Day-12 Jul-19-09

Two words for today, HOT, and dirty!!!

Another 105 degree day today. People say, at least there is no humidity, it's a dry heat. Well, it still feels like it's cooking the skin right off of your arms and legs :)

Today started off pretty nice, we decided to take a back road out of Moab Utah, up into an area known as Castle Valley. On the map and GPS, the road seemed normal, so off we went. I had also read about this route on one of the motorcycle forum groups I frequent. We were completely unaware of how our day was about to unfold...

Below are a couple of photos we took in the Castle Valley area. Pretty neat rock formations, and much different than the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Then, about 4 miles or so down the road, things got dicey. The pavement disappeared and the road turned to gravel. Not that big of a deal, I have driven the wing on gravel roads before. So we continued on.

Another couple of miles, and the gravel road became extremely rutted, covered with huge rocks, and in general, pretty horrible for riding a motorcycle. The road looked great, if you were in a 4 wheel drive jeep, but a 900 pound street bike made the riding pretty delicate. The huge ruts, pushed the bike around pretty good, and then there were the areas of soft sand to contend with!!!!

In addition to the horrible road, we were also climbing in elevation, going from about 4000 feet to about 8500 feet above sea level. This meant that I had to keep the speed up so we could continue to climb without stalling. The road got extremely rough in places, rattling the teeth in our head, and beating the snot out of our bike and trailer. Needless to say, Lennie was no longer enjoying the views :)

The camera does not do the road justice, but here is a section of the gravel road. Lennie quit taking photos as the road got worse, and focused her attention on hoping I could keep the bike upright.

With the high temperatures (105-106), I also had issues with the bike temperature gauge rising into the "over heating" zone. If I tried to keep the speed down to ease the jolting from the ruts, the temp gauge kept rising. If I sped up to cool the bike down, we were just beating up the bike and ourselves. As we continued to make progress, we ended up having to stop about every half mile to let the bike cool down !!! This made the 20 miles of rough uphill road seem to take forever!!! And, I was unable to just stop anywhere, due to the ruts, rocks, sand, uphill climb, etc, I had to be very careful about where I stopped to let the bike cool down, so that I could keep the bike upright. The farther we went, we kept saying, the road has to get better, but it did not. At this point we were committed, and it did not make sense to turn back. So, on we trekked.

At one point, our wonderful GPS told us to turn left, but there was NO LEFT. Since there was no left, we ended up with another unanticipated 4 miles of this washboard road. I ended up turning the bike around twice looking for the left turn, but it was nowhere to be found. For the turn arounds, I had to get Lennie off the bike, since the road was narrow and rock strewn. One of the turn arounds, I actually had to unhook the trailer due to the narrow road.

Finally, after about 20 miles, we hit the main paved road that continued through the Castle Valley area :) :) :) Lennie and I were both relieved. The bike, trailer, Lennie and I were a dusty mess, as well as HOT HOT HOT.

I felt fortunate to be back on a paved road, and was grateful that we were able to get out of that mess without dumping the bike or causing any engine damage from overheating.

The road kind of reminded me of this "inspirational" poster I saw on the internet before...

My attitude to not turn around and head back the way we came reminded me of this one....

Hot and dirty, we continued on to Colorado. Before heading for our hotel, we decided to drive up into the Grand Mesa area. Grand Mesa is the largest flat topped mesa in the world. The top of Grand Mesa is at an altitude of 10,700 feet. Finally, some cool air !!! The temperature at the base was 103, and at the summit it was only 68.!! We actually got off the bike and just hung out at the summit for a while to cool off. There are a number of beautiful lakes at the top of Grand Mesa as well, very scenic.

After Grand Mesa, we headed back to Grand Junction to check into our hotel and call it a day.

We checked in, then decided to head down the road to a car wash, where we cleaned the bike and trailer, they were a mess.

The day is now over, and we are snuggled into our air conditioned hotel room, with a clean bike and trailer in the parking lot, ready for another day tomorrow :)