218 Zion National Park

Tuesday 20^th August 2013-08-21

Miles Today 186 Total  18,133

We sat and ate a proper breakfast for once at the same restaurant as last night. Eggs, sausage bacon etc. Delicious. Then Karen decided to photograph one of the 250 humming birds that frequent the restaurant area. They do this because of the red nectar that is in the jar.

There were dozens of these all over the place These are my favourite little birds.

We then set off towards Zion National Park. It was a 60 odd mile trip with nothing of note on the journey. On arrival at the park the scenery changed dramatically. 

This chap ran across the road in front of us.

Karen looking after Wallace in Zion Nat Park

It was then hot foot to Lake Powell and the small town of Page.  Lake Powell is the largest man made lake in the USA and is a dammed section of the Colorado River, which eventually flows through the Grand Canyon.  Page only exists due to the Dam and as such is a very young town. It was established in 1957 so it is the same age as me. (Well almost)

After finding a motel we went for a walk to get some food and drinks for tomorrow’s trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

(Karen)  I am about Canyoned out, however we still have the grandaddy of them all to go.


We intend to hire a car for the day to give me a break from the bike and give Karen a bit of driving time.

We also booked a trip to Antelope Canyon for Thursday. Unfortunately it is on an Indian reservation and they are getting their own back on the European settlers by only allowing escorted trips to it and hence charging £30 to see it. Although I believe it is worth it. Those of you familiar with Windows 7 screen Aero wallpapers will have seen a picture of it already.

Wednesday 21^st August 2013

Miles Today 370 Total  18,503

We set off at around 9am to hire a car from Page Airport about a mile away. We collected a bright red Chevrolet Impala. A very quick car. We left Wallace at the Motel and set off for the North Rim only to come to a detour sign on our route. Apparently an earth quake had taken the road out. The posted detour would have increased the journey from 140 mile up to 230. Doh!

We found a better one at 160 miles and back tracked on yesterday’s journey by 75 miles. There are not that many roads around these parts.

The lake was loosing water at around 2" per day

The journey was pleasant enough until we entered the National Park whereupon thunderstorms set in for the day. Before the rain though, we came across a herd of Bison.

About half of the parks Bison

And a little cute baby one

Then it rained....  heavily.

However, in some respects, it made the Grand Canyon come to life.

 An odd feature of the North Rim of the canyon is that it has a different climate to the south rim only 1 mile away. Firstly, it is a lit higher, about 1200 feet and it has around double the precipitation. For example, the south averages 5 feet of snow a year and the North has 12. As a result, the North is lush forest and the south is desert.

This has its downsides. The lightning effects the forest in the North. It strikes trees at random with devastating results. It is odd to see single devastated trees in amongst live forest. Although we did not quite see the strike, we did see the live aftermath of it:

This tree is on fire having just been struck by lightning

Trees are struck at random and destroyed

In some places, like on high ridges there are lots of them.

Anyway, the canyon. We took loads of photos as the passing storms would allow. The Vid at the bottom of this lot is cool.

We also saw our old friends the vultures...

Hey Flaps, What do you want to do. I dunno, what do you wanna do. Dont start that again. (Jungle Book !)

We also saw loads of deer and a huge squirrel the size of a small cat. It ran across the road in front of us but fortunately we missed it.

This one was stuffed on a wall. We did not run over it honest.It is a Kaibab Squirrel and not to be confused with Squirrel kebab.

As we exited the park we saw a lot of birds of prey but as we have posted many before we did not include them.

Then it was the long wet drive back to Page. Sometimes it’s nice to be in a car
(Karen). I really enjoyed the driving,but I had forgotten what a fidget Ray is, and I had to set side of the car boundaries. Ray says I'm being harsh, you decide!!!!!

217 Torrey to Bryce Canyon

Monday 19th August
Miles today 167  Total  17,947

We are still in Utah, and finding the licensing laws, very weird.  We were able to just have a beer last night, but only if we sat with a menu, and changed our minds about eating. As long as we kept the menu's company we were able to pay up and leave.

Our motel overnight (last night)

On the road today, we are heading to Bryce Canyon.  We passed through Dixie's National Forest and again the scenery was ever present.   We had stopped on the road to photo some of the very raw countryside, when we were approached by a couple, again from Britain, Manchester in fact.  They all notice the number plate and stop for a chat.

One of the things that gets me are the cloud formations. We rarely see anything like this in the UK

We went further on and came to Bryce Canyon Park.  After all the desert and scrub, it was lush and green.  There were the "usual" beautiful rock formations and we saw lots of deer and birds and this handsome fellow, waiting on all us tourists to run over his next meal.

Hey you, Raymond....you look kinda old....are you planning on dying anytime soon ?

Again we were approached by another couple and they came from Troon in Ayrshire.  After a good old chin wag, we headed off in our different directions.  This is obviously the place to go, if you are British.

These are some of the rock and erosion pictures we took.

The boss checking out the views

A baby Horned Toad.

We made several stops to admire the scenery and then headed off out of the park.  The afternoon flew past and we headed off in the direction of our next destination, which is Zion National Park.
On the way we came through 'Red Canyon'.  This vid shows it quite well:

 However we hadn't got very far before we came across this gem of a motel, called Harold's Inn.  The rooms are lovely, it is reasonably priced and the restaurant on the premises has very good food and is good value. The grounds were like walking onto the Disney set of Snow White with all the little chipmunks, rabbits and birds flitting around, and the humming birds were out in force again.  I love these little birds, Ray just puts up with me watching them for hours.  Tomorrow we will get to Zion.

In the restaurant attached to the motel

Not sure what the mountain lion was for but it looked good.

 

216 Capitol Reef

Sunday 18th July 2013
Miles Today 155 Total  17,780

We were packed up and as usual left Moab at 11am. As we drove out of the town limits we met a Brit on a UK registered BMW who was doing a similar trip to us but only in North America and solo.

After about 40 minutes we turned on to I-70 (a motorway) and were confronted with this. A truck doing 70 mph... backwards. It was actually one truck towing another two. The last one was just facing the wrong way.

After turning off the interstate the scenery picked up again. The size of the scenic part of Utah just beggars belief. It just goes on and on. So much so that despite its beauty, we are becoming de-sensitised to it.

This is the Capitol Reef National Park.

We found a motel at a small town called Torrey and as we were early I decided to swap the tyres over.
Not a difficult job but getting the old tyres off the rims by hand is a bit taxing 

The rear being pumped up. This bike is just so easy to work on. I could not have done this on my old BMW.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was out to dinner in the motel restaurant and then on to the bar whgere we supped a beer on the patio.

215 Moab Playtime

Saturday 17th July 2013
Miles Today 0 Total  17,625

Today was an admin day mainly. I got up early and took Wallace for a bath at the local car wash and then went in search of a camera shop. I found one and got a model almost identical to the old one except that it will not do panoramic pics so don't expect any more of them !

Then it was sort the kit out time for tomorrows pending departure and do the washing. I spent an hour scrubbing the bike jackets in the bottom of the shower to get 4 months of grime out of them before putting them in the laundry.

When that was over it was play time. We had arranged to take a 4 wheel drive buggy out for the evening. Woohoo....

It was an escorted trip which we do not normally like but it was a lot of fun. The guide, a retired marshal, took the lead and stopped at several places to show us local features. The most amazing was the dinosaur footprints. They were huge, as was the distance between them.

The footprints were huge.

This is one set (wet) and the next footstep is where Karen is standing !!

Although the trip was a procession, it was not a tame one and Karen had a ball, despite scaring herself several times.

Despite being a procession, it was great fun.

This video does not show how steep these ups and downs were.

And as usual the views were amazing.

The Colorado River.

And again.

We drove over the rocks and hills till the sun went down and then we stopped to watch the sunset.

The setting sun made the already red rocks glow all the more - just like Karen

Karen, her buggy and the ex marshal.

As the sun dropped the landscape became even more picturesque.

And it finally set.