Mountain Bike riding in Fruita Co (kokopelli trail and 18 road trails)

Old Stage Coach road

Almost right away, I was blown away by how many motorcycle like mine I saw. So I started asking around, and there are hundreds of miles of dirt roads and trails in the mountians.

Here is one of them, called Old Stage Coach road. It is one of the early pathways of frontiersmen and cowboys.

Our move from Philly to Denver

On June 2nd, Jordann and I got into our pickup truck and pulled our 16ft trailer, that was filled to the roof, 1800 miles across the country. We made it, but just barely, because our truck could only technically hold the exact amount that we had in it.
We were able to stay with a friends mom in Columbus, OH and from their we had to book it to make it to Kansas City. We were both so relieved to see the mountains in the distance as we approached Denver, our new home.

Hiking the AT/Lehigh Gap to Wind Gap

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. 

Good experience.

Hiking the AT/Lehigh Gap to Wind Gap, a set on Flickr.

Motorcycle trip out west

Motorcycle trip out west, a set on Flickr.

check out the pix from our trip!

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....