Day 14, 15 and 16

Well it has been a while since I have had internet so it is time to play a little catch-up.

Day 14
Mileage – 160
Ride Time - 7 hours

Today was a pretty short day leaving Utah. We had pretty straight forward roads which was just what we needed. We were both getting pretty beaten down so a short day was just what the dr. ordered. We had a lot of just straight gravel cruising at 40-50mph. We had a couple of notable sections, my favorite being what I like to think of as the whack a mole section.

We were near the end of the day and cruising at 50-60 just to get through the day. I had pretty much lost sight of what we were doing and just ready to end the day when we came down out of the mountains and ran into this section where the road rolled up and down. There was a massive wind storm rolling in out in front of us and the effect was pretty cool. I would roll up to the top of the hill and see the light filtering through the clouds and the dust being picked up and thrown into the mountains and then roll back down into the gap where I could not see anything and just think about what I had just seen and then head back up to the top of the next hill and repeat. I kept adding more and more throttle until I had a grin touching in the back of my head at 70mph. Just great!!



At the end of the day Palmer and I stumbled on one of the strangest hotels we have had so far. This place was just a storage unit complex that someone had transformed into a hotel. I am not sure what I expected for $49 but at least it was clean and did not have bed bugs (funnier if you knew everything about this trip). Here is a pic of this sweet hotel.



For dinner we walked next door to the gas station/diner/casino. Oh yea, high class….


Day 15
Mileage – 25
Ride Time - 10 hours


Well yesterday we crossed into Nevada. For some reason I had been expecting Nevada to be flat, hot and sandy. Surprisingly what we have seen so far has been lush (for a desert) mountains. We started the day off realizing that Nevada was not going to be like any other state we have ridden in so far. About 10 minutes from the hotel we were lost. The routes in Nevada seem to be much more suggestions than anything else.

The maps built into the GPS just don't show the roads and the Topo map overlays Palmer and I have are only slightly better because they show the roads we are looking for, they just happen to be in the wrong place. So between the combination of hand drawn maps we have and a GPS that at best suggests where the roads are we spent the day wandering around making our own trail. This may all sound like a bad thing but we had a blast bushwhacking on motorcycles. Generally we would wander for a while and then eventually make our way to a section of the trail, ride that for a while and then wander to find the next section. The entire area was covered in sage brush which was the first thing that has made us smell anything but repulsive in a while (I forgot deodorant and quit noticing how bad I smell a week ago).

We hit several really cool sections of single track trail that make me realize how much we have progressed since the trip started. I was riding along on one of those sections of trail just thinking how great our riding skills had gotten and that neither of us had dropped out bikes today when all of a sudden I was on the ground in a cloud of red dirt. What happened?@! This helped contribute to this wonderful look I had going on by the end of the day. Check this out...



Day 16
Mileage – 150
Ride Time – 7 hours

Today was another pretty straight forward day. The norm in Nevada seems to be getting lost in the first 10 miles and today was no exception. After a brief re-route we were cruising at 40-45mph on gravel most of the day. I am still shocked with how lush Nevada is. The craggy peaks are just covered in sage brush and some small pine trees. As the day went on the terrain started to look more and more like I pictured the state. The greens and yellows of the morning gave way to more red and gray. At lunch we ducked out to another strange small town. After lunch we decided to take a different way back to the trail. We ended up climbing up and through the coolest canyon. According to the GPS we were not on a road but there was certainly something there. We criss-crossed a creek up and through the canyon for about 10 miles before we popped out into a lush grassy valley with tons of cows chomping away. On all of the peaks around us you could see the trails coming from old gold mines. Sad to see the land so raped but it was a beautiful site all the same.

Every once in a while we would run across a strange rock shack like this one.



Here is a little video of me getting stuck near the end of the day. This was a nasty bog but at least it was in a pretty spot.



Today finished a little early at 4:30 . Palmer and I found a hotel with a pool and let the chlorine attach our nastiness for about an hour before relaxing for the rest of the evening.