Small Towns and the Eastern Slopes of the Sierras

Bishop, CA

I decided to take a pass on the coast and head north inland to stay out of the traffic and crowds of the California coast on the weekend.  It was a very good decision, and I had a beautiful run up the east side of the Sierras on 2 lane roads with minimal traffic.

Sierra eastern slopes

300 miles north of Palm Springs, I'm in the land of ski slopes, fly fishing, $5 gas, and small towns that feel like small towns.  Bishop, where I stayed, was big enough to have a few motels, coffee shops, restaurants, and shops related to the business of the great outdoors.

Add 300 more miles the next day, and I'm now just a day out of Oregon and two days from home.  Not trying to rush things, but as I passed the 3,000 mile point, getting home a little ahead of schedule doesn't sound bad.  '

Red Rocks and Energy Vortices

300 mostly uninteresting miles gets me from Santa Fe to Flagstaff, AZ with my biggest goal being to beat the rain that was forecast for the afternoon.  What took me a while to figure out is that rain here is not like rain in Seattle.  Here, we're talking extremely localized thunderstorms, and hitting one or missing them all is a roll of the dice.

Slide Rock State Park - Just North of Sedona

The road from Flagstaff to Sedona drops 2,000 feet and winds down through hairpin turns through beautiful forests and red rock formation. Easily one of the most scenic rides I've been on, and with little enough traffic that I didn't feel hurried.  

Sun on the Mountains

The mix of clouds and sun make the light on the land particularly spectacular.  Click on any of the pictures here for the full size version, but none of the pictures (shot with my phone) come close to doing it justice.  Have to go see for yourself!

The town of Sedona is very geared towards tourism, with lots of shopping, Jeep excursions, and restaurants.  Very pleasant to walk around, but not "local".  I did go in pursuit of local art and found that most things were imported - including the mystical energy crystals to clear your chakras that came from "overseas".

Nestled in the hills just south of town are beautiful adobe homes for the lucky and wealthy few.  The scenery continues for a short while as the road drops further down in elevation, but soon all of the red rocks are in the review mirror and endless scrub takes over for the rest of the way into Prescott.

Hotel St. Michael

Prescott is a much bigger city and the road into the historic district goes past endless strip malls and other very uninteresting parts of the city.  I've made a habit of trying to book hotels right in the heart of the places I stay - mainly so I can stay off the bike and walk to places.  Hotel St. Michael was a great find, and I really enjoyed both the hotel, the bistro on the corner, and one of the art/jewelry galleries located in the same building where I finally found something worth bringing home.

I left Prescott early (7am) to try to get a jump on the heat of the next 300 miles across the desert through Blythe, CA and into Palm Springs.  It sorta worked, but was about 92 degrees as I dropped into the smoggy basin that runs from Coachella and Indio in the south up to Palm Desert and Palm Springs in the north.  All of it is void of the natural wonders that I left behind, but is more like a man-made desert oasis where life in the pool behind gated communities draws in the older folks who no longer need access to their old jobs and lives in the big city.

Of course, I have a couple of friends who have bought places down here, and having a warm and sunny escape from the dreary Seattle winters is pretty appealing.  And things are relatively cheap down here...

El Paseo in Palm Desert

I was going to head out to the coast for my trip north, but with the forecast for the next few days being cooler than normal and looking at the traffic that I'd have to contend with, I changed my plans to head north to the east o LA and up the eastern side of the Sierras past Yosemite and Lake Tahoe to Reno.  There are some thundershowers forecast for that area, so we'll see how it goes.  It's worth it to stay off the interstate and have a bit more road to myself.

Santa Fe style

A short 70 mile ride from Taos that passes through scenic rock formations and follows the Rio Grande river, Santa Fe is the yup-scale version of the desert SW that is both artsy and touristy on a bigger and more highly produced scale.

Santa Fe Plaza

 I ate lunch at a sit-down place just before I came across this guy selling street tacos.  Maybe next time...

Street food

I did come looking for art. Something that I really attached to and could ship home.  These deer shamen did catch my attention, but from $3k on up to about $30k, they were just a bit too spendy for my budget.  Cool back story though - inspired by 4,000 year old petroglyphs found along the Pecos River in Texas.  Very renowned artist (Bill Worrell), but hey - need some gas money left to get home!

Deer Shaman

Nice to have a down day and spend some time wandering the town and off the bike.  Still shy of the half way point, I've put on 1600 miles in 5 days, so nice to take a bit of a break before my 400 miles to Flagstaff tomorrow.  Maybe after 4,000 miles, I'll appreciate those guys with the sheep skin seat covers - NOT!

Just say no

Tomorrow is Flagstaff and then south and west.  I was going to go to the Grand Canyon, but the weather there is cold and possibly snowy, so will have to take a pass and head for the south where it's dry and 90+

A few last photos from Santa Fe to round out the story. Onward ho...

Chilis!

Crossroads

My hotel

Indigenous People's Art

The (very) High Road to Taos

Google Maps is great for finding the shortest route from one place to the next.  It's great for telling you when and where to turn from one highway to another to stay on track.  What it's not very good at doing is warning you that your route takes you up to over 10,000 feet elevation over some unmarked pass.

Brazos Summit

 Turns out this is called "Brazos Summit" and tops out at 10,507 feet!  Wasn't quite expecting that, and as you can imagine, the roads up at that level take quite a beating from the weather and big temperature swings.  I had a balmy 52 degrees, but from all the snow around, I'm sure that it's well below freezing most of the time.

I do have to keep reminding myself that this is an adventure trip and not really a vacation.  Only 300 miles for the day, but they were hard fought miles.  Coming into Taos, I kept reading the signs as "Tacos" and I knew that I was overdue for some lunch.

Main Street Taos

 I knew that I'd see a lot of bikes on Memorial Day weekend, but Taos was overrun with Harleys.  Turns out that there is a big annual motorcycle rally about 20 miles away in Red River.  Not Sturgis size, but 20,000 bikes expected for the weekend.  I stayed in a great little place just off the main drag with parking right in front of the room.  Half the rooms had motorcycles parked in front of them, so I knew I had chosen well.

Taos Plaza

Taos is a wonderful town - very artsy with a lot of great restaurants and galleries, along with enough tourist gift shops to keep the summer crowds happy.  I had lunch is a little burger bar and ended up talking with a guy who grew up in Seattle (Mercer Island, WWU in Bellingham) and just bought a place in Taos ($350k for a nice house on 1.5 acres with a sweeping view of the Taos Valley - he showed me pictures).  If it weren't for the 4 feet of snow in one picture that he showed me, I'd be tempted.

Memorial Day selfie

Walking around in the morning, I stumbled upon the Taos Memorial Day monument.  Selfie time!

The long and sometimes wet road to Moab

Day 1:  Seattle to Boise:  525 miles

Not a lot to say other than it was a long haul.  Once over Snoqualmie pass, it was farm country all the way passing through Yakima, the Tri-Cities, then over the river to Umatilla and through eastern Oregon.  Good weather, easy traffic, no complaints.

Day 2:  Boise to Provo:  410 miles

I brought up the radar image of the region on my phone before I left.  The forecasts were iffy with a lot of moist, unstable air, and showers popping up here and there with occasional thunder storms.  I was hoping that I could dodge the major action - especially with 80mph speed limits on the highway meaning most traffic was doing 85-90.  Not fun in the rain.

Things held up well until I reached the southern edge of Idaho.  It was clear in the distance that there was a lot of activity.  I pulled over for gas and donned my rain gear hoping for the best.  Just as I got to the sign saying "welcome to Utah" the torrent started dumping buckets while trying to maintain my 80mph to keep the yahoos behind me from running up my exhaust.

Middle of nowhere, S. Idaho

Fortunately, these cells are pretty localized, and after 10 or 15 miles, things started to dry out and the sun broke through.  Going down through Salt Lake City, it was amazing how much snow was still on the Wasatch mountains to the east.  I heard there is still skiing at Snowbird, but not sure how usual that is for late May.

I had a few more showers going into Provo, but was glad to finally get there.  These first two days were the "getting there" part of this trip - like taking a long haul flight on your way to someplace good.

Day 3:  Provo to Moab:  185 miles

As soon as I left Provo, I got to get off of the Interstate and spend the rest of the day on a really nice 2 lane highway with incredible scenery and pretty limited traffic.  This was day 3, but was really day 1 for the part of the trip that I had been looking forward to.

Colorado River

I remember coming through here 22 years ago with Megan and Max (my kids) way back when they were kids.  We were awestruck back then at the red rock formations as we worked our way south, and came up the road where the picture above was shot to camp out along the Colorado River.  

Being Memorial Day weekend, I knew it would be busy, and Arches National Park was actually "full" and closed to new visitors when I got there.  Too bad, but I was okay not going in with pictures of long queues of cars in my head.  Instead, I went down into town and found some coffee and some lunch.

I actually drove south another 60 miles before settling onto a cheap motel to get some rest and write my blog.  I'm in a town called Monticello that is at a windswept crossroads and has seen better days.  I came down here because hotel/motels in Moab were running $200+ and were mostly booked out for the holiday weekend + it gets me an hour closer to Taos, which is still 300 twisty miles away.  Should be a really nice but long ride tomorrow.

Zen & the Art of a 4,000 Mile Motorcycle Trip

"Red Ryder" 2018 Harley Road Glide Special

I've been focused on scuba dive trips over the past several years that have taken me to some pretty exotic locations, but feel that I've been neglecting my own back yard as of late.  I bought my latest Harley specifically to do some long distance rides, and since there's no time like the present, I'm off to see the USA - or at least some of the most interesting (to me) parts of it!

Road Trip 2019

I've done pretty much all of this road trip before, but not in modern times, not all in one trip, and not on a motorcycle.  Part of it - the coast and the desert SW - I did as a kid with my brother, sister, and parents in a 1960's VW van with no AC.  I clearly remember 100 degrees at 10pm in Needles, CA and dying for some relief from the heat.  Part of it I did a couple of decades later with my own kids - going down through Utah past Salt Lake City to Moab and Arches National Park.  And part of it on my first Harley back in the early nineties with my friend Matt on his BMW bike.  This will be a different experience, but will be good to see what still fits to my memories and see how things have changed.

Captain America and Billy circa 1990?

Plan is to go fast and long for the first two days to get down to southern Utah, then slow down and enjoy the beautiful southwest with stops in Moab, Taos, Santa Fe, the Grand Canyon, and Sedona before racing across the desert and hitting the California coast. 

2 weeks (+ or -), about 4k miles, and both a lot to take in and a lot of time lost inside my head.  Should be epic!

Cairns, diving the GBR, and hugging a koala!

The Great Barrier Reef (or at least a little part of it)

Diving the Great Barrier Reef is part bucket list, part "not like it used to be" (no place is - you hear this everywhere you go), and is mostly wonderful and "is-what-it-is".  Going to the outer reef and further north helps to get into less visited waters and corals that are in better shape. I'll save all of the fishy pictures for the end, but here are a few highlights.

Sharks!  Who doesn't love to see something as sleek and top-of-the-food-chain.  We had a couple of dives centered around sharks, but they could be seen on most dives.  

Shark feeding

Jumbo cod!  Mostly really big potato cod, but the biggest one I saw was a Queensland Cod that looked to be the size of a small car.

potato cod

And mostly, beautiful and diverse corals and multitudes of fish of all sorts.  To be honest, neither were as good as I've seen in other places, like the coral diversity or fish density in Palau, or the sea life diversity in Bali and Indonesia - but still an awesome place to dive where I got to see many things I'd never seen before - and many others that I never get tired of seeing.

Staghorn coral

Octopus

Leaf scorpion fish

This was never meant to be a diving trip so much as a discover Australia trip, tand diving was definitely a big part of that - though if I'd come here only to dive and skipped the other chapters, I would have felt short-changed for sure.  

Mike Ball Dive Expedition's boat SpoilSport

One of the best parts of any liveaboard trip is meeting other divers from around the world.  One of the best parts of traveling solo is that you tend to connect with other solo travelers who are less focused on their partners or groups.  Below is Lisa from Ohio who was my dive buddy for most of the 20+ dives, Sam from Atlanta (by way of Utah), and Sophia from Paris.  

dive buddies