Utah Spring! What?

Springtime in Utah isn't quite like it is back home.  :-)

 

 

 

 

The forecast calls for snow all day with a high of 37F and a low tonight of 27F.

Rain tomorrow, and getting all the way up to 43!

It looks like I'll be in this motel an extra day.

Depending on the elevations, I may have to plan a different route around Capital Reef N.P.

The guy at the front desk said some bikers just came by and then continued on toward Bryce Canyon.
=:-o
That will take them over 9,600 Ft. Boulder Mountain that I came over yesterday.
Here in the snow in Torrey, the elevation is only 6,800 Ft.

I can't risk riding in slippery conditions without rear brakes.
The rear brakes started to go away back around Lake Tahoe, and have been intermittent ever since, fading between 20% and 0%.
I've checked the fluid and bled the line, but haven't seen much improvement.
My front brakes are fine, but you really need rear brakes in tough conditions or at low speeds.

Odometer update: 6,592 mi.
 

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon N.P.
Who would have thought that erosion could create art?
There's a huge difference between Zion and Bryce Canyon.
In Zion, you are in the canyon looking up at the cliffs.
In Bryce, you are riding the canyon rim, stopping at overlooks to see the formations below you.

I've seen enough photos of Bryce Canyon to know what to expect.
And a wide panorama of the canyon looks just like all the photos you've seen.
But if you leave the rim and take a hike down into the canyon,
all the spires, hoodoos, windows, ribbons, and bridges become quite a spectacle.
I guess there's just something about humans that we aren't inspired by things we can look down on.
Take a helicopter ride above a grove of redwoods, and it's just a bunch of trees.

 

Back to Bryce...
If you only take the road along the rim and stop at the overlooks, you can see it all in half a day.
I took a short hike into the canyon to see some "shapes" close up.
And at 8,000 feet elevation, a short hike down becomes a long trek back up.
(Nice clean, crisp air, just not enough of it for me.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw this baby grizzly bear at Bryce Canyon:

 

 

There was a large gathering of antique Indian Motorcycles at Bryce.

 

 

 

 

 

I holed up in a Days Inn in Torrey, Utah after looking at the weather.

 

 

Tonight's forecast for Torrey:

30F and snow.
Tomorrow's forecast:
A high of 41F and more snow.
If the weather cooperates, I'll be at Capital Reef  N.P. tomorrow.
We'll see.

 

Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers out there (especially mine!)

Zion!

Zion National Park.
Wow.
Oh, man.
Wow.
I've never seen a place that was at the same time incredibly beautiful and so difficult to photograph.
If you've ever experienced the grandeur of Yosemite Valley, you know what I mean.
But Yosemite has viewpoints from a distance that allow you to capture the valley in a decent perspective.
In Zion Canyon, you are right up against the most massive walls you can imagine,
and you can't back up far enough to take a decent picture.
Shooting vertical photographs leave you with a perspective that is meaningless, with no context.
Another big difference between Yosemite and Zion: Color.
Yosemite is nearly all the same granite, where Zion's canyon walls are a rainbow of different types of sandstone.

 

The little road up Zion Canyon has been closed to private vehicles for some time,
since it is incapable of handling the volume of traffic.
Now they provide a free shuttle up and down the canyon, stopping at 9 different locations.
Get off when you like, overheat your camera, and then catch the next shuttle in a few minutes.
Chuckle... the shuttle has skylights/vents in the ceiling,
and people had to take pictures through the ceiling to capture the tops of the canyon walls.

 

All the while I was shooting photos, a little voice was telling how futile it was to
try to convey this magnificent landscape to others via a little portion of a computer screen.

So, good luck.
Just try to imagine you have a 100-inch screen and you are standing a foot away from it.

 

Camping tonight just outside of Bryce Canyon at around 6,000 ft. elevation.
Temperature forecast is in the 30's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marching to Zion

I camped near Washington, Utah, just outside of Zion National Park.

 

Quail Creek Reservoir is up the road about a mile:

I'll be seeing Zion today, and maybe Bryce N.P. as well.

Now that I'm in the area of the parks that inspired this trip, I'll be slowing the pace a bit.

 

Yosemite Slam

 

I left the CA coast just north of Santa Cruz this morning under heavy clouds and some fog, but I didn’t have any problems with rain today.
My plan was to ride over the top of Yosemite to Tonopah, Nevada, and then the Al-E-Inn at Rachel.

 

But crossing Yosemite took a lot longer than I expected.
Over the top of the Yosemite highlands, massive amounts of the park are still a long way from recovering from last year’s wildfire.

 

 

 

But I came upon an overlook with a surprising view of Half Dome and El Capitan.

 

 

 

 

By ‘surprising’, I mean I wasn’t supposed to see Half Dome at all. I took a wrong turn and ended up there by mistake. :-)

 

 

When I had stopped at the entrance to the park, the ranger told me that of the two passes over Yosemite, Sonoma was still closed and Tioga (which I wanted to use) had only been re-opened 2 hours ago. It had been closed all morning because they had what she called a “dusting of snow” overnight.
“A Dusting”.
LOL.

 

She said it might be a little chilly going over the top of Tioga Pass.
“Chilly”.
ROFLOL.

 

So I headed off in high spirits, expecting to see some snow up on the mountain peaks.
She was right – It got chilly. All the way up to 7,000 ft.
Then 8,000, and 9,000…
Tioga Pass tops out at 9,943 feet.
This has a predictable effect on the temperatures.
The temps had dropped from the 70’s to the 30’s and it was snowing.

 

This had a predictable effect on the comfort level of one of the riders.

 

The problem is that you don’t just go up to the top and right back down.
It takes about an hour to cross the highlands. I don’t remember any of it being… balmy.

 

 

 

After finally ending up around Mono Lake, I had a decision to make.
I wouldn’t be able to make it to the Little Al-E-Inn for a burger and fries with free camping, and I was a bit glad about it. I was chilled from the snowy ride, I was still riding in elevations around 7,000 feet, and the wind was working itself into a frenzy again.
So I decided to be smart (uh-oh) and just ride to Tonopah and get a motel for the night and catch up on the blog.

 

All I had to do is cross some more valleys like this:

 

 

When I got there, I couldn’t wait to get into a hot shower, so I stopped at the first seedy motel I came to.
Oops – no vacancy.
So up to the next one – “The Clown Motel” (no kidding).
The guy says “Sorry – no rooms. You won’t find any rooms in town. All the contractors are building that new solar plant.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project

 

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
It’s another 109 miles to Rachel, and besides -  I didn’t really want to sleep in that cold wind again with my light sleeping bag.
Now the sun has set, and it’s looking like I won’t have a place to sleep.
The lady in the gas station said there was a really nice motel in the next town south - Beatty - with a Denny’s next door. I called it and got a room.
So here I am...
In the Motel 6.
In Beatty.
92 MILES from Tonopah. Yeah, I got to experience a moonlit desert ride. Strange... usually a farm is all dark at night, but I passed a couple of ranches way out in the boondocks that had lots of flashing lights...

 
 

I guess I won’t be going through Rachel again after all.
Instead, I’ll be going through Las Vegas again on my way to Utah.

 

 

Riding the coast

Tonight I'm camped out in Pescadillo, California right across the road from the beach. I can hear the surf from my tent, and I can see the Pigeon Point lighthouse.

This is me and my neighbor in a grove of eucalyptus trees. 

 

I'm typing this while sitting in my tent. The Wi-Fi signal reaches all across the campground. The wind had died down a bit after sunset, but now it's back up to a pretty serious blow. That's why I asked the owner for a spot near the trees - to get some protection from the coastal winds. 

Today was an exciting ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. By exciting, I mean "OMG – keep your eyes on the road!"

There are some sharp turns on that road that you wouldn't want to miss. It's a long way down to the surf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some random shots:

 

 

 

After I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and passed through San Francisco, it began to level out a bit.

This is the Point Arena lighthouse that I passed a few hours north of here. 

 

 

Here's a sad example of why you don't want to build your dream home too close to the ocean.

There are several homes here that have partially fallen into the sea.

 

How about this:

While I was photographing the Point Arena lighthouse, my phone beeped. Bonnie had texted me telling me that the batteries were low in my SPOT tracker!

I checked the device and sure enough, the low-battery light was on.

LOL - ain't technology great??!!

Apparently, the tracker sends its status along with its location to the tracking web page.

 

Redwood Adventure

The guy who ran the campground told me about the nearby Jedediah Smith Redwoods Park
He said there was a "smooth dirt road" you could ride through the giant redwoods.
But I neglected to consider that it had rained overnight.
So it was a little muddy, but not too slippery.
I stopped to take a picture, but decided to turn the bike around to pose it for a better shot.
That's when I discovered that the pine needles outside the tire tracks were covering very slippery mud.
Anyway, the bike started going over, my feet were slipping and down she went.
I hate it when that happens.

 

I tried to lift it, but it was too heavy and I couldn't get enough traction for the 'backwards lift' technique.
Of course I had just filled the tank (7.5 gal) minutes before.
With a full tank of gas and all my gear strapped on, it felt like 700 pounds. Oh wait...  It is 700 pounds!
After removing all the luggage and duffle bag, I was finally able to grunt loud enough to get it upright again.

Then I took my stupid picture and loaded all the stupid luggage back on the bike and continued down the stupid road.
The road was so narrow I didn't expect to meet anybody coming the other way - surely this must be one-way road.
Then a car came around a turn and surprised me - I was just able to get stopped in time to avoid going into the pine needles again.
But the worst part was her warning as she passed me...
"There's a school bus behind me!"
=:-O

It took us a minute or two to get past each other. (The dark shoulder on the road is the muddy part.)

 

 

Then I started having flashbacks of the Dalton Highway.
Uh-oh. There's that nasty twitch in my left eye again... and my therapist almost had me cured...

 

After all that, I was able to take a hike into one of the redwood groves for a closer look...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stopped at a KOA campground today in Benbow and was told that I could pitch my tent for $45.
I said no, thanks.
So I ended up here in Fort Bragg, CA in a motel for $58 with a continental breakfast.
And I don't have to set up and tear down my house and bed.
;-)