e x c e s s i v e l o c i t y: Page, Arizona to Hatch, Utah

I woke up about half an hour before sun rise and discovered that I had left the tent’s zipper open about 6”. I was just hoping nothing crawled into my tent overnight. There are scorpions and black widows here. I guess when I pulled my zipper to shut the flap last night, the zipper got stuck and since it was dark I thought it was all the way closed. We heard some coyotes hauling in the distance last night the left over cooked hot dogs we left on our picnic table were still there this morning.

Sandy and I 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 the minute the run rose over the horizon. After watching the dark blue water turn golden with the sun’s reflection, we headed back to the camp to take our showers and get ready to leave. We also had some breakfast and I had to adjust the route for today. We were on the road by 11AM.

Just before sun rise at Lake Powell

Our camp site at Lake Powell

We took 89 south and stopped by a roadside native American jewelry stand. I happen to love Indian jewelry and so does Sandy. While browsing the many tables of silver and turquoise offerings, we noticed the nasty storm coming our way. I guess there was a good possibility of us getting wet today. It was hot too, in the upper 80’s or low 90’s. After purchasing some jewelry we headed to 89A north, pretty nice road with amazing scenery and nice sweepers. I was suddenly very thirsty, I still had not replenished my platypus, so at the next gas station 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 only 5 minutes away.

At the road side jewlery stand

Big rain coming our way

Twisties coming up on 89A

Curves on 89A

The beautiful southwest

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. We continued northwest. There were dark clouds still ahead of us, the rain was far from being over. It drizzled some more 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 climbed in elevation. The twisties were awesome though, we continued without stopping and before we even knew it, we were 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 motel 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.