Start 7:00 AM - Stop 8:00 PM

Distance - 456 miles

We both awoke early in Kanab and couldn't sleep. So we got up before sunrise and after a quick shower made our way out of Kanab and headed down hwy 389 to Hurricane so that we could enter Zion National Park from the west. It was quite a sight to have the sun rising behind us illuminating some unique rock formations to our right as we passed through the Kaibab Indian Reservation. Once in Hurricane we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast. We met a couple that was checking out properties in the area for investments. He was a newly retired police officer from San Bernardino, she was a real estate agent. Hurricane is supposedly really booming and they wanted to cash in on the growth. After breakfast (and explaining all the gadgets on the bike to our new friends) he mounted up and head to Zion National Park .

The approach to Zion lets you know you are in for something special. The rock formations become darker red, and are much more solid rock. I can't tell you what kind of rock the cliffs are made from but I can tell you it makes granite look soft. Zion is located along the edge of a region called the Colorado Plateau. The rock layers have been uplifted, tilted, and eroded, forming a feature called the Grand Staircase, a series of colorful cliffs stretching between Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon. The bottom layer of rock at Bryce Canyon is the top layer at Zion, and the bottom layer at Zion is the top layer at the Grand Canyon.

We used our newly acquired National Parks Pass to enter into Zion. I had read on the Internet that there is a tunnel in Zion that is too small for campers and motorhomes to pass each other going in opposite directions, so they have flag persons outside of the tunnel forcing traffic to go through one direction at a time. The delay can take up to 40 minutes. The large vehicles have to pay a $15.00 escort fee to be guided through the center of the tunnel. It seems to me that this money needs to be put toward finding an alternate route for the large vehicles. As it was, we were lucky and only had to wait about 10 minutes before we moved through. It was worth the wait.

The rock formations in Zion will simply blow you away. They are huge! Too huge to capture in a picture. All the area is covered in red. Even the roads have had the indigenous red rock mixed in so that they are the same color as the surrounding landscape. Since we had left Sonora we had seen enough red dirt to last a lifetime. We were in for a couple more days of it. I'm not complaining, it was gorgeous! We took the time to snap a few pictures and then exited the eastern side of the park. We had only seen about 1/10th of the park but other roads are closed in the summer due to fire danger.

We left Zion and worked our way northeast on highways 9 and 89 to Bryce Canyon National Park. If you ever travel between the two and have more time than we did, you should spend the extra hour and take the North Fork County Highway scenic route just outside the east exit of Zion. I've heard nothing but good things about this road and the scenery it affords. But we had a lot to knock out in one day so we went for speed over scenic. Don't get me wrong, we weren't disappointed with the scenery.

As we climbed Hwy 89 through the Dixie National Forest we ran into a unique grasshopper infestation/migration. What was so unique about it (at least to us city folk) was that the grasshoppers stayed pretty much at knee level or lower. At first I thought we were kicking up a lot of gravel off the road as I heard the pinging against our fender and lower cowl. But then the swarm got thick enough that there was no mistaking that grasshoppers were on attack. To this day, a year later, I'm still finding grasshopper parts in places that nothing should ever find on my bike. It was a good thing we had our armored pants on, the grasshoppers would have stung pelting regular jeans as they bounced off our shins.

But as soon as we left the greenery of the forest and surround farmlands and made it into the dry high desert around Bryce Canyon the grasshoppers disappeared. The last few miles before the entry to Bryce Canyon National Park took by breath away. Some of the most unique rock formations on the planet surrounded us. It looked like a giant had drizzled sand into tall pillars of lumpy formations. We stopped and took some pictures, but Carole was beginning to feel under-the-weather so I stopped at a gas station to refill our water packs and get her in the shade. It wasn't quite noon yet but the temperature was already in triple digits.

We entered Bryce Canyon, once again taking advantage of our National Parks Pass (it paid for itself with this being the third National Park visit on our journey). We made our way to the Bryce Canyon Lodge and went inside. Carole sat for a few minutes while I purchased some hard candy to help pick up her sugar levels. We drank a lot of water, took it easy for about a half hour and Carole began to feel a little better. Looking back I question our choice of restaurants for breakfast. At any rate we decided to ride over to Sunrise Point to see what Bryce Canyon was all about. As it turned out, we really didn't see much that was any more inspiring than what was outside the park. This whole area was simply astonishing. We decided to ride down to the Natural Bridge to check it out, but were disappointed to see that there was heavy road construction going on and the road had all the pavement ripped up. Not wanting to dirt-bike it on the wing we turned around and headed back toward the entrance. We passed a couple of Wings going in and waved at them. I guess they were too busy, they didn't wave back. I heard them chattering on the CB about work and stuff, so I just wrote it off to them being preoccupied. I later learned throughout the trip that wingers must get preoccupied a lot.

We exited the park and made our way down Highway 12. The road was fast and there was no other traffic. We once again were in awe of the surrounding geological formations. I could feel Carole's energy picking up as we scooted along. It looked like there was a severe thunderstorm to our left, but as luck would have it we skirted that storm for the rest of the day. There were several times that day that we ran into other motorcyclists who were not as fortunate. They would share with us their stories of being drenched by rain and pelted by hail. The creator was watching over us.

Carole was back to 100% as we passed Escalante and started making our way down a grade. Suddenly we saw a turnout just as we were admiring the spectacular view so I slammed on the brakes and we cut into the view point. There was a sign on the edge of the cliff that said "On a clear day you can see forever." It pointed out on a map all the names of the formations we could see off in the distance. It was a clear day from that cliff, and we could see forever. Later I learned that this particular turnout has snagged its fair share of motorcyclists that were overcome by the view and had to record it with their cameras. Ask any rider if they have been on Hwy 12 in Utah and they will produce the pictures they have taken for this exact spot. Its almost unreal to see all the photos I've seen on the web from other motorcyclists. Once you've seen this view, it is as memorable as a photo of Marilyn Monroe.

Another treat about this spot is that you get a good view of where you are heading or where you have been, depending on your direction of travel. We mounted our bike and eagerly got started on the twisty roads that traveled along the Devil's Backbone area. The ride had me shivering with excitement. We reached an area that was just too good to be true! It was a two lane road along the top of a twisting and winding ridge. There was a 150 ft. drop to the right and a 150 ft. drop to the left with no guardrails. Awesome!! We laughed along this portion of the ride and finally stopped for gas in Boulder, Utah. The only structures we saw in Boulder was the gas station/general store next to an Outdoor Outfitters store. I know there has to be more to Boulder than we saw, I just don't know where it is. Inside the General Store were two obviously outdoorsy young ladies handling the register and stock. We chatted with them for a while, finding out that the stretch of road we had just ridden was a favorite for bikers and is generally what kept them in business. There were extremely friendly, treating us as old friends. They made a huge impression on Carole. She still talks about them to this day.

After leaving Boulder we continued up Highway 12. The scenery suddenly changed from barren rock formations to tree covered mountains as we wound our way through the Dixie National Forest. It was unreal how different the terrain became in just a couple of miles. We rode through the winding roads of the forest, enjoying the cooler temps in the 80's. But suddenly, a mere 30 miles later we exited the forests and entered into what appeared to be farm lands. At Torrey we left Hwy 12 and made a right onto Hwy 24 into Capitol Reef National Park. I didn't know what to expect as I had never heard of this national park before. What we got was what we had been getting all day... shocked by the beautiful land formations. Only now we were following a river that was as red as blood from the surrounding earth. We rode through a canyon on Hwy 24 not talking at all, we were so overcome with the sheer beauty of it all. To this day I am disappointed we never stopped and took pictures. If you can believe it, we were just too blown away by the beauty to remember to record it. But it will be forever recorded in my mind.

All too quickly, after 15 miles of the most wickedly pleasurable twisting roads, we exited the park and found ourselves in a flat desert broken by huge odd rock formations in the distance. We made our way to Hankesville and cut right onto Hwy 95. It was now the hottest part of the day with the temperature hovering at 106 degrees. It took all the discipline I had to keep the throttle at the speed limit as we made our way down a straight and unremarkable road. On a normal day we would have been awe of the massive, barren mountains around us. But our senses were still in shock from all that we had seen since leaving Kanab in the morning. Just before making it to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area we pulled off the road to use a restroom. Here we had the only downer on our whole trip. Carole had set her helmet on the back seat of the bike. I was getting something out of the trunk and accidentally knocked her helmet to the ground. I quickly picked it up and found that about a quarter-sized section of paint had been chipped off the helmet. I had bought our helmets because of their unique finish that fit so well with our bike. The flat-blue color matched up nicely with the illusion blue. Seriously, I was bummed about it for the rest of the trip.

After leaving the rest stop we continued on around the northern end of Lake Powell. There was no traffic and I felt like we were riding on the moon. It was as desolate as Death Valley. I saw a sign that said "Warning: Road construction next 81 miles." Yeah, right. Like they were going to tear up an 81 mile stretch of road out here in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough, a couple of miles later we were riding on gravel with posted speed limits of 45 mph. We couldn't go any faster because the gravel was kicking up and was extremely slippery. I was to learn once we got to Wingding that another rider from the Bay Area had traveled the exact same route. He had a piece of gravel kick up into his radiator area and get caught between the fan blades and the radiator. It ended up grinding a hole in his radiator and required replacing the radiator. I did not want this type of catastrophe to happen to us so I kept the speed down. Carole and I actually had a good time dealing with the long straight slow riding. We cracked jokes, sang songs, and got to know each other better under stress. All in all, we had a blast! Its amazing how well we handle duress together. I am one lucky man.

Not much more can be said about this slow portion of the trip. The day had been long and we made the best of a bad situation. As soon as the pavement was back to normal we picked up our speed and rushed through the remainder of Monument Valley. Looking back, I wish we would have taken more time to stop and admire the scenery. But we were just anxious by this time to get to a town a bed down for the evening. Throwing all caution to the wind, we opened up the throttle and sped on. We approached a cliff that looked like the road simply ended at its base. But once we got to the side of the cliff we did a slight climb parallel to it and saw that their was a crevice that the road ran through. We continued on until we finally met the intersection of Highway 191. We saw a sign that said the town of Blanding, Utah was a few miles to our left. We decided that would be our stop for the night.

We arrived in Blanding and looked for a hotel. Carole mentioned that she was tired of dive motels so I spied a Best Western and pulled into their parking lot. I enquired about a room and was shocked at the prices they were asking. It was after 8 PM and there were only five or six vehicles in the lot so it was obvious they were not getting a lot of business. The desk clerk wasn't interested in lowering the price so we left. Down the street we found the Sunset Inn. It was my kind of dive motel, but I asked the clerk if we could see a room first. Carole and I inspected to room and found it to be more than adequate.

She took a quick shower while I washed down the bike. Afterwards we went to the only restaurant in town and ordered a pizza and a beer. While we were waiting on the pizza a bunch of high school aged kids and their chaperones came into the place. We found that they were a Christian group that was in from Salt Lake to do some missionary work. The kids were your typical high school kids, a bit noisy as they worked out their seating arrangements so they could sit with the guy or gal they were attracted to. There conversation was light and actually kind of refreshing. The chaperones all sat at there table and included us in on their conversation. Its funny how little things like this stick out in your mind. Our pizza finally came, as did our beer (non-alcohol, after all we were in a dry county). I don't remember how it tasted, we were exhausted. We finished up and walked back to our motel.

I showered and jumped into bed next to an already sleeping Carole. I quickly drifted off to sleep with thoughts of the beautiful scenery we had encountered that very full day. Utah is why God gave us eyes. It was beyond imagination.