October 11--Mordor II--then home!!

We left Durango at 7:45 a.m., just as a few drops of rain started to fall with 402 miles to go to get home. It was looking very black in Durango, so we planned on having breakfast in Cortez. The weather was mixed, sunny for a while, then cloudy. But on the stretch of road from Cortez, CO to Monticello, Utah we hit 50+ gusts on old route 666 in New Mexico and Hwy 6 Utah. That was horrid! It was the weather ahead of the Hurricane hitting the Baja. We tried to get ahead of it, it was headed north.

By the time we got to Moab, we were ahead of it, but then we met some other storm system from the west, and had more 50+ winds from Moab to the I-70 intersection. By now I was really dreading the stretch from I-70 north to Price, but it was surprisingly smooth until the last 15 miles or so before we arrived in Price. From Price on it looked okay, so we kept going.

By the time we got to SLC and looked towards Bountiful, it was looking pretty black. Steve drove through town at 80+ mph (just keeping up with traffic), and as we drove up Chelsea, it was black and threatening. We pulled into the drive, opened the garage, and pulled the bike in the garage 5 minutes before the snow started. (The picture on the far left was taken the day we left on our trip, and the one on the right was taken 4 hours after we got home.) And snow it did. The next morning we had 8 inches on the ground! Boy did we feel blessed and grateful to be home safely!

We traveled 9,802 miles, across 24 states and 5 provinces, and are glad to be home, but happy we made our journey and thankful for the opportunity to see so much of this wonderful country we live in.

October 10--uh-oh...then Jamie's place

The beginning of the ride up from NM was beautiful. Nice cool weather, no clouds, lots of nice sunshine. Jamie had warned us about the section from above Albuquerque to Aztec, NM. It started out a little windy, but by the time we were 30 miles out from Aztec the wind was ferocious. Just as we arrived in Aztec, NM, Steve was having problems with the bike and it turned out we had a flat front tire. He pumped it up, and we headed for the nearest tire store to see if we could get it fixed. Three miles later at the store, it was going flat again. It was a bad valve stem causing the problem, and the tire store couldn’t fix it. So we headed west to Farmington to the Four Corners Harley Davidson dealer. Two stops later to pump up the tire, a Harley Rider stopped and asked if we needed help. At that point, we said yes, and he rode on to the dealer to have them send a truck. In the meantime, Steve decided to try it one more time (this time with duct tape!), and we drove into the dealer just as it was going flat again. They called their truck back and got our bike in the shop within a few minutes of our arrival. They were greattt! people and a great dealership, especially O.D. and Jeff. The dealership is just in the process of buying the local Honda dealer out. If you have a MC and are going through Farmington, NM stop by and see the dealership and buy something from them. They are awesome!!!

So what we thought was going to be a fairly short day, turned out much longer than we had thought. Jamie made reservations for us at local camp ground along Animas River in Durango and picked us up after we got set up and took us to fabulous restaurant. We got to see her apartment, her new bicycle, and she located her roommates in one of the local bars and introduced us. After a nice evening, Jamie took us home and we had showers and tucked ourselves in and got ready for an early start on our last day of riding.

October 9--Dancing Cranes B&B--Jim and Jana's

We set out early in the cool of the morning just before dawn. It is pretty cool when the GPS screen on the Goldwing switches automatically at dawn from the night screen to the daytime screen. We had set our GPS for a “short-cut” to San Antonio, NM to avoid El Paso and 150 extra miles. Little did Steve realize that there are 4 San Antonio, NM towns in the GPS! By the time we realized it, it cost us most of the time and mileage savings we had planned on.

We stopped in Pecos, NM (I think) for gas and had some great chili pepper/choriso egg burritos for a snack from the gas convenience store. Too bad we didn’t have more because they were terrific!

We met a 73 year old judge (and former cop!) in Vaughn, NM. He was riding a 400 cc scooter back to his home in Texas. He’s had a lot of ‘rides’ including a K1200RS which he had just sold after getting a ticket and fine from a local cop and a friend of his, the local judge! He still has two BMW motorcycles in his garage but, since he was diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago, he likes to ride the scooter which doesn’t require a lot of strength to balance. What a character and genuinely interesting man!

It was a long day and Kathy was very sore! Before heading to Jim and Jana’s, we had a bite to eat and a beer at the brew pub in Soccoro to kill the pain!

Stayed at Jim & Jana’s Dancing Cranes B&B 505-517-9273 outside of San Antonio, NM (the one in Soccoro county). Wow, what a great place! They have put in a new pond since we were there last and Jim has been working on planting lots of high country plants and trees. He put three cat tails in early in the spring around the pond, and now it is almost completely lined with cattails! The garage building is in the middle of remodeling. A third of it will become another B&B room large enough for 3-4 people to use, and the rest will become the new Dancing Crane store. Jim showed off all the plantings, and we had a great visit talking about politics, life and our families. Jana, as always, served up a great meal and we consumed several bottles of Costco red wine. The king bed was fabulous, and we slept like logs!

Jim introduced me to the Agastache bush which is a fabulous hummingbird attractor. I brought the catalog home to shop from this winter and will see where I can put two or three.

Tomorrow (Friday) we are headed for Durango to spend the evening with Jamie before heading home. We’ve been watching the forecast in Bountiful, and it looks like it could be nasty on the weekend, so we want to try to get home as early as we can on Saturday.

October 8--West Texas

We woke up early to a beautiful morning and started off in 56 degrees under clear skies. Made it in short order to San Antonio, Tx. Kathy took over driving (her first time on the bike pulling the trailer with ‘two up’). She handled all 1,600 pounds of us just great! West Texas turned out to quite pretty but it was a long 500 plus mile day broken by some great BBQ at Coopers BBQ in Junction, Texas. Don’t miss eating at Coopers if you have a reason to be going East/West on Hwy 10 between El Paso and San Antonio. But then, why would you ever be there?

We decided we still ‘had legs’ when we drove into Sonora (Steve had taken back the driving) so decided to make an extra couple of hundred miles and make it to Fort Stockton before settling in for the night.

As we moved west across Texas, the topography got flatter and flatter, and windier and windier. I was thinking they should be putting up wind generators, and voila! I began to see them. First a few, then thousands of them! Obviously there were many that were not visible from the freeway, but just the ones we could see were certainly all rotating in the wind.

Fort Stockton appears to us to be Rock Springs moved to West Texas. If you know Rock Springs then you’ll appreciate just how ‘stimulating’ this culturally deprived place is to us. If you’ve never been to either Rock Springs or Fort Stockton, you really don’t need to put it on your must visit list. They also charge an arm and a leg for a room in Ft. Stockton, I think mainly because of all the oil work going on. The RV parks (they had 7 of them) were particularly unappealing so we got the best deal we could find and settled in.

Tomorrow, on to San Antonio, New Mexico to spend the night with our good friends Jim and Jana. ‘(only 383 miles)

October 7--Norman!!!

We got another early start and continued through Louisiana, passing lots more Hurricane damage. We hit a massive but short rain storm at Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was very UGLY looking, so Steve took refuge under the awning at a closed gas station. We were about to go up over a long bridge, and decided to stay under the protection of the awning about 30 minutes until the rain and wind almost stopped.


Steve made a ‘pound the pavement’ run to Houston (he likened Houston to Mordor) through ‘beautiful’ Beaumont, Texas. Refineries, plastic plants and tire manufacturing dominated the toxic landscape. We saw many effects and heavy damage from the last hurricanes, Ike and Gustaf.

The weather cleared as we entered Houston, but it was hot and muggy. The freeway into Houston from the East was narrow, no shoulders, and lots of large pieces of trash on the limited shoulders that they did have. Unfortunately, the GPS didn’t ’take’ Steve’s last instruction to go to Norm’s office rather than directly to his apartment. By the time he realized he hadn’t completed the programming, we were at Norm’s apartment door. . . and realized that Norm’s office was well back on our trail . . .on the other side of downtown. Oh well! We sat at Borders drinking cold coffee drinks until Norm returned from work. We had a great visit with Norm and caught up on what’s been happening with them. We ended up at a Cajun restaurant eating shrimp, etc. and drinking beers and then back to the apartment to an exciting evening watching Barack in his 2nd debate with McCain. Go Barack!!! It turns out that Norm and Phyllis will be in SLC the weekend of October 17-19, so we’ll get to see both of them then. It was great to spend some time with Norman and his pet fly, Ralphie the 14th!

Tomorrow, we are on the way to El Paso with intentions of staying in Sonora. We’ve decided to ‘make tracks’ and head towards home without doing the 300 mile detour to Big Bend National Park or Austin. We will save it for a spring ride with Kevin and Julia!

Oct. 6th--On the way to Mordor

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 6th. We started out in Alabama and traveled through Mississippi past a lot of on-going roadside tree cleanup from Hurricane Katrina. I was surprised to learn that it was still cleanup from Katrina. We had a great meal at the Purple Parrot Cafe (terrific upscale place to eat and a great price!) in Hattiesburgh, Mississippi. After lunch and some driving, we stopped at a visitor information/rest area in MS. We were still seeing lots of people who had been at the NASCAR races in Birmingham. One of those nice people found us in the center and told us about a low tire on the trailer and offered to pump it up for us. But Steve was prepared with his own little compressor, and got it pumped up and looking good again. All along the route through Mississippi and into Louisiana we saw lots of Hurricane damage from Katrina, Gustaf, and Ike. And the RV camps were full with people living in RVs and helping with cleanup, or just living in RVs now. It is hot and muggy outside, so we decided to enjoy AC after a long day of traveling. Tomorrow we’ll be in Houston and are looking forward to a short visit with Norm.

Oct 5 and 6th--Alabama, MS, and LA

Well, we were up early on the 5th, and headed to Birmingham. Our plan was to get there early and drop the trailer at a motel central to the Museum of Art and the Barber Motorsports Park. We were in Birmingham by 10:30 a.m. We stopped first at the Quality Inn where we met their front desk clerk, a terrific guy. Yes they had a room for $79/night...oops, it’s still NASCAR Talledegas weekend and the computer shows the room rate is $130/night. He was a sweetheart, he tried everything he could to get us the normal rate, including calling the 1-800 number and acting like he was just a traveler. When he couldn’t, he suggested another hotel close by that was nice and clean and much more reasonable. What a dear!

So we checked in to his recommended hotel and dropped the trailer in front of our room, and headed to the Museum of Art for brunch. Unfortunately when we got there, they were completely booked up for brunch, so we ate at the Sheraton and then came back for the opening of the museum at noon. The museum had quite a wide range of art. One notable collection was an absolutely wonderful set of photographs by a woman named Marion Post Wolcott who worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (part of the WPA) during the Roosevelt years. She documented the conditions of migrant and farm workers in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina in the 30’s. The other impressive collection was a set of 11 Leonardo Da Vinci drawings brought over from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. The jazz group playing for the brunch could be heard throughout the museum, so we spent a delightful couple of hours wandering around.

Then we headed to the Barber Motorsports Museum and Track. What an incredible place! Steve was drooling for 3 hours, and I was so impressed with what they had and how they displayed it. They had two bikes, a BMW R100 and R80 ridden by a couple around the world back in the 80’s along with photos of their trip. As a result of their trip they made it to the Guinness record book! They had hundreds of beautifully restored bikes and bikes in original conditions covering 1905 to the present. They had pillars of bikes and walls of bikes. They had old bikes, new bikes, little bikes, big bikes. Norm and Kevin would have absolutely loved the place.

Random thoughts--

• Steve had a long and thorough discussion with Tennessee pig and bear hunters--concerning the relative merits of hunting these animals in the brush with a .44 caliber handgun or a .30-.30 lever action. . . and which meat was best to eat.
• The motto on the license plate for Alabama is “Stars fell on Alabama”. Isn’t that great?
• Steve lost the wrist rocker Jon gave him from his bike and the motorcycle stores don’t seem to keep them in stock. Guess we’ll have to order two or three when we get home.
• I talked with Meri today and Jamie yesterday, and everyone sounds well and appalled about Sarah Palin. Aren’t the SNL clips great!!! Tina Fay does an absolutely great Sarah Palin--she could be her double!
• We saw fields of the Katrina trailers today in MS, and they are still cleaning up blown over trees along the highway in MS after Katrina
  

We are headed towards Houston tomorrow, and plan to be there at Norm and Phyllis’ on Tuesday.

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 6th. It is hot and muggy outside, so we decided to enjoy AC after a long day of traveling. Tomorrow we’ll be in Houston!