Back on the road in 2021

We started our first long-distance motorcycle trip in almost a year today, and it felt fantastic to pack up the BMW and ride 376 miles from our home in Prescott, Arizona to Farmington, New Mexico. It's the first day of a 2-week trip that will take us to the Denver area to visit our sons, South Dakota, and then - well, we're not exactly sure where we'll head next. 

We headed north from home on AZ 89, picking up I-40E for a few miles to Flagstaff where we once again turned the BMW north on US 89. We were a bit surprised to see snow at the north-facing top of the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff. Named for the Franciscan friars who were doing missionary work in this area in the early 1600's, the San Francisco Peaks are a volcanic mountain range with the highest point in Arizona - Mt. Humphrey's at 12,633'.

We rode through the Navajo Nation the majority of the day, turning east on US 160 and stopping at a Subway in Kayenta for lunch. Due to COVID-19 restrictions there is no in-person dining, so we found a spot of shade outside and enjoyed our lunch.

We can't remember the last time we rode on 160E past Kayenta, and enjoyed watching the changing scenery and the far-off distant vistas.

We picked up US 64E and then just a few miles further crossed the state line into New Mexico. We're still in the Navajo Nation, which covers over 27,000 square miles in four states:  Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. 

 There was almost no traffic on this stretch of asphalt, and we were excited to see the odometer turn over to 30,000 miles. We've had the BMW for a bit over 3 years and are looking forward to many thousands more miles.

We passed a few herds of cattle and saw a small herd of horses off to the side of the highway taking shelter from the mid-day sun under the rock overhang in a wash. There weren't as many motorcycles as we expected, and much of the time we enjoyed the road to ourselves. Riding through the Southwest is a lesson in vast spaces, long distances between often very tiny towns, and lots of open road. Tomorrow we'll head into Colorado and are looking forward to the Rockies.

Sunday morning motorcycle ride

 We love going on weeks-long motorcycle trips where we explore new areas and are never quite sure what might be around the next corner. Short rides through familiar areas have a completely different feel, where we're out simply for the joy of being on the BMW, enjoying the sun on our face and the wind at our back. Today we rode 128 miles to Wickenburg, Arizona and back. We didn't actually get to downtown Wickenburg, and instead rode into the Wickenburg Ranch development, turned around, and headed home.

We rode out of Prescott southeast on Iron Springs Road/Yavapai County route 10 through Skull Valley, a small ranching community that used to have a fantastic diner, which unfortunately is now closed. The post office seems to be the most thriving spot in town. We continued on AZ 89S through Peeples Valley, another ranching community and home to Maughn Ranches that spans over 512,000 acres. 

Just past Peeples Valley we rode through Yarnell, site of the Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park commemorating the 19 firefighters who died here in June 2013 fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire. It's a rocky, remote, forbidding area and the hike itself is quite strenuous, reinforcing the extremely difficult and hazardous task our forest firefighters face every day. 89S descends 1300' in four miles on a twisting road that snakes down the mountain into the valley.

The haze in the valley is due to the smoke from the wildfires in California, a sobering reminder of the high fire risk this very dry summer. We rode a few miles in the valley, then turned around at Wickenburg Ranch and headed back up the mountains into the cooler air in Yarnell, passing several saguaro cactus that thrive in the hot, dry, lower elevations in Arizona.

A sunny day, bright blue skies, cooler temperatures and twisty roads make this one of our favorite short motorcycle rides and lead to dreaming about longer rides to come.

Riding home from Zion

We left La Verkin, Utah about 8:30am local time, heading home after a weekend that included a ride through Zion National Park and a 13.5 mile trail race yesterday.

Riding through the vast southwestern part of the country, where the road stretches before us to the horizon and we can look out over a valley to the mountain ranges 100 miles distant, makes us appreciate the small details. A few cattle grazing in the dry scrub brush, birds lazily swooping on the updrafts, a couple of trees next to an abandoned homestead, the feel of the wind  as we zoom down the almost empty 2-lane paved road.

We rode east on Utah 59, which becomes Arizona 389 and entered the Arizona Strip, the remote, arid, northernmost part of Arizona that lies north of the Grand Canyon. Indigenous people lived in this area for at least 8,000 years and Spanish explorers first saw the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the 1500's. The first Europeans didn't arrive to this more remote section of present-day Arizona until the late 1700's.

We picked up US 89A in Fredonia and gradually started to climb into the pine forests of the Kaibab Plateau.

We enjoyed the cooler temperatures at this higher elevation as the road curved and climbed to almost 8,000' elevation before we started to wind down into the valley along the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, known for sherbet-colored swirls of slickrock and towering cliffs.

We crossed over the Colorado River and continued south on US 89 through the Navajo Reservation until we started to see the San Francisco Peaks, a mountain range just outside Flagstaff that contains Humphrey's Peak, the highest mountain in Arizona at 12,633'. After a quick stop in Flagstaff for lunch, we continued toward home riding on I-40 west until we turned off on the much less traveled AZ 89.

We love long motorcycle trips where we spend a few weeks on the road exploring new areas, and also relish a weekend trip and the opportunity to revisit familiar roads. With cooler weather coming, we'll change up our travels and head south instead of north, hopefully within the next couple of months.

Riding through Zion National Park

 We've ridden through areas with amazing scenery, on tightly twisting and curving roads through the Alps, over high mountain passes where we could see for miles, and today we rode through yet another area with fantastically colored rock formations and sheer, towering cliffs:  Zion National Park. 

Zion sits along the Colorado Plateau, where over millions of years rocks and sediments were uplifted, tilted and eroded. According to the National Park Service, the bottom layer of rock at Bryce Canyon (where we spent Memorial Day weekend) is the top layer of rock at Zion. The bottom layer of rock at Zion is the top layer at the Grand Canyon, about 100 miles south of Zion.

Look closely at the photo above - the opening in the rock face is part of the 1.1 mile long tunnel started in the late 1920's and completed in 1930. Because today's vehicles, especially many RVs, are large, they can't easily pass through the narrow tunnel. Any vehicle that is 7'10" wide and/or 11'4" tall or larger is required to have a tunnel permit. Thank goodness we were on the motorcycle!

We continued east on Utah Route 9 to the junction of US 89 at Mt. Carmel, then turned around and retraced our route back west.

We stopped at the viewpoint for Checkerboard Mesa in the photo above where we talked with two motorcycle riders from the Phoenix area. 

The section of Utah Route 9 through Zion National Park is only 14 miles long, but the twisty narrow road, hairpin turns, and jaw-dropping views makes this a drive you want to take slowly and savor.

345 miles today from home in Arizona to La Verkin, Utah

 We started a 4-day trip this morning, leaving our home in Prescott, Arizona and heading north first to Flagstaff, and then continuing north on US 89 through the high desert of the Navajo Reservation.

This landscape looks almost other-worldly, and even though we've ridden this way several times, we never get tired of looking out over the sand and rocks.

We've been looking for a shiny tanker truck so we could take a photo of us on the BMW as we ride by, and today we finally find one:

Soon after this photo, the BMW's odometer turned over to 26,000 miles and we did a little happy dance on the bike for all the fun we've had over the past 2.5 years.

We turned left onto US 89A, and stopped at Marble Canyon to walk across the Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River. This is considered the beginning of the Grand Canyon, and is where the historic Lee's Ferry was located. For about 55 years the ferry was the only way to cross the Colorado River, until the first bridge was built in 1929. A new bridge designed for larger trucks was completed in 1995, and the old bridge is now reserved for pedestrians.

We continued west on US 89A past the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument near the Arizona/Utah border where the Paria Plateau drops 3,000' to the valley floor.

After passing by Vermillion Cliffs, the highway winds and climbs up the Kaibab Plateau and the landscape changes once again, this time to dense forests of tall pines. We stopped for lunch in Jacob Lake where we couldn't pass by the large, delicious homemade cookies. 89A continues west at this point, winding through the pine forests that unfortunately were decimated by the Magnum Fire in June of this year.

We wound our way down an average 6% grade off the top of the Kaibab Plateau to the high desert floor below us, and when we reached Fredonia we turned west on State 389, riding through part of the Kaibab Paiute Reservation only 50 miles north of the Grand Canyon.

The temperature rose into the mid 90's and we were glad we only had a few miles left until we reached La Verkin, Utah where we're staying for 3 nights. We're looking forward to some gorgeous motorcycle riding!