Seattle to Ushuaia

Today may have been the singularly most amazing day of motorcycling that I’ve had in my six years on two wheels.

My day started with the shrill beep-beep of my cell phone alarm.  After a quick shower and a banana, I said goodbye to my lovely little cabin and sped off towards the gate to Zion.  The entry fee was a mere $12 for a single rider on a motorcycle, which I paid happily.

The great thing about visiting National Parks in November is that they’re almost empty.  Aside from a few early risers who were mainly focused on road-side photography, I had the roads to myself!  I never got stuck behind a single RV or bus, and the riding was spectacular.  I’ve never seen such brilliant colors in any rock formations before!

Gorgeous roads, weather and scenery - what else can you ask for?

An early morning shot with the sun just barely peaking over the hills.

I took some video of my ride through Zion, but I’m not quite sure what to do with it.  My netbook apparently isn’t powerful enough to even play back the video (it’s HD) and it would need to be cut and edited before making it available to watch.  I guess I’ll just have to get to it when I get home

An unfortunate aspect of my planned route is that it doesn’t leave me much time to get out and explore the places I visit on my way to Mexico – this means no big hikes or long detours.  I couldn’t bear to visit Zion without at least exploring a little bit, so at one point I pulled off to the side of the road, parked the bike, and walked down into a small ravine.  I stood here for a while and marveled at all the alien colors and shapes.  The red sandstone that is so prevalent in Zion is completely new to me, and I think it’s beautiful!  The Seattle landscape is dominated by greens, blues and browns.  With the bright reds, I sort of felt like I’d taken a trip to Mars.

Just enjoying the alien scenery

This was the first time I had ever seen a live cactus in the wild.

I couldn’t stay in Zion all day, though.  My plan was to visit the Grand Canyon, then find a place to crash for the night so that I could drive down to my buddy’s place near Phoenix on Saturday.  So I had to say goodbye to this lovely park, but I made myself a promise that I would come back here some day with enough time and gear to explore the more remote areas.

By the time I left Zion, it was after 12 and I’d only eaten a banana for breakfast, so it was time to visit the grocery store.  I bought all the fixins for the advrider staple: tortillas, peanut butter and honey.  This was the first time I’d ever tried this, and I have to say that it wasn’t half bad.. I wouldn’t say it was half good, though.  It was high-calorie and easy enough to swallow so I guess that’s a plus.  In the future, I think I’ll stick to my powerbars.

A high-calorie, high-density lunch

After lunch, I followed the road signs to Grand Canyon National Park.  This led me down Highway 89 and to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

I hadn’t quite realized how high everything is in Utah/Arizona.  My GPS has an altimeter and I watched it climb from a low of about 3500 feet (in Springdale) to a high of 8840 feet just outside of Grand Canyon National Park.  I never felt dizzy from the altitude (I have had altitude sickness before, but that was at around 13000 feet) and it was neat to see the vegetation change so drastically!

Heading into Grand Canyon National Park.

If you enter the park from the north, you will eventually see this sign on your left.  I highly, highly recommend taking a little detour and exploring this “narrow winding road” – you’ll be glad you did.

What would you do if you saw this?

I went a bit picture-mad today (if you can tell), so for brevity’s sake I won’t post many of the photos I took inside of the park.  If you’re interested, you can check out all of today’s photos in my Flickr photostream (first image).

The Grand Canyon with the Colorado River just barely visible.

I followed the road all the way to the lodge/visitor’s center area right on the edge of the North Rim.  After taking lots of photos, I consulted my GPS to find out where I should head next – and to my surprise, I learned that the road I’d taken into the park (HWY 67) was a dead-end!  In order to leave, I had to backtrack almost 70 miles, all the way to the intersection of HWY 67 and HWY 89.  I really should have consulted a map before blindly heading into the park, but in my defense, most parks in Washington have either a route that loops or enters and exits at different points.

In any case, I put the mixup behind me and proceeded to enjoy the hell out of the remaining daylight hours.  When the sun finally began to set at around 5:00, I must have pulled off to the side of the road at least 8 or 9 times to take photos.  Here is my favorite:

A beautiful sunset just outside of Grand Canyon National Park.

Well, that’s all for now.  Today’s tracks have been added to my KML file (view them in Google Earth) and the rest of my photos are available in my Flickr photostream.  Thanks for reading!

By the way, if you tried to call/text me over the last two days, I’m sorry – I’ve been out of cell service all day.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Motorcycle Ride, On The Road.

Tags: pictures, utah, zion