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.



Near Marble Canyon



Near Grand Canyon's North Rim



New Bryce hotel



Adobe Cafe is the place to eat at in Hatch, UT, I had a Navajo Taco



Sandy had a burger

Navajo Lake, New Mexico to Page, Arizona

About an hour before sunrise I woke up to zip up my sleeping bag all the way and pull it over my head. It was cold. We were sleeping at 6,000 feet in elevation. I really wanted to put on my fleece but I was too lazy to crawl out from the sleeping bag and put it on and I knew that I was getting up at sun rise anyway, which wasn’t too long. My alarm went off in the early morning but there was no sun yet so I re-set it for a later time and when it went off again still no sun, the last time it went off the sun was already at the horizon. I jetted out of the tent, grabbed the camera and headed for the lake to capture some pictures of the sun rise but the sun was way over the horizon by the time I climbed down to the water. The air was still chilly, but not for long, with each half hour it became warmer and warmer.



Sunrise at Navajo Lake



A beautiful morning at the camp site

When I got back to the camp site, Sandy informed me that when she got up she found a small praying mantis inside her tent, how bizarre. The camp bathroom had free warm showers, although there were only two showers in the woman’s bathroom and one of them didn’t work really well. We got cleaned up, packed up and left by 11AM. This setting up and tearing down of the camp site does take some time but camping is just so much fun.



See the car driving on the road that goes to the Navajo Dam? In the picture below, we're on that road



On the Navajo Dam road



One has to be very careful not too go over the cliff



Twisties near Navajo Dam



Navajo Dam



A washed out road



Looking down a the road that goes to the camp site

It was a magnificent day already. We rode up towards the Navajo Dam to take some pictures, but since we didn’t spend the night in Mesa Verde I had to look at the map and adjust the route, I wanted to make it easy and quick; we were still behind, so we took 64 out. There was a bit of traffic on this road through New Mexico, but once we got in to Arizona the roads opened up a bit. With the open roads our speed increased also. Sandy was running a radar detector and I was leading on this trip, so I was watching her in my mirrors, if she backed down, I did too. of course I had no idea Sandy didn’t have the radar detector on right now. I went to pass a SUV swiftly and got back in to my lane just to find out there was a police car approaching in the near distance, hiding behind some other cars. Then he put his lights on. Sandy just finished her pass when I looked in my mirror to watch him turn around, but he didn’t. We got lucky. Sandy did turn her radar detector on right away and just in time too, two more police cars were heading in the other direction 5 minutes later.



Under state under our belt



A thief stealing a granola bar at a gas stop



Cool rock formations along 160






An abandoned building - time to investigate



Yea, the place has a door, but what fun is that



I had to be careful, the floor had collapsed in a few places



Storm building outside the window in the distance

So the whole time we’re riding, we’re watching and admiring this storm in the distance. As the road turned, it would be to the left of us and then sometimes to the right and then it would be ahead of us. For about an hour we watched it dance in the distance, big menacing dark clouds and spectacular lightning. Once we turned on to 98 North we started to get close to it, so close you could see water falling in sheets to the ground from the dark clouds. Then we started to smell the rain, this was the smell of dry earth sucking up moisture, we knew then we couldn’t escape it. We rode right into it, it got gusty and cold right away, the rain drops were big and even painful at times as I felt them through my textile jacket. Then close to Page, AZ we rode out through the other side of the storm, and back in to the heat and sunshine. The closer we got to the city the hotter it got, in town it must have been in the upper80’s or low 90’s.

We wanted to call some of the campsites and get more information about them but none of the phone numbers we had worked so we just got on the bikes and rode toward the Wahweap marina and campsite, stopping at the Glen Canyon Dam for pictures. It cost us $7 to enter the Glen Canyon Recreational Area, this road used to be free back in the day when I used to come out here, now it was a national park. Back then there was no marina, and there wasn’t a lot of motorized boats here either, the lake was peaceful and serene. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I remembered camping at Lake Powel and not seeing another person for days. Those were the days. Now it’s all built up.



Glen Canyon Dam












Lake Powell

Camping at the Wahweap cost us $19 for one camp site. For dinner we bought some wood, salsa, tortilla chips, turkey franks and hot dog buns at the camp store, then schlepped all that stuff to our camp site on our bikes. The sun was low on the horizon so we needed to hurry and set up our tents but first we needed to park our bikes. Although the road to the camp site was paved, the parking spots were sand, both Sandy and I tried backing her bike in to the sand pit, but we were having a lot of difficulties, even with the both of us. Our neighbor next door was watching and came over to help. He used to race motocross and seemed familiar with motorbikes. He parked our bikes pretty quick, backing them in so we could ride right out tomorrow morning.



Getting supplies at the camp store



Wahweap camp site

It was another great night for camping, clear skies, mid 70’s all night. The only thing bad about this camp site was the sand, it was everywhere, in our tents and in our sleeping bags, but it was so beautiful here that I didn’t even care, we could see the lake in the distance from our camp site, the moon hung above us like a giant lamp. The bathroom was near by also but the showers were a short walk near the camp store, and they were $2 for 15 minutes.



Dinner

Sandy got the fire going, I looked for sticks that I could cut and make skewers out off. Yea, you can’t get this close to nature at a Super 8, camping was awesome. After dinner we were beat and went to bed. I set the alarm clock again, knowing now when exactly the sun would come up, I was going to be ready to watch the sun rise tomorrow morning.

Albuquerque to Lake Navajo, New Mexico

The day started out with New Mexico style home made breakfast burritos and coffee. We hung out and relaxed a bit, did some laundry. Yea, we actually had some dirty clothes to wash already. Sandy likes to keep her Duc clean so she washed her bike. We didn’t leave until 2PM since Mary Ann and Sandy had some catching up to do. Then it was time to leave and that was stressful for us shorty girls on the heavy bikes. Al monitored the traffic on the road since there was no way I was going to stop at the top of the gravel hill to see if anything as coming. The coast was clear I pulled out of the gravel pit and on to the road. It was easier then I though. A few minutes later Sandy was behind me and we were heading for the northwest corner of New Mexico.





We spent the night in a 100 year old adobe house



There was a bit of traffic on the interstate and we left later then anticipated so we decided to skip the twisty roads and just took 550 North still trying to make it to Mesa Verde by nightfall. 550 is designated as a scenic route on my map but I didn’t think it was all that scenic and it was a pretty straight road. I’d avoid it next time. We ran in to a small rain storm that lasted just a few minutes and arrived in Aztec, NM in the late afternoon. It was pretty hot here and we were sweating while trying to figure out what we should do next.

We looked at the map and realized that Mesa Verde was still very far away, so we headed east where we knew of a State Park that we could camp at. The road getting to the park was cool, it went up and down like a rollercoaster and had some great scenery. Confusion set in when we passed an entrance to a camp site, the road leading there was a beat up dirt road. We stopped down the road at a gas station to get more info. Then we fund out that wasn’t the park I saw on the map, the other park was further down and the road to it was paved. Paved was good, gravel/dirt was bad on a loaded up ST bike when you can’t even flat foot.

We arrived at the Navajo Dam and then Lake Navajo Sate Park. Navajo Lake is New Mexico’s second largest lake. The entrance booth was closed already since it was after 6PM so we continued in to the camping area where we could self check in. The guy at the gas station told us the camp site was full this morning, but we were hoping some people left already since the three day holiday weekend was over. As we headed to the park, we saw a lot of cars coming form the park heading the opposite direction. When we got to the camp site more then half of the camp sites were empty. We rode around the steep and narrow but paved roads and found a camp site with some grass to set up our tents on. Not all sites were good for tents, most looked like RV sites and there were many RV’s still here. Our site was a RV site too but, we parked our bikes in the spot where the RV would park. The price was $14 for the camp site, we put the money in to the self-pay envelope and dropped it in to the box.





Navajo Lake



Navajo Lake State Park



Dinner



Our camp site



It was a delightful night for camping. The air was cool but not cold and the sky was clear. The moon was almost full tonight and there were so many starts in the sky. Our camp site was pretty close to the bathrooms, so we didn’t have to walk too far. At around 10PM we called it a night and zipped ourselves in to our tents. My spot was a bit slopped and every time I turned to the other side I’d slide down on since my sleeping pad, and pillow and sleeping bag were made out of slippery type materials. This was my first time camping on a motorcycle trip, so all my gear was new, just tested out for a few nights in my back yard a week before this trip.

Hays, Kansas to Albuquerque, New Mexico

We were out on the road by 8AM, no interstates for us this morning; we took a bunch of back roads that cut through Kansas in to Oklahoma and in to New Mexico. This way was just as fast as the interstate, the roads were empty and we kept our speeds up. In the early afternoon we reached Clayton, NM where we were originally planning on camping last night before Sandy’s bike broke down. I made a few short cuts in today’s route so we could still try to make today’s destination; Albuquerque, NM where we were going to spend the night with Sandy’s cousins family.



Made it to Oklahoma






And we made it to New Mexico





We found us a cowboy in NM, but had to throw him back, too young



Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The temperatures were cool today and as the clouds moved in it got a bit chilly. We got on it and headed for the mountains of New Mexico, wanting to ride through there before heading south to Albuquerque. The roads were nice and scenic, many twisties, also a bit of traffic. The cars were moving at a good pace, we didn’t even need to pass anyone, but then we caught up to a slow Harley cruiser riding two-up and that was it, we couldn’t pass him, we were stuck behind him for miles.



Many twisties on 64 Near Taos, NM





Taking a break on 68





Nice sweepers and scenery on 68

Near Taos we found some rain and the pace got even slower. The rain wasn’t bad at all though and it did amplify the already crisp and fresh mountain air. We also saw a bit of deer here in the forests, and many more crossing the main streets in towns. As the sun started to drop toward the horizon we started to head toward Santa Fe. In the dark we jumped on I-25 for the last section of our ride in to Albuquerque. The temperatures were still nice and the traffic was moving fast. Then all the sudden, the traffic came to a halt as we encountered some gaper’s delay. There was an accident in the northbound lanes, as I passed the emergency vehicles I took a peek at what was lying in the road. Oh my. It was big. It was brown. It was a freakin’ bear.

We arrived in Albuquerque at around 9PM. I found the road the house was on, the driveway was sloped and gravel and dark. The butterflies in my stomach instantly got agitated as I contemplated my decent to the house below, locating the path of least resistance. I don’t like gravel. I really don’t like slopped gravel and I really, really don’t like any gravel in the dark. It went well considering I couldn’t see much. We parked the bikes in front of the house on the patio and went in.

Mary Ann, Sandy’s cousin, and Al, her husband, had an amazing spread of food waiting for us. Home made cheese ball and some crackers, chicken fajitas a la New Mexico , good ‘ol American apple pie and good beer and local wine. Sandy and I sat outside in the back yard with Mary Ann and Al eating and drinking and talking as the fire burned in the outside fireplace near by. The night air was clean and cool and very pleasant. Sandy and I were beat. We laid out our sleeping bags in the living room next to the fire place and it was nighty-night.



Dinner is waiting for us



We're not very neat guests



Indoor camping