Cross country BMW motorcycle trip begins!

Mike and I have been planning a cross-country trip on our BMW motorcycle for months. The goal is to ride the BMW in every one of the lower 48 states. Because we lived in Vermont before we moved to Arizona 5 years ago and we love traveling on our BMW, we only have 19 states left. However, these states are spread throughout the country. We're starting our trip on the southern route:  heading east from Arizona through the southern states all the way to Florida. Then we turn north through the east coast states and stopping in Vermont for almost a week to visit family and friends before we head west to eventually ride through the northern states. After South Dakota, we plan to ride through Colorado to visit our oldest son and then finally back home to Arizona.

We'll be gone 5-6 weeks depending on weather and whim. It's the first time we haven't had a set return date on a trip, and we're loving the freedom of taking the trip one day at a time.

Today was our first day of the trip, riding on familiar roads from Arizona to Farmington, NM.

After a short ride north on I-17, we turned east on AZ 260, riding through pine forests leading to the top of the Mogollon Rim. The benefit of starting out at 6am on a Sunday morning is that we saw very little traffic, and most of the day had the roads to ourselves - except for some of the local wildlife. Just before we turned north onto AZ 87, we saw two large female elk grazing in the forest just off the side of the highway.

The landscape changes from forest to high desert on AZ 87 north to Winslow, with long-distance views to the shadowy mountains to the north and west. Winslow is famous for being part of the Eagle's song "Take it Easy" where there is a statue 'standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona' and it's on the old Route 66 that crossed the U.S. from Chicago to Los Angeles.

From Winslow, we continued north on AZ 87 through the Navajo and Hopi reservations where we saw more horses and sheep than cars.

At Second Mesa on the Hopi Reservation we turned east on AZ 264, and then north on AZ 191 where we stopped for lunch in Chinle. The Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles, and the smaller 2,500 square mile Hopi Reservation is surrounded completely by the Navajo Nation. Riding through both of these reservations the miles slide by quickly because of the lack of traffic and people, plus we make great time on the lightly traveled roads.

4 years ago we discovered Indian Route 13 that winds through the Chuska Mountains between Lukachukai in Arizona and the Red Valley in New Mexico. It's one of our favorite motorcycle roads because of the steep, twisting, winding road that runs over the Buffalo Pass - our first mountain pass of our trip.

After crossing in New Mexico we rode past Shiprock, the remainder of a volcanic eruption 30 million years ago. The prominent rock formation that rises 1500' above the desert is sacred to the Navajo.

From Shiprock we left the peaceful 2-lane highways and headed north on the busier 4-lane divided highway US 491 to the town of Shiprock, then east on US 64 along the San Juan River into Farmington, our stop for the night.

Starting our cross-country trip on familiar roads gave us the opportunity to ease into the routine of motorcycle travel. Tomorrow we continue east riding through the mountains of northern New Mexico. More steep and twisty roads are in store - our favorite!

Arizona desert on our BMW motorcycle

There's a huge difference between life on a motorcycle trip and life at home. When we're traveling on the BMW the days fall into a pattern:  up early in the morning to run, breakfast, load up the bike, travel all day with stops for gas and lunch, end up in the late afternoon at our destination, unpack, blog, work and eat dinner.

When we first get home from a trip I'm faced with a pile of laundry, a big stack of mail, hours of work that I've been putting off plus a packed calendar. Did I mention sorting through hundreds of photos and finishing the blog for the trip?

We came back from a 6-day Labor Day weekend trip to Boulder, Colorado on Tuesday and today (Sunday) I'm finally writing up the blog for the last day's ride. The overall theme for this day is emptiness.

New Mexico Route 64 riding west from Farmington

Small towns are often 50 or more miles apart in the Southwest. Many of the towns are home to less than 400 people, and sometimes all we see is a sign at a road crossing, with the promise of a cluster of homes hidden out of sight behind a hill or past the next canyon. We see narrow dirt roads that snake off across the desert with 2 or 3 mailboxes sited at the highway the only sign that people live at the end of these lonely roads.

We started today in Farmington, NM and rode west along Route 64 on the Trails of the Ancients Byway that connects the Four Corners states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona on the Navajo Reservation. People settled here starting in at least 10,000 BC, and I'm guessing that the landscape hasn't changed very much from then until now.

The landscape went back and forth from flat desert with faint shadows of distant mountains on the horizon, to craggy canyons and rolling hills where the highway swept around the larger rock formations, to tall mesas, and sometimes to weirdly shaped rock formations that rose hundreds of feet above the desert.

We were only in New Mexico for a few miles before we crossed into Arizona. At Teec Nos Pos  we continued west onto Arizona Route 160. The Navajo name translates into 'cottonwoods in a circle' but I didn't see any cottonwoods at all as we rode past the tiny town.

We turned south onto Arizona Route 191 with views of the Lukachukai Mountains to the east. We've ridden through those mountains on past trips, but today contented ourselves with straight and flat roads instead of twisty mountain hairpin turns.

horses along the ridge on Arizona 191 near Many Farms

I like reading the names of the towns as we ride along:  Mexican Water, Many Farms, Rock Point. 191 took us to 264, heading west again past Keams Canyon that was the site of a trading post in the late 1800's. The 3 mile long box canyon is known as Pongsikya by the Hopi and Lok'aa'deeshjin by the Navajo and is the only gas station/convenience store for several miles. Too many miles today, because instead of stopping we continued on for another 1 1/2 hours until we stopped for a late lunch in Winslow.

Keams Canyon

We've been through Winslow many times in the past year, but today was the first time we actually rode past the "standing on the corner of Winslow Arizona" statue from the classic Eagle's song.

As we continued on 87 South, we finally rode into the Coconino National Forest where the 2-lane highway wound through stands of tall Ponderosa pine trees along the rugged Mogollon Rim country. It wasn't until we rode down into Camp Verde that the temperature suddenly shot up to 100 degrees. We stopped at a gas station for a cold drink of water and I peeled off layers of clothing to make the last 45 minutes of our ride home bearable.

Some people say there isn't anything to see through this northwestern corner of Arizona, but we enjoy riding through the empty desert. There might not be large towns, traffic, or tourist stops to draw people's interest, but that means we have the opportunity to pay attention to the wisps of clouds that sometimes dot the blue sky, the bright flowering plants that dot the desert during this rainy season, and the way the wind feels as we zoom along the highway with no cars to be seen for miles in front of us.

We've been home for five days and every time I see a motorcycle with side bags and a duffle strapped to the back, I'm envious. 

Colorado bound

"I was standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona....." lyrics from the song by the Eagles kept running through my mind today. Our first stop on a 2-day trip to Colorado Springs was Winslow and as we rode northeast from Prescott I kept humming the classic Eagles' song.

We're headed to Colorado Springs to watch our son, Nate, race in the Pike's Peak Downhill longboard race this weekend. It's our first opportunity to ride the BMW on a multiday trip since we moved to Arizona one month ago. I'm amazed at the varied scenery on today's 415 mile trip:  up and down steep mountains, long sweepers through pine forests, brilliant green valleys bookended by high, dry mesas; mile after mile of sagebrush, deep and dry washes and creek beds, irrigated farmland, and terrain that we can best describe as 'moonscapes'.

After lunch in Winslow, we traveled on Route 87 north and Route 264 east first through the Hopi Reservation and then into the larger Navajo Nation, 27,000 square miles in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The road stretched out in front of us, and at one point Mike figured he could see 14 miles into the distance.
 

 

We saw preparations for the Navajo Nation Fair as we rode through Window Rock, and talked with a couple of people at the gas station about the hundreds who come into town for the fair, pow-wow, and rodeo competition.

Just east of Window Rock we crossed into New Mexico, the first time we've been in this state. We turned north onto Route 491, one of the Navajo Nation scenic roads known as the Trail of the Ancients because it winds through countryside first settled over 10,000 years ago.

We were surprised to cross canals filled with water and bright green fields of corn and hay as we rode closer to Farmington, NM our destination for the evening. The Navajo Agricultural Products Industry operates one of the largest farming operations in the country.

It felt jarring to ride down the 9% grade into the busy city of Farmington after spending the past 7 hours riding through countryside where we often didn't see a house for miles. At one point this morning a sign announced "no services for the next 51 miles" and at the end of the day we're in a city of 45,000.

Tomorrow we head north into Colorado and the Rockies, and I already have another song in my head:  Rocky Mountain High by John Denver.