travellingbennetts

Flagstaff AZ. By now we are solidly into the routine of motorcycle travel – up, breakfast, pack, check the room 18 times, get on the road, realise the GPS is going somewhere other than where we want to go, stop, check Google Maps and Gaia off-line maps, provide guidance to the GPS, and repeat with stops for fuel and snacks until getting to the place we had decided to stay.

We were now 16.3% of the way across the USA, but only our 2^nd state of 48. We needed to start ticking them off more rapidly otherwise the whole lower 48 was going to take – small pause here while the calculator App is engaged – quite some time. Flagstaff also our first experience of rain, apparently almost unheard of at this time of year. Yes but we are in town, and we always bring it. Luckily it stopped before we executed the Day 8 plan, which was to get a few more % east to check out some geology features in the Petrified Forest and the Meteorite Crater, before cancelling out those % by heading back to Flagstaff. Cindy decided to pillion again, no sense in wearing out two sets of tyres on the straight interstate.

On the way back, we had to stop at Winslow. This wasn’t mentioned in the Route 66 song, so The Eagles snaffled it for Take It Easy. This seemed appropriate, as I’ve got seven women on my mind. Four that wanna own me (including the cat), two that wanna stone me, one that is a pillion of mine.

Then to the impressive meteorite crater, created by a 50m lump of iron – nickel alloy that should have come to the attention of the Arizona highway patrol officers by its carelessly travelling at 12km/s. It is a big crater. There is a big lump of meteorite in the visitors centre, and a geologist I happened to meet with there said it was originally part of the core of a planet a bit like ours.

Finally back into Flagstaff after a big day, via another Route 66 song town Winona. But having been through it on the bike gave us the right to call ourselves Winona Riders. Day 9 was going to achieve little in ticking off states, but it was going to set us up for it and some big highlights. We headed due north out of Flagstaff, missed a turnoff to the Sunset Crater (a volcano this time) due to roadworks and no sign, and pushed up to Tuba City for luncheon at a Dennys Diner, our first for the trip. On the way we went through a section of the Painted Desert, which became a photo obsession, but getting off the road into deep sand calmed the obsession down a bit, and resulted in only partial satisfaction.

After lunch we headed northeast through Navajo country, the scenery started to make a few changes, then suddenly we were amongst rocks. We decided on a detour to a lookout as we were a bit early to get to our motel in Kayenta, and this was a great decision. The hint of Monument Valley sandstones started to come into play at this time, as the plateau steeply drops off into a valley floor. A tempting feature of the rock is that it is flat, so can be ridden on, and so was.

Down into the valley, the trip into Kayenta gives more than a hint of Monument Valley, it is the start of it. Out to the motel in the middle of nowhere, we had to head back into town for dinner supplies. One of the features of the US is that food and beverages are available everywhere, servos included. But no beverages in the Indian reservations, except the usual bewildering display of energy drinks and other weird concoctions. So a light dinner of servo snacks and water, and some light motorcycle maintenance. Another feature of the US while drifting along on the features topic is that you have to pay for air. Not the breathing kind, but the tyre kind. $2 is roughly the average for 5 minutes of air. That leads to another feature – coins. This literally drives people mad, because the maximum value coin in circulation is a quarter, which is 25 cents. So you need a lot to do anything. You want 5 minutes of air? You need 8 quarters, which means you will have 7 quarters available. No air for you, Mr and Mrs Motorcyclist. Anyway, back to the story….

Right. Now we are just going to do some photos to kick off Day 10 because this area is beyond words.

Our good friend Alden from the “best ever” Alaska ride in 2019 had mentioned the Valley of the Gods road, not far out of Mexican Hat. A sensible question is why people are naming things Mexican Hat this far north? Maybe because the rock formation does look like someone in full bustle wearing a Melbourne Cup hat, but the Melbourne Cup was not televised in this area back then so they went with the closest thing – a Mexican Hat.

Off up the Valley of the Gods dirt road, this was truly one of the best rides we’ve ever done. Loneliness and wilderness all by ourselves. Epic scenery, this had the lot.

A stop toward the end attracted a couple from Germany. They had a serious number of BMWs – even to Cindy’s delight an R1200C – I think I lost count after five, so the conversation flowed easily. This highlighted another thing – when you travel by motorcycle, you attract attention. We are both fully dressed in Klim gear – USA designed – so surely bog standard. Not the case, people dressed like us were extremely rare, the undressed Harley rider is the norm, so we find a lot of people just come up and start asking questions. It happened a lot here because most people are tourists. Done with some of the best geology imaginable, we headed off to the next target – the four corners point. This is the meeting point of 4 states – Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, so we could easily tick off the first 2 making it 3 for the day. We ticked them off just getting to the point, but for a mere $5 per head we could reach the actual point that isn’t actually the point.

The day concluded at the Super 8 motel in Cortez, Colorado. If Cortez looked a little worn generally, the Super 8 was the Cortez pants seat. We were on the second floor, so the motorcycles were nowhere near line of sight. This was a bit of a concern, but there were Harleys parked nearby and they were much shinier than ours so with the disc locks on and a visit to a craft brewery we’d done all we possibly could.

Day 11 was raining heavily, and it was about 10°C. With the bikes out in the open and many tens of feet from the hotel, we held off departure for a while, but this means the rain responds by setting in. Extreme detail time-and-motion planning starts to try to minimise exposure to water when loading up the bikes. The easy stuff first, everything is packed, we take it downstairs and place it close to the exit door. Too close in fact, other guests can’t get out. Okay, shuffle it around to create a corridor between bags and helmets and accoutrement. Open the door and look at the sky then down at a puddle to judge rain flux every 10 seconds. Is that a slightly lighter patch headed our way? But which way are the clouds moving? Stare at the grey blanket for 10 seconds, no idea. Could stand there all day in theory, but Santa Fe New Mexico beckons, and it is a fair way away. Toughen up and take everything out at once. Then realise that with only two hands, holding everything and packing is impossible. Stuff goes on the ground, stuff gets wet, we’ll worry about that later. Off past the portico at the front of the hotel where Harley people were leisurely packing their stuff under cover, and across the bottom of Colorado.

The riding was very pleasant along here, cool but not heated grips cool, and there was still a smidge of snow on some of the higher peaks. Then to Pagosa Springs and a due south-ish to the New Mexico border, Cindy had done a push up already in this state so we remained on five. New Mexico was surprisingly green in the north, but the rock formations it is famous for soon woke themselves up as we headed in Santa Fe which is a bit more deserty.

Into an Airbnb about 8 miles (we were now fully converted) south of Santa Fe, we had a whole house complete with washing machine and dryer to ourselves for two days. A trip to the supermarket later, we made a big discovery – cooking and eating at home is a lot cheaper than eating in diners and restaurants and breweries.

Day 12 was touring Santa Fe via a self-guided walking tour App. These things are quite good except when more than one tourist is involved, the synchronising of the commentary travelling between the sights and the other tourist gets tough, with the “where is yours up to?” becoming almost incessant. We did see some good things though, including the oldest church in the USA, the 1610 San Miguel chapel, and the famous spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel.

Another interesting stop was at 109 East Palace Avenue. This was the office of Dorothy McKibbin, the gatekeeper of Los Alamos during the development of the nuclear bombs in WW2. Dorothy would check scientists and their families in before shipping them up the hill to the site. Being totally ignorant, I hadn’t realised Los Alamos was near Santa Fe, so this neatly set the plan for Day 13.

Los Alamos was originally an exclusive boys school, but the Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves decided it was a perfect location for a top secret laboratory – very limited access in canyon country, reasonable climate, limited private ownership, and no communities. The major problem was the gross underestimation of the resources and size required to develop the bomb, initially the thoughts were 300 punters was heaps. Turned out 6000 was the real number, so it was a bit of a mess for a long time. Still, they got the job done. A great museum and some lunch later, Los Alamos was done and we were back down the hill to Santa Fe.

Day 14 started with Las Vegas. But not The Las Vegas, just the Las Vegas. A totally different kettle of gambling fish in New Mexico. It was far enough out of Sante Fe to demand a coffee, and this leads to another USA cultural exposé. A quaint plaza, numerous cafés, 0930 hours. In Australia it would be going off with active wear and Lycra clad people ordering single source decaf lattes at precisely 52.3°C and a dish involving breads from some obscure eastern European country with avocado. Las Vegas New Mexico? Nothing. No-one. We asked a couple doing laps of the plaza – their gym was closed for de-sweating – where can we get a coffee? A bakery a few blocks away. OK, back on. The couple came around for another lap – that place there has just opened. Righto. Some excellent coffee with simply horrendous art later, we were replete.

South-east into the flat lands happened this day. The lunch target was Tucumcari, where Lee Van Cleef stopped the train and got off with his horse to get lunch in A Few Dollars More. To get there we dropped off the heights, and it is a long way down.

Onto the interstate for the final stretch, we made a mess of getting the border sign photo, but regardless got into state No.6, Texas. This section was memorable for all the wrong reasons – a feedlot. It was huge, right next to the road, and the smell was up there with the Fez Tannery of ’24. Breath hold didn’t work, we would have broken the world record it was that big. One can also sense the miasma of foulness getting into everything, and one becomes paranoid checking into the motel on Route 66 in Amarillo. Full immersion, we went with the Big Texan motel. Were they being more perfunctory than normal when we checked in because of the feedlot, or is cow waft a badge of honour? Who knows. The Big Texan is famous for the 72oz steak, 2.04kg sounds scarier, eat it and the sides within an hour and you get it for free. A chap was doing it when we were there, comfortably home in 59 minutes and 57 seconds. One of the winners board comments was “bring your own knife”, likely a plastic one would only add to the drama.

Overloaded on our own steaks and big people in big hats, we battled the heat outside and called it a day. Day 15 started with breakfast, as it pretty much has every day for the past 60 years, but this was potentially very scary, with thoughts of a what scale a Big Texan breakfast could be. Turned out huge, but we were confident enough by now to say “I’ll have the Big Texan breakfast please, just without the 9oz sirloin, the cheese, the crispy bacon, the sausage, the potato, the crispy fried chicken drizzled with sweet honey, and the fluffy waffles with syrup. Yes, just the two remnant poached eggs and the toast please.”

From Amarillo we went straight north with a modicum of east. This area is known as the panhandle, and even though it is a pretty featureless place it has an interesting history. There is a lot of oil and “carbon black” production here, with carbon black the additive to tyres which makes a huge difference to tyre life, which I was starting to think about. There is also agriculture, and as we headed up into Oklahoma we were right in the heart of the famous Dust Bowl counties, where people died of “dust pneumonia”, i.e. their lungs just had so much dust in them they couldn’t breath and they died. Also, the amount of silica people ate with their food wore their teeth out. This area looks weird, there is a 34 mile section of Oklahoma that sits between Texas and Kansas. Why didn’t Texas just say “that bit’s ours?”. Another hopefully interesting fact is that for Texas to join the Union in 1835, they had to give up anything north of 36°30′ latitude, i.e., that bit, because they were a slave state and slaves were not allowed above this line under the Compromise of 1850 between the free states and slave states. So it existed as No-Man’s Land, not under anyone’s control. Of course that ended well, every rat-bag in the surrounding states just did rat-bag things and then wandered back into No-Man’s Land to avoid the authorities. In 1890, it was thrown to Oklahoma to manage. I suggest that thoughts of people in the future wanting to ride the entire lower 48 states was in play – in 34 miles a motorcyclist can be in 3 states! Let’s legislate!

More north and more east followed. We were in Kansas so could just do the east, but the famous Dodge City beckoned. The place of cattle, gun-fights, and cattle having gun-fights with Wyatt Earp. Admittedly I didn’t spend that much time in the museum and may have missed a couple of the key displays, but that was the gist.

What didn’t come through in the westerns we watched as kids was the heat. They always wore vests, often coats, and even cravats or ties. A loose singlet and shorty short shorts was too hot a combo when we were there, and John Wayne only got down to this practical western ensemble in The Man who Shot Liberty Valance.

So we were 8 states in. Going okay, with the only big concern my rear tyre which had worn down a bit faster than planned. Numerous phone calls to hopeful tyre places had not borne much fruit. Then I remembered that they aren’t tyres, but tires. But that’s a story for next time.

In the first post I forgot a map, here it is in green (first post), and red (this post). Messy, but we are being measured by progress so we need to prove something.