Winterizing your Motorcycle

Southwest Motorcycle Trip – Day 4

Barry and Braden

After our overnight stay at Jacob’s Lake, we climbed on our motorcycles and headed north towards Zion’s National Park. We even passed through Colorado City, birthplace of Warren Jeff’s and his sixty children. Arriving at Zion’s upon our motorcycles we paid our fee and took a tour bus to tour Zion’s. Beautiful, tall mountains, with shear cliffs.

The bus driver can hear and see everything!

It was interesting…we sat in the back of the bus. I was minding myself, but Barry and Braden were being unruly. We then noticed a sign in the back that said the bus driver could hear everything we said. So Barry, having had chili for lunch, wasn’t very quiet.

Zion's long tunnel

After our tour, we pressed our motorcycles on toward Bryce Canyon National Park. Still in Zion’s we rode through a long tunnel through the mountain, with our motorcycles displaying the loud sound of our pipes.

Arriving at Bryce Canyon, we pulled into the Ruby Inn’s campground and put our motorcycles down for the night. They had hot showers that were to die for. Best shower I’ve ever taken.

Southwest Motorcycle Trip – Day 3

Mike with the Grand Canyon behind his behind

Day 3 of our motorcycle trip, we decided and debated of heading on to Laughlin, NV and Las Vegas, or backtracking a little and going around the Grand Canyon, from the South Rim to the North Rim. We concluded it would be cooler, since the temps down in Las Vegas were in the 90′s. So we headed back around. I’m kinda glad we did, because we saw some beautiful vistas, and a death-defying leap off a high bridge over the Colorado. (I’ll explain in a minute)

So we headed back towards Page, Arizona, gassed up and headed towards the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Jacob’s Lake. On our way we stopped at the famous “horseshoe bend” in the Colorado.

Horseshoe bend of the Colorado

I’ve seen pictures of this place, but never in person. It is a lot more impressive in person. A problem I had in getting a decent picture of the full horseshoe bend was I needed a wide angle lens.  None the less, it was impressive.

As we were crossing over a bridge, next to an old bridge, by Lee’s Ferry, we noticed a group of people standing in the middle of this older bridge. Curious, we stopped to see what was going on. If any of you are afraid of heights, then do not look at these pictures. As we approached the group, we saw that they were bungee-jumping off this bridge, which had to be over 300 feet from the Colorado river below.

Japanese guy getting thrown

As I look out over the edge of the bridge, my insides started doing back flips. It was high. We watch as this one Japanese kid stood up on the ledge of the handrail, and decided he couldn’t jump. So six guys threw him off. As he was free-falling, I could hear him yelling something in Japanese.

Anyway, that was fun to watch.

We got to Jacob’s Lake to stay for the night, and was told that the North Rim was closed and wouldn’t open until the next day. We didn’t have enough time to drive there the next day, so we decided to push on towards Zions National Park, after a good night’s sleep. That night it dropped into the low 30′s.

"Bonsai!"

Southwest Motorcycle Trip – Day 2

East end of Lake Powell

Day 2 we left the comfort of the houseboat, climbed on our motorcycles, knowing that the next 4 nights would be spent in sleeping bags and tents, not to mention nights in the 30′s. Yes, it was still cold. Where did our spring go?

We headed back to the highway and headed southeast, crossing over the grand Colorado River on the east end of the lake.

We traveled on our motorcycles for awhile before coming to a junction that would head due south to Mexicanhat, Arizona. What we didn’t realize, was a portion of this road was about 13 miles of dirt road. Kind of tough on the motorcycles.  We took it slow, but saw some unbelievable landscape.

Over looking the east end of Lake Powell

The further south we headed, the warmer it got, with temperatures in the 80′s pushing into the 90′s. Awe, but on a motorcycle you have natural air conditioning.

We finally made it to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. It has been many, many years since I’ve seen the Grand Canyon. It is still a big and deep Canyon, with not much change.  It was interesting though — everywhere we stopped, Europeans and Asian’s were taking pictures or our motorcycles. I guess they don’t see the big motorcycles in their countries.

The Grand Canyon and 4 biker dudes

Southwest Motorcycle Ride – Day 1

Getting ready to leave

Awe, the wonderful epic journey of the wind in our face and the road ahead, as we explored new vistas of the Southwestern States.

Due to time restraints we shortened our trip, starting out on a cold Thursday morning, Braden, my newly acquired son-in-law, and myself, left Salt Lake City around 8:30 am, with the temps in the low 40′s, headed south to hook up with Barry, my brother, and Mike, a good friend. Actually, Mike is considered my “BFF,” (Best Friend Forever) in Orem, Utah

After hooking up with them, we continued our journey south to Lake Powell for our first night.

We have a houseboat down on the Lake, so that was our first night stop. Mike, pictured to the left, is a digital junky. A commercial pilot by trade, loves all his gadgetry.

We were going to take the Lake Ferry across to continue the next day, only to find that the Ferry was not operating and was out for repairs. That problem added about another 50 to 60 miles to our trip.