Yep. That whole area from about San Angelo to just West of Roswell is part of that "Chihuahua Desert" I mentioned in post #46. "Pain Zone" is an understatement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chihuahuan_Desert
And I also fully agree about Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains. Been there. Done that. Glad I got the T-shirt, but I aint goin back. Add Palo Duro Canyon, also in Texas, on the North end of the Chihuahua Desert, to that same list.


But North Rim Grand Canyon is a place I hope to return to many times, one of the Top 2 destinations of all the places I have been. Yes, can be cold in the spring, even early summer, and Fall, but I will take the chill rather than the heat any day. I can always put on more clothes. Can't always take off enough, especially with that air cooled engine between my knees.


You saw more of Zion than I did. Too crowded for me, can't stand waiting in line. I just made a drive through on it. Thanks for the Picts! Very Nice! Glad you took the time for the hike, and shared it with us! I agree on Bryce, too much better stuff in the neighborhood. I did enjoy Arches when I was there in 2014, but, again, of all of them North Rim Grand Canyon is my hands down favorite! But, I did have the comfort of a Toy Hauler for the cold nights!

 

I liked Arches. Pics and commentary forthcoming.

 

Several years ago the wife and I did all of them - Arches, Zion, Bryce, Escalante-Grand Staircase. My two favorites in the area are hardly mentioned - Cedar Breaks Monument and Dead Horse Point State Park. If any of you reading this are thinking of a trip in this area DON'T forget the two I mentioned. Incredible riding !!

 

Thanks Whiskers. Hope I can remember your post until September when I hope to be passing through there again, on my way home from another PNW tour. I also want to stop by Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon just South of Lake Powell that some friends recommended to me and which I have bypassed on previous trips. Know anything about "Island in the Sky Road" and "White Rim Road" ? Might be fun to just try to follow the Colorado River down on the West side to Lake Powell and then North Rim.


Sorry Mike. Hope I don't "Hi-Jack" your thread. I am easily distracted.

 

No worries, I'm nearly done. I like having a 1-stop shop for future ideas. My guess is my traps and back will stop being sore in about 3-4 years so I'll be ready for another long trip about then.

 

I love riding thru that area - N. Rim, Zion, Bryce, Ut hwy 12 etc. A friend told me that several of the parks were going to the bus system, I'm glad I was lucky enough to visit Zion before that started. Just before the N. end of the tunnel, there is a walking trail that takes you up on top (Theater Rock?) where you look down into the Canyon, Awesome view! hopefully the bus will allow the people to walk that trail.
Great Pics and Great Story! Thanks for Sharing

 

Day 10 I was planning on going to both Canyonlands and Arches NP. I did a little googling and found that Canyonlands is extremely large, and not really suitable for a partial day excursion, while Arches is the perfect half to 3/4 day trip. This was probably my lowest mileage day of the trip, Green River to Arches, then Arches to Monticello, just over 2 hours + the riding in the park.

Arches is quite a bit different than the other parks I'd been to. You can pretty much drive up to most of the major attractions, walk a very short distance, and you're there.



If you like a little solitude in your NP or pictures that at least look that way, this isn't the place for you. Completely impossible to get a picture without somebody wandering into the frame.



You could easily do this park in a couple hours if time was an issue, but I had all day to kill so I stopped at most of the attractions and walked out to them. Lots of rocks with holes in them, wonder why they call the place Arches.



Multiple arches



There was one moderately strenuous hike that wouldn't have been too bad, except my legs were still letting me know about the previous day's hike. Anyway, it takes you to the Delicate Arch which is the one they use on Utah's license plate. Again, hard to get a clean frame since people like to go underneath and do the "Y" from the Village People YMCA and get a snap. I couldn't get a completely clear frame from my distance with just an iphone, but at least nobody was under the arch.



All in all the trip to Arches was worth making. I wouldn't go back solo but if the family was with me I wouldn't mind dragging them through.

 

Day 11 was supposed to be a scenic ride day. I started in Monticello UT and had planned to ride to Durango, get some breakfast, then take 550 all the way to Montrose with the USAFA as my ultimate destination for the day. I stopped at the Durango Diner for some breakfast and a warm-up from the 2 hours of 45ish temperatures. Great food and conversation to be found there. I also think I kind of lucked out. I was talking to the guy sitting next to me and when I told him my day's plan he informed me they had gotten quite a bit of snow up in the mountains over the last 2 days. He mentioned Red Mountain pass is pretty high and that I'd be at altitude for at least an hour en route to Montrose. I decided to check the weather at Red Mountain pass -- 23F. Uhh no. In addition to the cold he thought that there was probably snow on the road. Double no. So instead I just mapped out the quickest route which turned out to be the most southerly route. I still had to go over Wolf Creek pass at just under 11k feet, but the bike's outside air temperature gauge never got below 40 degrees and there was no snow on the road.

Days 12, 13, and 14 were just iron butts to get home. On day 12 I rode from Colorado Springs to Omaha NE, day 13 I rode to Chicago, and day 14 was Chicago back to Atlanta. I took the northerly route because my parents live just outside of Chicago so I figured it was worth going out of my way to stop in, they're not getting any younger. Nebraska wins the stinkiest state award. I bought Powerball tickets in every state I passed through beginning with CO but skipping IL since those criminal politicians would probably figure out a way to steal the money from me if I actually won. No pictures, only 1 person tried to kill me, and the roads were bad in lots of places: in Indiana I swear I hit an Evil Kneivil jump, thankfully I was holding on at the time. Then there's are all that grooved pavement and uneven lanes, my god those things are killers, I got stuck for 20 miles behind a semi because I was in the lower lane and didn't want to risk making the move into the left lane to pass, I swear there was at least a 2 inch difference between the lanes. I completely wore out my back tire -- we're talking race slick tread in the middle of the tire -- good thing I didn't have to go through any heavy rain. In total, I put just under 6000 miles on the bike in 2 weeks.

 

So what was my motivation? I can't say owning a HD and touring the country is a lifelong bucket list item. About 1-2 years ago I started feeling really restless. I'm about to turn 46 so I suppose it could be a partial midlife crisis, I don't know the science behind that but I just felt like I was missing out on something. We used to have a ski boat but the kids would rather spend time on the internet than go to the lake. I've still got the big diesel truck that pulled the boat so I offered to get a 5th wheel so we could go camping as a family and that was met with the same BS passive resistance. I said fuggit I'm buying a GD touring bike and I'm going to see this country with or without you. I regularly fly coast to coast and just felt like I needed to see all that stuff that I zip over at 500 mph all the time. No idea if I really scratched that itch, but at least right now I have 0 desire to take another long range trip by myself on the bike (although we are going to do a family vacation along PCH in a rental car in June).

So lets talk about the bike. My 2015 Ultra Limited Low exceeded my expectations in almost all areas. It started on the 1st time every time. Never a single mechanical issue. It is pretty comfortable. Yes, I am extremely sore at the end of 2 weeks (edit: although I list through day 14 somewhere I skipped a day, I was only gone for 13 days), but I averaged around 450 miles a day sitting in the exact same position for hours on end (2200 miles in the last 4 days of the trip!). You could probably sit on your couch for that length of time and be sore. I had just put an 8" LRS shield on the bike and that did slightly better than stock of keeping the wind from buffeting my helmet. I still got hit in the forehead with a few rocks and bugs but it wasn't terrible. The only other mod to the bike is it has the standard touring seat + backrest, not the ULL seat. A lot more comfortable but I give back about an inch of the reason I bought a ULL instead of just a limited. I didn't keep any record of mileage, but generally speaking I got between 35-45 mpg per tank depending on how fast I was going and how the wind was blowing. There were only a couple places in west TX and one place in UT where I was worried about running out of gas. On most interstates it wasn't an issue, and after 2 hours in the saddle my body needed to stretch out just as I was typically hitting 1/4 tank of gas.

My gear. I wore an Aerostich Roadcrafter Suit for all but about 3 hours of the ride. Perfect temp for the suit with the zippers open is 70-80F, close the zippers and add a layer or two of under armour it's good down to about 55F, anything less than that then I was more comfortable when I put my rain jacket over the top. At 90F the thing is miserably hot, and at 100F you spontaneously burst into flame. I only had a half helmet with me, a full would've been nice for about half the trip, just not a lot of room to be carrying a spare full sized helmet. I wore ear plugs the entire time. Typically I'd get completely suited up, start the bike, and realize I'd forgotten to put them in. I have a pair of Surefire EP4 reusable earplugs but found them to be vastly inferior to the foamy style in both comfort and noise attenuation. I hate the bike's stock GPS and bought a RAM mount and used google maps and my iphone for all my navigation. The phone is very difficult (if not impossible) to see with polarized glasses, especially in direct sunlight but still better than that effing mess HD installed as standard equipment. Seriously, the Garmin GPS I first bought in 2004 (which is now garbage) is 10x better than that junk. I mostly listened to podcasts, but when I was riding on the highway and had internet access I listened to iHeart Radio. I wore Ariat cowboy boots which are as comfortable as can be but have almost no traction, I wouldn't wear them on another long range ride and would buy something with a rubber sole that grips a little bit. My raingear was the Nelson-Rigg AS3000 suit. I really liked the top, the bottoms were a bit more difficult to put on and the bib style made it really hard to take a leak without getting completely undressed. If you copy this route, bring lots of sunblock and chapstick.

My route wasn't exactly what I wanted but it was still pretty good. Big Bend was worth seeing but too remote to ever go again. North Rim and Zion NP were the best parts of the trip. Arches was good, I really didn't give Bryce Canyon much of a chance since I was so cold and Canyonlands probably needs about 3 days all to itself since it is so spread out. I'd have loved to go to Yellowstone but it was unseasonably cold and the weather didn't support going any further north. I stayed at a couple nice Mom and Pop hotels and ate at a bunch of really tasty local restaurants. I only ate fast food once the entire trip which is 1 time too many. My guess is the trip cost me about $125-$150/day after gas, food, and hotels but not including the gear I purchased in advance of the trip. I already had an America the Beautiful Pass so all the national parks were prepaid.

My original title said 3 weeks on my hands and that was true, but between the cold weather and my own innate home-body-ness (word?) I was ready to come home after Zion. Since Bryce and Arches were really close I visited those, but by that time my mind was set on my own bed and I really just wanted to go home. I'm the dutiful son so I spent the extra 2 days to go see my aging parents, as much for them as for me. Nice side benefit was I got to eat my favorite food in the world, Giordano's stuffed pizza! Overall I'm glad I did it, but as I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not planning my next bike trip .

I'd like to thank everybody who contributed to this thread. I got at least some of my inspiration from the Adventures of Darla thread on this forum. If you haven't looked, it's monstrously long and pretty interesting. Finally, one thing that really surprised me was how NICE everybody was to me when they saw me on the bike. Riding a big blue touring HD across the country makes people just want to talk to you. I'm sure I spoke with lots of people with vastly different views on this country than me, but one thing everybody seemed to agree on was how cool my bike was, and how cool it was I was riding it cross country. For those on the fence, I say go do it, you won't regret it.

 

great read!