush and tumble weeds. At this point as, I was waiting for Jordann to catch up, I started hearing emus or lamas (couldn't tell).We did see some trailers, which was how most of the native americans we met lived. We quickly made our way out of their property and were very delighted to see pavement.

Once we arrived at the visitors center, we were able to watch this navajo woman weave a rug in a traditional loom. She would lay the wool through the threads and then knock it down with a dowel, and she did this for EVERY thread...needless to say it was labor intensive.

We knew we had a short hike to the lookout point to see the native ruins (cliff dwellings) so we decided to eat. Broke out the pocket rocket (aka camp stove) and heated up some chili with peanuts in it! Which was surprisingly great!

After our quick chow and clean up, we headed down the trail to the lookout point. We saw a variety of different desert plants and learned about mud huts that the navajo would take steam baths in. (super small)

At the lookout we met a super sweet French family with a little girl named Gabrielle. She was really shy at first but then she warmed up to us weird americans. We were amazed at the cliff dwellings, as expected, but I really enjoyed meeting people of other cultures that came so far just to see something that few people from this country take the time to go see. (this was a very common theme throughout the whole trip)

 After a great adventure getting to Navajo National Monument, we decided to stick to pavement for at least the next couple hours.

go to Day 3 Part II .....

day 2 part II

So after we learned a bunch about Mesa Verde from the park ranger (who btw was friggin adorably nerdy and had a bunch of freckles!) and traveled back down the mountain/mesa on our way across the desert to Monument Valley.

We made our way to Cortez and the tiny little airport was empty! (we were there because american airlines lost our bag with our helmets in them, they graciously rush shipped the bag to the tincy lil airport on our 2nd day) I walked around and found the maintenance guy for the airport, who called the 1 person who ran all departures. She was in her trailer down the road, and said she would be there in like 10 mins. Thank God he was able to reach her, those helmets afforded us our helmet cam and blutooth communicators.

So after some boring straight desert roads, we started to come upon some mesas and plateaus. Eventually we made it to Valley of the Gods and there was a dirt road that I was curious about. I proposed to Jordann that we try to see what it was like. Jordann had limited offroad experience so we were a little nervous about it since it was entirely sand/gravel but we decided to go ahead and tackle it. I am super glad we did because we were able to get right up next to all the amazing "monuments".