Southwest Adventures 2015
Kristen and I planned a motorcycle trip this year to the Southwest; we intended to join my sister Ute and her boyfriend Andreas who were coming from Germany and would not be on bikes but would rent an Escape Camper van and would be our supply vehicle. After lengthy negotiations we decided to meet in Valley of Fire near Las Vegas on Saturday, May 9 to begin our adventures. We originally wanted to go in March to avoid the heat of the Southwest but then decided early May would work as well. We advised them that they should count on temperatures in the 90s or 100s in the lower elevations, slightly cooler temperatures were forecasted in the lower elevations but we planned on staying in a hotel there anyway. We basically told them: “Don’t worry about bringing warm clothes.”
Before we left, we had the bikes serviced at BMW of Fresno (a 2006 F 650 GS and 2009 F 800 GS) to get them in good riding condition, purchased an Intercom system (Scalarider Q3) to communicate with each other and my sister over the phone and even equipped ourselves with a Helite “airbag”, which we hope we will never have to use. The tour was supposed to lead us from Fresno to Valley of Fire, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon N.P., Grand Staircase Escalante (Highway 12), Capital Reef N.P. with Burr Trail Road, Arches N.P., Canyonlands N.P., Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and back, in two weeks while my sister and her boyfriend had an additional week at the end. So everything was set and we had a plan – or so we thought. I even had attached my other travel companion, the Pink Panther, on the back of my bike.
We took off on Friday May 8 after work and stayed the night in Mojave to shorten the rest of the trip to the Valley of Fire State Park (VOF) by a couple of hours. We stopped at the Mad Greek in Primm Valley (if you haven’t tried it you should, very yummy) on the way and made it to the VOF by early afternoon while coordinating with my sister over the Intercom system, which worked like a charm after some initial troubles before the trip. Temperatures were perfect, not too warm and a lot lower than anticipated. VOF has beautiful red sandstone formations that look like sand dunes. We went to the visitor center and started with a short hike on the Rainbow Vista Trail and finished with the Wave hike. The VOF Wave is similar to the famous Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness but easier to reach and no permits are necessary. The red colors are very dramatic even though we hiked it in the evening and the sun was going down very quickly. Getting back to camp at the Atlatl Campground (with showers), we enjoyed a few cold ones and some good stories. The trip was off to a good start.
The next morning we completed the White Domes Loop with its short slot canyon before taking off towards Zion. We had made reservations for the Watchman campground inside the park at the Virgin River for a couple of nights and got ready for some BBQ and, of course, cold beer. It’s good to have a support vehicle with a refrigerator. A couple of campsites down from us we met a guy who had hauled his KTM on the back of an RV to do some trails in the area. All tours in Zion are only reachable by the shuttle service so we left early the next morning for Angels Landing and then started around noon for the Narrows. Both hikes are beautiful and if you are not afraid of heights you can make it all the way to the top of Angels Landing. Ute and I skipped that part since we both don’t enjoy steep cliffs going down 1,200 feet on one side and 800 feet on the other side of the trail, which is only a couple of feet wide. Too narrow trail, too far down even though most areas have chains to hold onto. It’s about a 1,500-foot climb to the top but there is a nice view area of the whole valley below before getting to the last ½-mile of the trail. The Narrows trail is much more down to earth or water because you hike 90% of the time in the water of the Virgin River through the narrow canyon. We made it just past the beautiful narrow part at the confluence with a side canyon (Orderville Canyon), about a 6-mile hike round trip. Early rise the next day, riding through the tunnel towards the eastside exit and taking another short hike to the Canyon Overlook, a very nice view over the canyon. When we parked and got out of our gear we saw a group of about 10 big horn sheep roaming the mountain side complaining about our arrival. We had never seen big horn sheep before and they are now no mythological creatures to us. They are real!
The ride from Zion N.P. to Bryce Canyon N.P. along US Highway 89 is beautiful through mountainous terrain and a nice ride through Red Canyon before reaching Bryce Canyon. Before that, we stopped at the Chevron Station on US Highway 89 at the turn off to Cedar Breaks (SR 14) to fill up one more time. That turned out to be the crucial moment for our trip, even though we didn’t know it yet. Reaching Bryce Canyon, we checked for our hotel and started towards the parking lot of Ruby’s Inn for some lunch. Kristen was following me from the hotel and while I was waiting for her I talked to a couple from Germany who had shipped their two BMW motorcycles over from Germany for a 9 ½-week trip through the US. Apparently, it is cheaper to ship the bikes over than renting them for that long of a time. While talking, Kristen, Ute and Andreas came over from the other side of the street walking because Kristen’s bike didn’t want to stay running. It would start, run for a couple of seconds and then die. It was somewhat lucky that this all happened right at the Sinclair gas station in Bryce Canyon across from our hotel and across from one of the few restaurants (Ruby’s Inn) in the area. Even though the gas station had mechanics, they, of course, don’t work on motorcycles, especially not BMWs. Because we were pretty frustrated, we decided to let it sit for a while, have some lunch and do some sightseeing in Bryce and hopefully would have more luck tomorrow.
Next day we found out that nobody in the area wanted to work on a BMW. We made a million phone calls and even tried the one Harley dealership in Hurricane but they declined as well. The closest BMW dealerships are in Salt Lake City (Sandy) or Las Vegas, each about 260 miles away. The joke was that you need all the Harley dealerships because they break down all the time and clearly no need for a BMW dealership, although that didn’t help us much. Next step, how would we tow the bike to either place? Bryce Canyon doesn’t necessarily have a huge number of businesses that offer these kinds of services. We called Steve in Fresno to see if he had a recommendation in regards to what was causing the problem with the bike. He suggested that we perhaps had gotten bad gasoline. And even though both motorcycles filled up with the same gas using the same pump, my 2-year younger 800 GS is a little bit more “sophisticated.” The mechanics at the Sinclair gas station tried to help and after syphoning the tank we did find water in it. We contacted the dealership in Las Vegas and they didn’t have time to work on it for at least 4 days, but it could be done by the end of our vacation. Now, we had to organize a U-Haul truck in Panguitch (Population 1,600, about 20 miles from Bryce), buy tie downs and leave the next morning to drop both bikes off in Las Vegas, rent a car and continue with our trip.
During this hectic day and emotional roller coaster an older gentleman mentioned a guy in Escalante on Highway 12 who had helped him years ago with his truck. I didn’t pay much attention since we were busy getting ready and he didn’t have any contact information. But then, the U-Haul guy in Panguitch mentioned the Escalante Desert Doctor (435) 826 4951 to us as well. Escalante (about 60 minutes from Bryce) would have been along our original route on Highway 12 (Calf Creek Falls was one of our planned hikes and campsites) towards Capital Reef so Kristen decided to give him a call. He was very enthusiastic and had no doubt that he could help us. However, after some debates, we decided against this option since we didn’t know if he had the right diagnostic tools and because it was supposed to snow in the area the next two days and we didn’t want to be stuck in Escalante. So, if you ever are in the area and are in trouble you might want to try him out. Considering that the problem with Kristen’s bike turned out to be just cleaning the fuel injectors (and not, as a few people had suggested the fuel pump) we could have gone that route as well to fix the bike. But hindsight is 20/20 and it turned out to be a good decision. On the way to Las Vegas, we ran into heavy winds, hail and rain and after we rented a car in Las Vegas and headed towards Arches N.P. (Moab) through snow, hail and rain, Ute and Andreas called that they had to go through an inch of snow on the pass between Escalante and Capitol Reef. So, a few times we just looked at each other and were happy to be sitting in a car. We hadn’t planned for that kind of weather.
It was still a nice trip even though we would have liked to complete the tour on our bikes. We had done Highway 12 around Escalante on motorcycles before, so we knew what we were missing. We met with Ute and Andreas again in Moab where we stayed for two nights. Arches N.P. was on our agenda and we hiked to Delicate Arch first thing next morning, which is just a short hike on a very busy trail but still worth doing. Afterwards, we went to Devils Garden and saw too many arches to remember all their names. We still only saw a tiny fraction of the 2,000 arches in this national park. From Devils Garden we took the primitive trail back and hiked through gorgeous rock formations. This hike is not quite as easy as we thought since we didn't have shoes with good traction. We walked most of the time on the sandstone formation but had to scramble to get down some very steep rock. This five-mile hike was well worth the effort. The evening was capped off with some live music in Moab along with some tasty Jalapeno Margaritas.
The plan to camp an additional night in the adjacent Canyonlands N.P. was not doable because the campground was full already at 9:00 a.m.; instead we drove to all of the lookout points where you can see from this high plateau with a dramatic drop into countless canyons and then decided to go further south towards Natural Bridges National Monument. This is another worthwhile park with some beautiful bridges. We learned the difference between an arch and a bridge is that the bridge is being formed by a river’s erosive pressures. From Natural Bridges SR 261 leads towards Mexican Hat and Monument Valley but not before going down the Moki Dugway on a gravel road. This State Route basically ends up at the edge of the Cedar Mesa high plateau, turns into a 3-mile gravel road and goes down 1,200 feet in steep switchbacks towards the valley floor. It was a nice drive and would have been a nice, and easy, ride on the motorcycles as well. From Monument Valley, with its beautiful sunrise views but strong afternoon sandstorms, we went south towards Sunset Crater National Monument. The campground there was almost empty, so we had our pick of the place, and with the 25 degrees night temperatures sitting around a camp fire was really necessary. We moved on and stayed in Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona a couple of nights, and wrapped up our tour with a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, which was a fantastic highlight before parting ways with other traveling companions.
Despite Utah experiencing an unusually cold (20 degrees below average) May, we still saw most of the sights we had planned to and had fun. The trip ended with a rough ride back home from Vegas after we picked up Kristen’s bike at the BMW dealer and my bike at the Enterprise rental car. We stopped in Primm Valley again at the Mad Greek for some gyros and saw some very dark clouds gathering around us. We started well fed and ended up in hail and heavy winds between Vegas and Baker, had some rain and insane winds between Barstow and Mojave that tried hard to push us off the road. For rest and food we stopped at the RedHouse BBQ in Tehachapi on Business 58 for some great pulled pork sandwiches before heading into the much calmer San Joaquin Valley on SR 99. We had never been that happy to be on SR 99, the smooth air was a welcome change. For our next trip we will cautiously observe the weather forecast to make sure we are prepared (tie downs) and research in advance the locations of repair shops and U-Hauls along our planned route.
Kristen and I planned a motorcycle trip this year to the Southwest; we intended to join my sister Ute and her boyfriend Andreas who were coming from Germany and would not be on bikes but would rent an Escape Camper van and would be our supply vehicle. After lengthy negotiations we decided to meet in Valley of Fire near Las Vegas on Saturday, May 9 to begin our adventures. We originally wanted to go in March to avoid the heat of the Southwest but then decided early May would work as well. We advised them that they should count on temperatures in the 90s or 100s in the lower elevations, slightly cooler temperatures were forecasted in the lower elevations but we planned on staying in a hotel there anyway. We basically told them: “Don’t worry about bringing warm clothes.”
Before we left, we had the bikes serviced at BMW of Fresno (a 2006 F 650 GS and 2009 F 800 GS) to get them in good riding condition, purchased an Intercom system (Scalarider Q3) to communicate with each other and my sister over the phone and even equipped ourselves with a Helite “airbag”, which we hope we will never have to use. The tour was supposed to lead us from Fresno to Valley of Fire, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon N.P., Grand Staircase Escalante (Highway 12), Capital Reef N.P. with Burr Trail Road, Arches N.P., Canyonlands N.P., Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and back, in two weeks while my sister and her boyfriend had an additional week at the end. So everything was set and we had a plan – or so we thought. I even had attached my other travel companion, the Pink Panther, on the back of my bike.
We took off on Friday May 8 after work and stayed the night in Mojave to shorten the rest of the trip to the Valley of Fire State Park (VOF) by a couple of hours. We stopped at the Mad Greek in Primm Valley (if you haven’t tried it you should, very yummy) on the way and made it to the VOF by early afternoon while coordinating with my sister over the Intercom system, which worked like a charm after some initial troubles before the trip. Temperatures were perfect, not too warm and a lot lower than anticipated. VOF has beautiful red sandstone formations that look like sand dunes. We went to the visitor center and started with a short hike on the Rainbow Vista Trail and finished with the Wave hike. The VOF Wave is similar to the famous Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness but easier to reach and no permits are necessary. The red colors are very dramatic even though we hiked it in the evening and the sun was going down very quickly. Getting back to camp at the Atlatl Campground (with showers), we enjoyed a few cold ones and some good stories. The trip was off to a good start.
The next morning we completed the White Domes Loop with its short slot canyon before taking off towards Zion. We had made reservations for the Watchman campground inside the park at the Virgin River for a couple of nights and got ready for some BBQ and, of course, cold beer. It’s good to have a support vehicle with a refrigerator. A couple of campsites down from us we met a guy who had hauled his KTM on the back of an RV to do some trails in the area. All tours in Zion are only reachable by the shuttle service so we left early the next morning for Angels Landing and then started around noon for the Narrows. Both hikes are beautiful and if you are not afraid of heights you can make it all the way to the top of Angels Landing. Ute and I skipped that part since we both don’t enjoy steep cliffs going down 1,200 feet on one side and 800 feet on the other side of the trail, which is only a couple of feet wide. Too narrow trail, too far down even though most areas have chains to hold onto. It’s about a 1,500-foot climb to the top but there is a nice view area of the whole valley below before getting to the last ½-mile of the trail. The Narrows trail is much more down to earth or water because you hike 90% of the time in the water of the Virgin River through the narrow canyon. We made it just past the beautiful narrow part at the confluence with a side canyon (Orderville Canyon), about a 6-mile hike round trip. Early rise the next day, riding through the tunnel towards the eastside exit and taking another short hike to the Canyon Overlook, a very nice view over the canyon. When we parked and got out of our gear we saw a group of about 10 big horn sheep roaming the mountain side complaining about our arrival. We had never seen big horn sheep before and they are now no mythological creatures to us. They are real!
The ride from Zion N.P. to Bryce Canyon N.P. along US Highway 89 is beautiful through mountainous terrain and a nice ride through Red Canyon before reaching Bryce Canyon. Before that, we stopped at the Chevron Station on US Highway 89 at the turn off to Cedar Breaks (SR 14) to fill up one more time. That turned out to be the crucial moment for our trip, even though we didn’t know it yet. Reaching Bryce Canyon, we checked for our hotel and started towards the parking lot of Ruby’s Inn for some lunch. Kristen was following me from the hotel and while I was waiting for her I talked to a couple from Germany who had shipped their two BMW motorcycles over from Germany for a 9 ½-week trip through the US. Apparently, it is cheaper to ship the bikes over than renting them for that long of a time. While talking, Kristen, Ute and Andreas came over from the other side of the street walking because Kristen’s bike didn’t want to stay running. It would start, run for a couple of seconds and then die. It was somewhat lucky that this all happened right at the Sinclair gas station in Bryce Canyon across from our hotel and across from one of the few restaurants (Ruby’s Inn) in the area. Even though the gas station had mechanics, they, of course, don’t work on motorcycles, especially not BMWs. Because we were pretty frustrated, we decided to let it sit for a while, have some lunch and do some sightseeing in Bryce and hopefully would have more luck tomorrow.
Next day we found out that nobody in the area wanted to work on a BMW. We made a million phone calls and even tried the one Harley dealership in Hurricane but they declined as well. The closest BMW dealerships are in Salt Lake City (Sandy) or Las Vegas, each about 260 miles away. The joke was that you need all the Harley dealerships because they break down all the time and clearly no need for a BMW dealership, although that didn’t help us much. Next step, how would we tow the bike to either place? Bryce Canyon doesn’t necessarily have a huge number of businesses that offer these kinds of services. We called Steve in Fresno to see if he had a recommendation in regards to what was causing the problem with the bike. He suggested that we perhaps had gotten bad gasoline. And even though both motorcycles filled up with the same gas using the same pump, my 2-year younger 800 GS is a little bit more “sophisticated.” The mechanics at the Sinclair gas station tried to help and after syphoning the tank we did find water in it. We contacted the dealership in Las Vegas and they didn’t have time to work on it for at least 4 days, but it could be done by the end of our vacation. Now, we had to organize a U-Haul truck in Panguitch (Population 1,600, about 20 miles from Bryce), buy tie downs and leave the next morning to drop both bikes off in Las Vegas, rent a car and continue with our trip.
During this hectic day and emotional roller coaster an older gentleman mentioned a guy in Escalante on Highway 12 who had helped him years ago with his truck. I didn’t pay much attention since we were busy getting ready and he didn’t have any contact information. But then, the U-Haul guy in Panguitch mentioned the Escalante Desert Doctor (435) 826 4951 to us as well. Escalante (about 60 minutes from Bryce) would have been along our original route on Highway 12 (Calf Creek Falls was one of our planned hikes and campsites) towards Capital Reef so Kristen decided to give him a call. He was very enthusiastic and had no doubt that he could help us. However, after some debates, we decided against this option since we didn’t know if he had the right diagnostic tools and because it was supposed to snow in the area the next two days and we didn’t want to be stuck in Escalante. So, if you ever are in the area and are in trouble you might want to try him out. Considering that the problem with Kristen’s bike turned out to be just cleaning the fuel injectors (and not, as a few people had suggested the fuel pump) we could have gone that route as well to fix the bike. But hindsight is 20/20 and it turned out to be a good decision. On the way to Las Vegas, we ran into heavy winds, hail and rain and after we rented a car in Las Vegas and headed towards Arches N.P. (Moab) through snow, hail and rain, Ute and Andreas called that they had to go through an inch of snow on the pass between Escalante and Capitol Reef. So, a few times we just looked at each other and were happy to be sitting in a car. We hadn’t planned for that kind of weather.
It was still a nice trip even though we would have liked to complete the tour on our bikes. We had done Highway 12 around Escalante on motorcycles before, so we knew what we were missing. We met with Ute and Andreas again in Moab where we stayed for two nights. Arches N.P. was on our agenda and we hiked to Delicate Arch first thing next morning, which is just a short hike on a very busy trail but still worth doing. Afterwards, we went to Devils Garden and saw too many arches to remember all their names. We still only saw a tiny fraction of the 2,000 arches in this national park. From Devils Garden we took the primitive trail back and hiked through gorgeous rock formations. This hike is not quite as easy as we thought since we didn't have shoes with good traction. We walked most of the time on the sandstone formation but had to scramble to get down some very steep rock. This five-mile hike was well worth the effort. The evening was capped off with some live music in Moab along with some tasty Jalapeno Margaritas.
The plan to camp an additional night in the adjacent Canyonlands N.P. was not doable because the campground was full already at 9:00 a.m.; instead we drove to all of the lookout points where you can see from this high plateau with a dramatic drop into countless canyons and then decided to go further south towards Natural Bridges National Monument. This is another worthwhile park with some beautiful bridges. We learned the difference between an arch and a bridge is that the bridge is being formed by a river’s erosive pressures. From Natural Bridges SR 261 leads towards Mexican Hat and Monument Valley but not before going down the Moki Dugway on a gravel road. This State Route basically ends up at the edge of the Cedar Mesa high plateau, turns into a 3-mile gravel road and goes down 1,200 feet in steep switchbacks towards the valley floor. It was a nice drive and would have been a nice, and easy, ride on the motorcycles as well. From Monument Valley, with its beautiful sunrise views but strong afternoon sandstorms, we went south towards Sunset Crater National Monument. The campground there was almost empty, so we had our pick of the place, and with the 25 degrees night temperatures sitting around a camp fire was really necessary. We moved on and stayed in Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona a couple of nights, and wrapped up our tour with a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, which was a fantastic highlight before parting ways with other traveling companions.
Despite Utah experiencing an unusually cold (20 degrees below average) May, we still saw most of the sights we had planned to and had fun. The trip ended with a rough ride back home from Vegas after we picked up Kristen’s bike at the BMW dealer and my bike at the Enterprise rental car. We stopped in Primm Valley again at the Mad Greek for some gyros and saw some very dark clouds gathering around us. We started well fed and ended up in hail and heavy winds between Vegas and Baker, had some rain and insane winds between Barstow and Mojave that tried hard to push us off the road. For rest and food we stopped at the RedHouse BBQ in Tehachapi on Business 58 for some great pulled pork sandwiches before heading into the much calmer San Joaquin Valley on SR 99. We had never been that happy to be on SR 99, the smooth air was a welcome change. For our next trip we will cautiously observe the weather forecast to make sure we are prepared (tie downs) and research in advance the locations of repair shops and U-Hauls along our planned route.
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