Home through the mountains

We started the last day of our Bisbee trip in Show Low, a town of about 10,000 people at 6200' elevation in the heart of the White Mountains on the Mogollon Rim. According to local history, Show Low received its name based on the outcome of a card game. Sometime around 1876 two neighbors in the Show Low area decided the region wasn't big enough for both of them, so they played cards to decide who would leave. One of them told the other:  If you can show low, you win. Of course that led to the person with the deuce of clubs 'showing low'; he won the bet, and the town was named Show Low. If that isn't enough, the main street is named Deuce of Clubs.

This part of Arizona is known as Rim Country, and it's popular in the summer for folks in Phoenix who want to escape the baking heat in the Valley of the Sun, and also popular in the winter for the snow.

We started a bit later than usual because the temperature was in the 30's at 7am. I put on just about all of the clothes I brought with me, plus all the liners for my motorcycle jacket, and added raingear for extra warmth. It's days like this that a heated seat would be heavenly! Typical for Arizona, the bright sunshine warmed up the air so the temperature was tolerable, but I never took off any of my warm clothes as we rode from Show Low west to Payson at elevations around 7,000'.

It seemed like Monday was a popular day for people driving slowly, erratically, talking on their phone, texting - or all of the above at one time - to be on the road. Periodically we were able to take advantage of passing lanes on the curving 2-lane road through the mountains, zooming past the slower moving trucks and cars.

US 260 descends several thousand feet over a few miles into Camp Verde, giving us gorgeous long-distance views of the Mogollon Rim and the nearby grasslands.

We were close to home now, with only a short stretch south on I-17 then about 30 miles on 169 into Prescott Valley and a few final miles to our home in Prescott. We rode 930 miles this weekend on a looping trip to Bisbee, exploring twisty mountain roads with technical hairpin turns on the Coronado Trail and enjoying riding other, more familiar roads. The BMW is our favorite way to travel, and we're planning more trips soon.

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!

Local, familiar rides

We spent 5 days riding a BMW in Ireland last month, and while we thoroughly enjoy riding and exploring new places, this weekend we decided to ride a familiar loop near home. The summer monsoons have ended, and while a few puffy white clouds gathered over the Mogollon Rim, we had clear weather for the afternoon. The end of summer monsoons also means cooler temperatures, so instead of wearing my vented light-gray motorcycle pants and a cooling neck wrap, I opted for standard black motorcycle pants and both warm layers to my motorcycle jacket.

We rode a favorite loop:  north on I-17 for a few short miles to the General Crook Trail exit, where we hooked up with Arizona 260 heading west. General George Crook fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, and after that war, like so many career soldiers, was stationed in the southwest. In 1871 he established a supply route that connected forts Verde (Camp Verde today, where we exited the interstate), Apache, and Whipple (now home to the VA Hospital in our town of Prescott).

When we exit I-17 and turn onto 260 West we're treated to views of the Mogollon Rim, an escarpment of limestone and sandstone that rises 4,000 feet over the landscape to the south. Route 260 winds and climbs onto the Rim, with the temperature dropping 20 degrees as we gained elevation. We sometimes see bighorn sheep on the hills alongside the road, but today our primary company were several groups of motorcycles heading to an event in nearby Cottonwood.

We turned northwest onto 87 for a short distance, and then headed more directly north onto Lake Mary Road. We passed several trucks carrying quads used in hunting, and even saw a couple of elk in the back of pick-up trucks. Mostly we rode through forests with open meadows carpeted with green grass from the summer rains.

One of the grassy meadows is technically Mormon Lake, but the only water today was a large puddle perhaps the size of our house's footprint surrounded by boggy grass. Mormon Lake is the largest natural lake in Arizona, which says a lot about the water supply in our high-desert home.

Lake Mary, on the other hand, always has enough water for fishing and boating. That's because it's a reservoir, actually two reservoirs, built in the early 1900's for drinking water to supply Flagstaff.

We didn't realize that there is a significant paving project on Lake Mary Road, and passed the time while we were stopped on the now one-lane road talking with another motorcycle rider. We swapped stories about the amount of time we've spent stopped for construction, riding in the rain and hail, and favorite local roads.

Lake Mary road eventually became a busy road when we reached Flagstaff, where we stopped at Tourist Home Urban Market for a fantastic lunch which included wild blueberry pie and a large loaf of pizza bread that we brought home.

The best part of the trip over, we chose the fast way home, riding south on I-17. At least the scenery is some of Arizona's finest - the red rock formations of Sedona framed by the white sandstone and limestone cliffs that I-17 climbs and winds through.

We've ridden this way several times, and each time I'm awed by the wide-open views, hawks lazily circling on the updrafts in the sunny blue sky, and the winding highway that leads us through scrubby high desert into the ponderosa-covered mountains. Every day we're on the BMW is a day to be treasured, even a familiar ride close to home.

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. 

This is a really nice motorcycle touring bag!

I never know what to expect when I order something from a catalog or online. Sometimes the item is exactly as I pictured it, often the quality or size aren't what I expected, and every once in awhile the item is even better. We're thrilled that Motorcycle House sent us a complementary Viking Cruise Roll bag and asked for our honest review.

We leave in two days for a week-long trip to Boise, Idaho where we're going to put the bag to good use.

This is an impressive motorcycle bag that truly exceeds our expectations. It has two narrow round zippered expandable pockets on either side, and another larger zippered pocket with additional internal pockets on the front. The rear-facing side has a silver reflecting strip, a safety feature we appreciate.

The zipper on top reveals one large, padded interior section that easily holds my helmet. The top opening expands for easy packing and unpacking and the zippered top has three smaller additional pockets. There's a separate rain cover and also a removable bottom piece that reveals 4 bungee cords. We're both impressed with the sturdy quality, good looks with black leather accents, and roomy compartments.

 view with the zippered top open, showing the three pockets on the inside of the top flap

Tomorrow we'll pack up everything for the trip to Boise, and Mike will figure out how to attach the Viking bag to the top of our tail bag. Look for photos of the bag on our BMW as we head out on Wednesday. We'll bring the rain cover along but hopefully it won't be necessary.

Motorcycle gear: form and function

One of my friends is a talented and creative artist, and she taught me about form and function. She looks for functional objects that have interesting and artistic forms, and often loves an object just because of its stylish form even when it has no set function.

gorgeous and funky leather scarf by Sara Gay

On a motorcycle everything has to serve a function, and often I sacrifice form. Case in point:  I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy in my bulky, yet highly visible and protective Olympia Motorsports gear.

When I put on the Frogg Toggs raingear - that keeps me perfectly dry and toasty warm when we're riding through a driving downpour or high mountain passes - I look like a double version of myself.

Periodically I wish I could ride pillion wearing flip-flops, short-shorts, and a skimpy leather top - then I come to my senses and realize that in motorcycle travel, safety trumps style.

Sometimes we get lucky and our gear serves a necessary function along with great form and style. Our BMW motorcycle boots are stylish and they're also 100% waterproof and extremely comfortable. Our feet stay perfectly dry, even riding for hours in the rain.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to test and blog about gear from Motorcycle House and Viking Bags. They're sending us a couple of items, we'll try them out, and I'll blog about them. We have a couple of extended trips coming up plus spontaneous shorter rides when the mood strikes us to get out and explore. Stay tuned!

Riding through the changing southwestern countryside on our BMW

It's always fun to combine two favorite activities into one trip. I'm running a marathon in every state, and riding the BMW to a race is always more fun than driving the car. This weekend we're on a short trip to the Shiprock Marathon in New Mexico.

We rode 482 miles today, starting off on familiar roads heading north from our home in Prescott, AZ and then east on Route 260 through the Coconino National Forest on winding, sweeping roads through stands of Ponderosa pines. The only constant today was the lack of traffic, as the landscape changed from the wooded forests along the Mogollon Rim, to high desert that looked like gravel pits, to amazing rock formations, to low, scrubby bushes.

We turned north on 87, spent 30 minutes in Winslow, AZ filling up the gas tank and finding a restroom as we wondered why the Eagles wrote a song that featured a corner in this town, and continued on through the Navajo Nation until we stopped for lunch in Window Rock. The Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles in parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. In fact, it's larger than 10 of the states, including Vermont where we lived for 21 years before we moved to Arizona last summer.

We continued north from Window Rock on a road so straight that it stretched out to the horizon. We've learned from experience to stop for gas whenever the opportunity presents itself while traveling through the Southwest, since often gas stations are at least 50 miles apart. After yet another gas stop, we turned off the 4-lane 491 onto 2-lane, paved Navajo Nation roads.

We've ridden into Farmington before, so we weren't surprised by the water irrigation and Irish-green fields surrounded by the desert.

We rode down a steep grade into Farmington, with views of the snow-covered Colorado Rockies in the distance and rocky badlands and cliffs right in front of us. The San Juan River even has water - something I rarely see in Arizona where the riverbeds are dry except for during the summer monsoon season.

Tomorrow I run the marathon and we'll spend the day exploring Farmington. Sunday we head back home, taking a different route to keep the trip interesting.

Rock 'n Roll in Las Vegas by motorcycle

It's mid-November and we're still having fun riding the BMW. This weekend we headed north to warmer weather in Las Vegas. We live at about 1 mile elevation in Prescott, AZ, and Las Vegas is about 2000' and in the Mojave Desert, hence the warmer weather.

After riding north on Arizona Route 89, we headed west on the longest original stretch of Route 66 from Seligman to Kingman. Interstate 40 takes the majority of the east-west traffic through this part of northwestern Arizona, and we rarely saw other cars or even populated towns along Route 66.

What we did see were miles of desert, tumbleweeds blowing across the highway, and the famous Burma Shave signs that encouraged us to slow down, read each line of the jingle, and try to guess the last, rhyming line.

If Daisies are
Your Favorite Flower,
Keep Pushing Up
Those Miles Per Hour.
Burma Shave.

 

Cattle Crossing

Please drive slow

That old Bull

Is some cow's beau.

 

You can drive

A mile a minute

But there is no

Future in it.

 

From Kingman we headed north on Interstate 93 into the mountainous 2337 square mile Lake Mead Recreational Area formed by two dams on the Colorado River.

at the scenic overlook

 

 

 

We rode over the new bridge at the Hoover Dam into Nevada, with sweeping views of Lake Mead as we headed closer to Las Vegas.

 

 

 

 

 

After riding through the Mojave Desert and down through the mountains into Las Vegas with miles of little to no traffic, it was jarring to ride through stop-and-go traffic in congested Las Vegas. We parked the bike at Harrah's for the next two days, walking or taking the monorail instead of riding.

 

 

 

We spent two days wandering through lavish casinos, watching the amazing Cirque de Soleil Beatles Love show, and at the Rock 'n Roll marathon before we loaded up the BMW and rode south, retracing our route back home. We decided that we both prefer fresh air and the quiet open roads to loud and crowded cities, and that if we're going to spend time in Vegas, it's far more fun to get there by motorcycle.





Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die

Today we went from 21st century aircraft at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson to the gunfights of the mid-1800's in the Old West town of Tombstone while traveling 120 miles on our BMW R1200 GS motorcycle, riding the little-used 2-lane highways in southern Arizona.

Mike loves airplanes and flight, and the Pima Air & Space Museum with its collection of more than 300 aircraft spread both inside hangars and parked outside on the hot and dusty grounds was a fantastic way to start the day. We saw airplanes that flew missions in WWII and VietNam, nuclear bombs (without a warhead) still in use today, scores of helicopters, the oldest existing SR-71 Blackbird (longrange Mach 3+ reconnaissance aircraft), and several seaplanes. We didn't cover the entire 80 acre museum, which means we'll be back to Tucson for another visit.

Brad and George planned a fun motorcycle route to Tombstone that stayed off the Interstate, giving us the opportunity to ride through the changing southern Arizona landscape. We saw mountains, rocky bluffs, flat sandy desert that stretched out to the horizon, and wavy golden grassland where I half-expected to see herds of buffalo.

 

 

We pulled into Tombstone in time for lunch at the OK Cafe where the ceiling was raised to accommodate a large stuffed buffalo head mounted on the wall over our table. I've never been to a town where people dressed in clothing from the 1880's enthusiastically told us to "don't miss the bank robbery at 3pm!" and a stagecoach was the only traffic along the main street.

 

Tombstone citizens dressed in 1800's clothing

 

 

A cowboy told jokes before the diarama/movie about the history of Tombstone narrated by Vincent Price where we learned how the town earned its name. According to the town's website:

 

Tombstone was founded in 1877 by a prospector named Ed Schieffelin. Ed was staying at what was then called Camp Huachuca as part of a scouting expedition against the Chiricahua Apaches. During his time there he would venture out into the wilderness "looking for rocks", all the while ignoring the warnings he received from the soldiers at the camp. They would tell him, "Ed, the only stone you will find out there will be your tombstone". Well, Ed did find his stone. And it was Silver. So, remembering the words of warning from the soldiers, he named his first mine The Tombstone.

 

The town was founded to support the thousands of miners prospecting in the mountains, but Tombstone really became famous for the gunfight at the OK Corral where Wyatt Earp and his brothers, in the name of bringing law and order to the wild town, gunned down three cowboys known for steading horses, robbing stagecoaches and shooting up the town. It sounds odd to say that the live re-enactment of the gunfight was fun, but watching the actors play out scenes I've seen countless times in Western movies really was great entertainment. At one point the actors adlibbed and started laughing so hard it took them a few minutes to compose themselves and finish the play.

Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and Virgil Earp

 

Big Nose Kate's Saloon still serves food and drink to a rowdy crowd, the Bird Cage Theatre is a museum full of old posters and memorabilia advertising singers and plays from over 100 years ago, and the Crystal Palace Saloon that started life as a brewery in 1879 still serves dinner.

 

Our hotel was just down the road from the Boothill Graveyard where the cowboys killed in the gunfight at the OK Corral are buried along with several other people whose white crosses on their graves piled high with rocks proclaim they were "hanged", "shot", "murdered" or every once in a while "died a natural death".

 

 

 I can imagine Tombstone on a Saturday night in the 1880's, with hundreds of cowboys and miners going in and out of the saloons, horses tied up along the wooden sidewalks, and loud music spilling out into the street. Tonight was a quiet night in Tombstone except for the sound of our motorcycles as we rode out of town to our hotel.