BMW ride on a hot day for pie

We decided the hot weather - temperatures in the high 90's today in Prescott - wasn't going to stop us from riding the BMW. The question was:  where to go? Flagstaff, at 7000' feet elevation is cooler, but we didn't have enough time today. Going south to lower elevations where the temperatures would be well over 100 degrees simply wasn't option. We decided to ride on familiar roads to a new destination:  pie in Wikieup.

Bright, Arizona blue skies and twisty 2-lane paved roads with almost no traffic made this a zen-like ride. Usually we see several groups of motorcycles on this route, but today we saw only one other bike, a Harley, which we quickly passed.

We headed west on Iron Springs road out of Prescott, riding through the Prescott National Forest. We're currently in Stage II fire restrictions which basically mean we can't do anything that might cause a spark:  campfires, charcoal fires, outdoor smoking, operating equipment like chainsaws, and even our town's 4th of July fireworks have been cancelled. All the vegetation is various shades of brown, with a few green bushes scattered around as a reminder that once the monsoon rains start, the desert will come to life again.

Iron Springs road becomes Yavapai County Road 10, and we periodically ride across cattle guards. Instead of miles of fences to keep cattle off the road, cattle guards are basically a series of metal pipes laid across the road over a ditch. When cattle (or people with smaller feet, like me) try to cross, their legs fall into the openings between the pipes and they are stuck. Cattle learn not to cross cattle guards, and I've learned to walk around them.

In Kirkland we turn right onto AZ 96 west, with the highway snaking through the mountains. It seems like we would be climbing higher in elevation, but actually Prescott is at 5500' and we descended through Skull Valley at 4260', Kirkland at 3900' and Hillside at 3850'. A few miles past Hillside we turned onto AZ-97 south for about 14 miles. This is one of our favorite motorcycle roads, reminding us of a roller coaster as we zoom down hills through areas marked 'do not enter when flooded', then zip back up the next hill. There are no straight stretches of road here, and we see only one car over the 14 miles of up and down, twisty fun.

AZ-97 takes us to US-93, a 4-lane divided highway which is the main road between Las Vegas and Phoenix. Luckily we only have about 30 miles to ride through the Big Sandy Valley in the Mohave Desert to Wikieup, a town of less than 200 residents. Wikieup is a Mohave word for 'shelter' or 'home'. In the winter, hundreds of RVs make their home here, but today it was 102 degrees and there were no RVs in sight.

We stopped at the Cool Water Cafe, part of the Hidden Oasis RV Park for lunch, sort of on purpose. I had heard that there was a great restaurant in Wikieup with amazing pie, and when Mike googled restaurants in Wikieup he found the Cool Water Cafe advertising pie and thought this was it. After all, how many restaurants can there be in the tiny town of Wikieup? (apparently there are 5). I saw a sign for Luchia's 4 miles down the road and realized THIS was the restaurant I'd heard of. It was hot, we were hungry, and the Cool Water Cafe had pie. We made a quick decision to stop and enjoyed our lunch of a sub for Mike and panini for me, with homemade blackberry pie for dessert. We were the only people in the Cafe and chatted with the owner about the numerous solar-powered bobble heads on the window sill next to our table as she made our lunch.

After cooling off with ice cold water and lemonade in the air-conditioned cafe, we retraced our route, climbing from 2000' elevation in Wikieup back to the cooler 5500' elevation in Prescott.

At one point today Mike said it felt like he was riding through hot air powered by a hair dryer, and I said it felt more like a convection oven. We're not about to let the heat stop us from enjoying the BMW and the Arizona countryside. Especially when there is pie involved.

Green hills in Montana

It's the 7th day of our BMW motorcycle ride from our home in Prescott AZ to Portland OR. We decided on a shorter route today, starting from Bozeman, MT and ending 265 miles later in Missoula, MT. We started on Route 191 South, then turned west onto route 84, riding through irrigated green fields with white-capped mountain ranges in the background.

Turning onto Route 287, we rode through MacDonald Pass at 6312' on the Continental Divide west of Helena. Originally known as the Frenchwoman's Road because it was a toll road run by the wife of a French Canadian, today it's the primary paved road through the area.

In Townsend, Route 12 joined Route 287. We crossed over the Missouri River, and then along Canyon Ferry, where the Louis and Clark expedition traveled. As we rode along, I like to imagine that not much in the scenery has changed since this expedition over 100 years ago.

Traveling in the Southwest means covering sparsely populated long distances, It was after 1pm before we found a place to stop for lunch, the Dinner Bell in Gold Creek. Run by a local Mennonite family, the Dinner Bell deli offers a variety of sandwiches on homemade bread and a picnic table on the porch outside to enjoy lunch.

We finished today's ride with temperatures in the mid-90's as we made our way through numerous stoplights to our motel in Missoula. The odometer on the BMW rolled over to 42,000 miles today, and we easily have another 2000 to travel before this trip ends.

Twisties and sweepers through the Rocky Mountains

A long day on the BMW is worth it when we get to ride through hairpin turns and long sweeping turns in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

We started the second day of our trip in Farmington, NM and quickly crossed into Colorado near Durango. We stayed on US Route 550 heading north, winding and twisting our way on the Million Dollar Highway that runs through Silverton to Ouray.

The 2-lane, narrow road, lack of guardrails, steep drop-offs and jaw-dropping scenery make this one of our favorite rides.

Gold was mined here in the San Juan Mountains with 13 peaks that top 14,000'. This area likes to call itself the "Switzerland of America" because of the steep, forested, and snowy peaks.

Once we passed through Ouray we continued north on Route 550 into Montrose, passing through a wide, green valley along the Uncompahgre River.

In Montrose, we turned east on US Route 50, a ride we've done several times. Route 50 runs along the Gunnison River and the 20-mile long Blue Mesa Reservoir.

We rode through steep, craggy gorges that opened up into wider valleys, and spotted several rafts zooming down the rapidly running river.

We twisted our way up and over Monarch Pass on the Continental Divide in the Sawatch Mountain Range, with panoramic views as we descended down into the valley and along the Arkansas River.

We chose a new route for the final miles north to Denver, starting with 9 North just west of Canon City on the Gold Belt Scenic Byway that runs along the western slope of Pike's Peak where gold was discovered in 1890.

Riding on winding, sweeping, 2-lane paved roads with almost no traffic, we enjoyed views of steep, wooded hills, snowy mountain peaks, and rushing streams.

To get into Denver, we rode the final miles of the day on highways packed with later Friday afternoon traffic. From Denver, you can see the snow-topped Rocky Mountain Peaks that we rode through earlier in the day.

We're spending the weekend in Denver with our kids, and will get back on the BMW on Monday, heading north into Wyoming.

First day on Mike's retirement ride

It's been far too long since we've been on an extended BMW ride, and this trip checks off several boxes:  Mike just retired from AFLAC, we're seeing our kids in Denver, heading to Portland OR so I can run another marathon (state #49!) and stopping to see friends along the way. We're not sure exactly how many days we'll be on the road, which adds to the fun.

We loaded up the BMW and left home at 6:30am to try and beat the heat, which basically worked since the temperature only hit 100 degrees for a minute or two late this afternoon. Thank goodness for overcast skies!

We've seen a wide variety of wildlife on our motorcycle rides, but this is the first time we've seen bighorn sheep in Arizona. They weren't afraid of us at all, waiting patiently while we turned around so we could take photos.

I'm always amazed at the changing scenery when we ride through Arizona:  tall pine forests, wide open pastureland, scrub brush, multicolored rock formations, and even irrigated farmland.

We stopped for lunch in St. John's, the county seat of Apache County along the Little Colorado River. We saw the sign for El Camino's restaurant and were glad we went a couple of blocks out of our way to enjoy the friendly staff, quick service, and great Mexican food.

Our original plan was to ride through the Lukachukai Mountains, down into the Red Valley in New Mexico, and past Shiprock, the 'winged rock' sacred to the Navajo. We turned right when we should have stayed straight, and enjoyed riding through Narbona Pass, which winds through the caldera of an extinct volcano.

At the top of the 8,721' pass the temperature dropped to 77 degrees, and then rose sharply to the high 90's and flirted with 100 degrees as we descended the winding road with 100 mile views across New Mexico. We ended our 442 mile ride 9 hours after we started, spending the night in Farmington, NM.

Tomorrow we head for Colorado and the Rocky Mountains!

Three days through the Mojave and Colorado deserts

What do you do when a bee flies up your motorcycle jacket sleeve and stings your upper arm when you are riding about 80 mph on Interstate 10 in southern California?

Luckily we were heading onto the off-ramp in Indio, CA as I hit Mike on the shoulder, took off my jacket, and started shaking it to get rid of the bee. Mike pulled over to the side of the road, the bee flew away, and we finished up the first day of our 3-day trip.

The day started on a much better note:  clear skies, 60 degrees, and we were off on our first overnight trip on the BMW in over a year.

We wound our way south through the twisties on 89S passing through Skull Valley, Yarnell, and into Congress where the temperature climbed into the high 70's as we descended from 5500' elevation in Prescott to 3000' in Congress. We continued southwest on Arizona 71, turning onto Arizona 60 where we stopped for lunch in Salome.

The highway passes through valleys with craggy, rocky mountains on either side. This time of year the dessert seems to come to life, with bright green leaves on the shrubby bushes, orange-red flowers blooming on the tips of the tall ocotillo, and bunches of yellow flowers periodically lining the
highway.

Eventually we had no choice but to turn onto the 4-lane Interstate 10; there simply aren't any other paved roads that head west. We saw narrow 4-wheeler tracks to the side of the interstate that threaded their way through the mountains or at times paralleled the highway, but otherwise there is nothing but wide-open desert.

We crossed the Colorado River into California, and the landscape changed abruptly from dessert into irrigated green fields. As we continued west away from the river, the desert took over once again, now with stands of palm tree trunks with their tops cut off, a barren and disturbing sight.

In Chiriaco Summit we pulled off the Interstate to visit the General Patton Memorial Museum, located within the WWII Desert Training Center where over 1 million soldiers trained to be prepared for warfare in northern Africa. We wandered through the indoor exhibits and then outside among the tanks and a small chapel.

A little further west we reached our destination for the night: Indio in the Coachella Valley in the southern California section of the Colorado Desert. According to our Garmin, the elevation was 12' above sea level - no wonder it was in the mid-90's! Even though it's in the desert, due to irrigation there are bright green fields of watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers and eggplant.

The next day we rode into the Joshua Tree National Park, where the Mojave and Colorado deserts meet. Joshua trees, which are actually a type of yucca and not a tree, only grow in the Mojave desert between 2000' and 6000' elevation.

Nearly 558,000 acres of the national park are designated as a wilderness, and we could look for miles across the desert to the mountains without seeing any roads or buildings.

We rode through the park to Keys View where we looked over the Coachella Valley and the San Andreas Fault where the North American and Pacific tectonic plates meet.

Keys View is at 5185' elevation, and as we wound our way north and down through the park, ending up in the town of Twentynine Palms at 2000' the temperature rose from the high 60's to the mid 90's. According to the legends, gold miners in the 1850's named this area after 29 palm trees that grew around the oasis.

From Twentynine Palms we followed Route 62 east, passing a sign at the edge of town that stated "no services for 100 miles" as we rode through the Mojave desert, passing a few abandoned houses scattered along the side of the road.

100 hot and dusty miles later, we crossed the Colorado River into Arizona at the town of Parker, and headed north on Route 95 into Lake Havasu City, our final destination for the day. Lake Havasu was formed by the Parker Dam on the Colorado River in the 1930's to supply water to southern California.

We had about 45 minutes once we checked into the hotel before we left on a 3 hour sunset cruise on the lake, motoring into secluded coves, spotting a coyote along the rocks that line the lake, and watching the sunset.

The last day of our trip we followed Route 95 north to a short ride on Interstate 40 east, then south on Route 93 through the Big Sandy Valley. We passed by the tiny town of Wikieup, a Mojave word for shelter or home. Just south of Wikieup we turned east on Route 97, a 2-lane blacktop road that winds and twists for a few miles through numerous washes and hills, making the road seem like a gentle roller coaster.

We're getting close to home when we reach Hillside and retrace our route from two days ago back to Prescott. Most of this trip was spent in the Colorado and Mojave deserts with a constantly changing landscape depending on elevation and water sources both natural and man-made. At some points the sand along the road reminded me of roads along Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana; we saw several types of cactus and yucca with some blooming in vivid pink, red or yellow flowers; rocky granite boulders pushed up out of the earth by volcanic activity centuries ago; and always the mountains all around us.

 As we unpacked the BMW, we started talking about our next motorcycle trip. We won't let another year go by before we head out again.

A spontaneous motorcycle trip from New Mexico home

Mike put together a great route for our return trip from Farmington, NM back to Prescott, AZ.

We didn't follow any of it.

I ran the Shiprock Marathon on Saturday, a 26.2 mile point-to-point route that took us right past Shiprock, or Tsé Bitʼaʼí, "rock with wings" or "winged rock" in Navajo. Shiprock is actually a monadnock, or center of an ancient volcano that probably erupted 27 million years ago. Shiprock rises over 1,500' above the plain, with sheets of rock known as dikes radiating away from the central rock formation. Shiprock holds special significance to the Navajo, and is a central feature in their history and religion. We spent the majority of the day riding through the Navajo Nation, an area about the size of West Virginia.

You can see Shiprock from miles away, but I wanted Mike to experience it up close on N13, the 2-lane paved Navajo Nation road, as I did when I ran past it during the marathon.

After the marathon we talked with some local runners who told us N13 continues out into Arizona. We rode by Shiprock and figured we'd use the Garmin to take us back on our planned route. Following N13 into Arizona, we rode into the Red Valley and were amazed by the numerous red rock formations and towering cliffs.

We were thrilled when we saw the sign that N13 is closed in the winter, which told us that we were in for some twisting climbing and descending. Riding through the Buffalo Pass in the snowcapped  Lukachukai Mountains was great fun, with steep ascents until we reached 8,400' and then a wild descent into the valley.

The red cliffs rose steeply from the side of the road, and it seemed like each time we twisted around yet another 10 mph hairpin turn, I caught my breath at the sight of another amazing rock formation. We saw only two other vehicles, and none in front of us so Mike could zip around the curves at his own pace. This road is a motorcycle rider's dream, and to think we found it by chance.

N13 dropped down into a sparsely settled valley with mountain views in the distance, where we passed horses and cattle grazing in the fields along the road. We came to an intersection with N64, and a sign directed us toward Chinle and the Canyon de Chelly. I originally wanted to visit this canyon on our trip home, but thought it was too far out of our way. In a few miles we found ourselves riding along the north rim of the canyon, with teasing views of red rocks and cliffs that dropped far below our sight.

I resigned myself to planning another trip to this area, and then spotted the Canyon de Chelly visitor center. We stopped in and discovered the south rim highway - really another 2-lane paved road - was right around the corner.

Canyon de Chelly is a national monument entirely owned by the Navajo Tribal Trust of the Navajo Nation, and several Navajo families still live in the canyon. The name is a Spanish borrowing of the Navajo word Tséyiʼ, which means "canyon" (literally "inside the rock"). We're learning more about the history of the southwest, and the story of the Navajo Long Walk, where the Navajo who lived in the canyon were forced to leave their homes and walk several hundred miles to Ft. Sumner in New Mexico.

The views from the several look-out points along the south rim highway are breathtaking. We saw people riding horses along the water in the Chinle Wash far below us and decided that we'll come back and spend a few days riding along both rims, hiking, and learning more about the area.

No longer on native highways, but still within the Navajo Nation, we continued south through high desert on 191 until we finally came to the intersection with I-40, a gas station and restaurant. We ate breakfast and left the hotel at 9 am, and were ready for lunch of Navajo hamburgers, basically a hamburger, lettuce and tomato on Navajo fry bread, by the time we stopped at 2 pm. Navajos first made fry bread during the Long Walk when the only staples provided to them by the US government were flour, lard, salt, sugar, and baking powder or yeast. Fry bread is still a staple among several  native tribes, and we saw it on menus everywhere within the Navajo Nation.

At the restaurant we learned we were only 20 miles from the Petrified Forest National Park. We were headed west toward home, the park was on our way, and we decided to stop. Another unplanned adventure! The exit off I-40 leads to a 28 mile park road that started with stunning views of the Painted Desert. The Painted Desert actually covers over 27,000 acres and stretches 160 miles, and we've ridden through sections of it before. The national park goes through some of the most stunning areas where we saw badlands and buttes in numerous shades of lavender, gray,  red, orange, white and pink from the variety of minerals present in the different types of rocks.

It's impossible to understand the size and scale of the cliffs and ridges from these photos. We stood along the rim high above the canyons below us and marveled at the forces of nature that created this landscape. People lived in this area for over 13,000 years, leaving behind hundreds of petroglyphs and early dwellings. We think our cities with skyscrapers and parks are beautiful, but imagine living in this even more stunning countryside, made by nature instead of human hands.

As we continued to drive along the park road, we came into the Petrified Forest where hundreds of logs from ancient trees lie scattered on the high desert grassland.

200 million years ago this area was a huge floodplain filled with tall pine trees. When the trees fell, a mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash buried the logs and cut off oxygen, which slowed their decay. The silica in the groundwater seeped through the logs, petrifying them and turning them into a rainbow of colors.

The 'wood' is actually now stone - really heavy stone that weighs up to 200 pounds per cubic foot. I used to imagine the deserts of Arizona as barren landscapes, and while some of those areas do exist, I'm discovering there is much more to the desert than I realized.

Our several stops today put us behind schedule, and wanting to get home before dark Mike decided to take the dreaded interstate. I hate riding on the interstate, buffeted by wind from the trucks and going too fast to truly enjoy the scenery. 33 miles later Mike exited I-40 for the less windy, more scenic, and a whole lot more fun route 87. It gets really windy in the southwest in the Spring, and the combination of gusting winds and truck traffic made him decide to take the Ponderosa Pine-lined, less traveled route along the Mogollon Rim home.

We pulled into our driveway 11 hours after we started. The BMW's odometer flipped over to 20,000  miles along the way, we rode through two popular national monuments on a day with very few visitors that allowed us to travel at our own speed, twisted over and down a little-known mountain pass, and reminded ourselves that unplanned journeys are our favorite way to get from one destination to the next.