Grand Junction to Page, AZ

Sometime I'll figure out how to put the pictures where I want them.

Good day today. We had an early start from Grand junction and headed to Moab Utah by a road I saw on google earth. Utah State Road 128 from I70 to Moab along the Colorado River. I would recommend taking this road to anyone. It's around 45 miles of curving roads at the bottom of high cliffs that will strain your neck looking up at them. We saw lots of nice campgrounds along the river and looked like any of them would be great spending some time there. Could be good fishing there too as we saw some fishermen on the banks.

Moab sure has changed from the little Podunk town I first saw in the 80's into the adventure tourist mecca full of gift shops, tour outfits and fast food places it is today.

A few miles south of there we stopped at this little hole on the wall. It's a 5000 sq foot home hand chiseled into the sandstone cliff by a guy back in the 40's. Nice place but at 5 bucks a head,, a little spendy.

The weather was great today, mid 90's, sunny-dry heat. On the bike it's good but just sitting in it or working in it might be a different story.

Here are a few pics from today.

Mountain Time

Chilly most of the day. More plains scenery, boring but didn't have much left. Cloudy and didn't see any mountains until we were in them. Traffic through Denver was lighter than I expected but clogged up climbing the mountains. Saw some rain before going through Eisenhower Tunnel but when we came out of that 1.7 mile long tunnel under the continental divide the weather was clearly different, I mean the sun was out. Still chilly but as we went down in elevation the temperature rose. the farther we went the more layers came off. I70 is an engineering feat, stacked lanes going through Glennwood canyon following the Colorado River. When we stopped in Grand Junction ti was 95 degrees. Sitting outside the motel room it was cooling off, moon out and the sidewalk was warm on my bare feet. Tomorrow; off of the interstate and camping!

On the Road

Since it rained all week we didn't do much. Packed all our clothes when it quit raining Friday. We left Saturday morning about 9:00 for an uneventful ride across the plains. Saw 2 flocks of Pelicans in Iowa - weird don't remember those here before. Saw this at a gas stop west of Des Moines, someone should have told the sculptor what a corn stalk looks like. The camper trailer pulls well, it didn't track perfectly above 85 (hey, it was Nebraska, and I was just keeping up!)with a good crosswind but I couldn't feel it affecting the bike, just saw it in the mirrors. Stopped for the night in North Platte, Nebraska 550 miles for the day. Ate at a place called The Whiskey Barrel, allot like Texas Roadhouse but they played Blues instead of Country. Good food too. The weather channel says it's 48 deg this morning. Linda says it's time to get out the long undies for a little while.

Getting Ready

Today I unloaded and vacuumed out the Napper II pop-up motorcycle camper. Then repacked our camping gear.
Linda and I are getting anxious for Saturday August 29th, when we leave Iowa for our Grand Circle trip. The first planned stop is at the North rim of the Grand Canyon. Back in Febuary I was spending my free time on the internet finding cool places on Google Earth and just looking for fun stuff to do. I looked up the North Rim and saw the cabins there were only $118 a night. Got one for 2 nights.