To ride all of what you see above would be over 7 days, but Steve only had 5 days, I had more time but figured I’d just do the 5 with him, then I’d head out with the trailer afterwards. We did find a place to park for up to two weeks, so next time we can drive over and have a place to park a trailer. Makes that highway section to get there more comfortable. As I’m getting older, I like comfort more and more. LOL.
For more info on the route can be found on the ADVrider site.
Originally, the idea was thrown out for a Brewsday family get together. It boiled down to 3 of us 4 days before we were going to leave. Then two days later it was just down to Steve and I. So we opted to try this out instead of heading up to CO. I didn’t care, since starting on the 11th I was off from work until Oct 1st. Steve and I had the best intentions of getting an early start on the day, it just didn’t work out that way for either of us.
Finally, on the road around 11am, that meant we might not get to the area around Tuba City before dark. Tricky when camping. It didn’t help that we stopped off at Laugna Burger for lunch. But those burgers are great! Slabin’ down the interstate until Gallup wasn’t my idea of a great time, but it was faster than the back roads. My trip got off to a rocky start with breaking the power cord for my cell phone. We messed around in Marble Canyon looking for a replacement. Darn, Pixel with the USBC connections… Micro USBs are everywhere. I had two of those with me. Finally made it to Lee’s Ferry as it was getting dark.
Next up our first dip into the Grand Canyon area.
I really recommend buying a Parks pass. The fee from Lee’s Ferry was discounted from each of our parks pass purchases. Great deal.
The next day was a bit of exploring the area, turns out neither of us is great at following tracks. We still had a great time exploring the area. Found one tricky/rocky steep slope, that got both of us. Overall, the roads were in great shape. Until they weren’t, that the rub on a big bike. We did some walking around at various points and rode some roads that weren’t on the route, just because it looked interesting or in an attempt to get back to our track.
We spent the second night at a point called “Crazy Jug point” It has some stunning views. Best part, was we were the only ones there. The scary part was that as soon as we got there I kept hearing what I thought was voices. (I know, but Steve was hearing that too.) After that stopped, I started to hear what kind of sounded like a baby crying. It went on for over an hour, before Steve started to hear it. I guess it was that I was camped closer the the road than he was. We went for a walk to check out another point, that is when it started to give him pause, as it got louder as we walked down the road. About 30 minutes into the walk, as it was getting dark the noise just stopped.
The haze in the air was smoke from a fire that was going to keep us from checking out some parts of the route, as they had closed the road. Too bad too, it looked like it was a very nice section. Maybe, next time.
This would be the last of the pictures I’d get to take. Some how that night I shattered the lens on my camera. Rest of the phones was fine and worked great. I just couldn’t take pictures….
The day before, when we went into the park, we stopped off at the back country permit office. There is one point that we both really wanted to camp at, but it requires a permit. The information that we had about the route said the road to the area was usually closed and that getting a permit to camp there was really unlikely. We figured it couldn’t hurt to check. So we had lunch and waited for the office to open up. We asked about Thursday night, but it was booked. Just on a whim, Steve asked when the next open night was. As it happened, it was open for Friday night. We were so LUCKY!!! After leaving Crazy Jug, we wondered around some more, than hit the park for lunch. Stocked up with some ice to keep the beer cold. We headed off for the 20 mile 4×4 only road to Point Sublime!
It had some tricky sections, just most of the roads, it was so much harder getting out to the point than it was getting back. I’m not a huge fan of sand when on the Tiger, it’s so much easier on the KTM. The Tiger is just way to much work. This wasn’t sand it was that really fine poweder, silt or fres fres as I’ve heard it called. I saw Steve kick up a huge dust cloud, so I knew it was coming. I made it about half way, then I just lost too much momentum, that meant a nice safe low speed, tip over in the fluff. Steve was gone, I couldn’t get him on the comms. I know he didn’t hear me yelling either. 😛 I might have called him a couple of choice names. That left me to figure it out and pick up the bike by myself.
First, I had to drag it around so that I could get it to a spot where I could try to pick it up. I also had to pull off most everything that I could reach to make it lighter. After that, it took me a couple of tries to get it back up right. The next part was getting it to a spot where it wouldn’t fall over while I loaded it back up. Last part, was catching my breath and a few minutes of rest before I headed off down the road. I found Steve coming back at me about 500 feet or so later. It was at that point that he mentioned lowering the tire pressures to handle more of that silt that was coming up down the trail. Duh, should have thought about that earlier, but it was also rocky. It’s a tough call as to how much to lower them.
Unfortunately, the drama wasn’t over for me. Normally, Friday the 13th is so good to me. Well, dragging the bike around on it’s side cause one of the buckles to fail as I was riding up the trail. It was interesting to have the bag to fall off the bike, and for the back tire to run it over. I stopped to find out what it was, notice I was missing something. I walked back down the trail to get it. Steve found it first, turns out there was a truck behind him. So I had to hurry to rig the bag back up so it wouldn’t fall off again.
A bit further up the road, there was a rocky up hill climb, it wasn’t bad, but there was a fallen tree sticking out. I ended up bouncing closer to it than I wanted to. I thought I was far enough away, but I was wrong. It caught, my bags just behind my left leg. (So glad it wasn’t my leg) It folded the aluminum plate to a 90 degree angle and ripped a huge hole in the dry bag. I was really worried that it had ripped my sleeping bag too, since it was now hanging out of the bag. Well, Steve had a couple more of his green chile straps, and we rigged up that side too.
After all that drama, we finally made it to camp. I went to grab my keens so I could walk to the point and watch the sun set. However, in my haste to rig up the right side bag I had not secured them well enough and they were gone. I really hate hiking in MX boots. But the missing keens was all I had for foot wear with me. So I walked to the point in my MX boots. 🙁
While sitting up the watching the sunset, some guy and his kid showed up in a truck. He walked over to me and asked if I knew who might be missing some keens!! Oh, Love that Dude! I was very happy to have my shoes back.
I’m going to have to bug Steve for his pictures of Pt. Sublime. It really is well named. It was stunning! I have some video, that I’m going to be working on from this trip. It was great watching the moon rise, almost as spectacular as the sun rise the next day. Or at least what I saw of it, I’m not an early riser.
The next day the ride out was so easy… not sure why I had so many issues on the trip in. We had decided to go a bit north before heading east toward home. Neither of us had ridden around Bryce, so why not, right?
It was a very pretty ride, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was just amazing! I was really glad we went through it. We ended up for the last night at a Glen Canyon campsite. Again, we were the only ones there. It’s amazing to have sites like that to yourself. It was a really long day of riding, but totally worth it.
We arrived back in Santa Fe early in the afternoon. I was bummed to be home, but it was only for a couple of days.