Are you joking?
As my buddies and I prepare for our cross country motorcycle trip San Diego to New York for Seaweed and Gravel Good Luck Tour, my cousin Mark says he wants to join us on the first few days of the trip. I was stoked because Mark and I have taken a few trips together before and they always were amazing and inspirational.
The days off were secured, the families were scheduled to be all good for our time away. The anticipation was so exciting, I couldn't wait to get out on the road and take the next month off to go across the continental U.S.
Then we got the call, the cb750 Tom Laveuf was building for the trip would not be ready in time. Also, Brady's cb550 had not been properly tested since the build up. They needed more time...
Mark and I had already scheduled our time to be off and away. We decided let's roll and see when these guys can get their bikes ready. We headed out the morning of the scheduled day to leave. There was really no plan but we wanted to try and cover as much ground as possible. Mark had it all in his head and I was just following his lead and felt relived to not be making the decisions at this point.
Mark left from Thousand Oaks and me from San Diego to meet up on interstate 15 to head to Utah.
We made it to Zion National Park about an hour before sunset which made for an amazing golden light ride through the tunnels and back to Springdale for accommodations for the night.
Mark is riding his Triumph Tiger dual sport and I am riding my old trusted stripped down 1978 GL1000 Goldwing. At every stop somebody always makes a comment about the old goldwing. Mark just laughs every time. Nobody comments on his brand new, state of the art dual sport bike.
After Zion we head to Mt. Carmel junction, which has a great selection of novelty items, pins, stickers, mugs, etc. We head North open 89 towards Escalante. The views are amazing. We keep stopping to take in the views.
From here we head towards Hanksville. On the way there are plenty of amazing views looking south in the grand staircase of Utah.
The shadows were getting long but we pressed on. I had no idea where we were headed and we had passed plenty of beautiful campgrounds on the way. The destination was a KOA in Green River. The horizon line as the sun set to my left started getting blurry and a strange and wonderful hypnotic feeling took me over as we approached highway 70.
My buddies that have ridden with me long distance know that I can get Hangry real easy. This was one of those instances. KOA's are normally wonderful and this one was too but the town of Green River is basically a truck stop. Our campsite backed up against the back end of a hotel 6 where there were strong lights, moving truck and loud people all night. I was not in a pleasant mood thinking of all those great campgrounds we had passed. Well, Mark got me some delicious food at the local restaurant and all was fine with world and out like a light.
In the morning (day 3) we head into Colorado via Grand Junction.
From here we head to Steamboat Springs. The weather is perfect and the views were amazing.
From Steamboat Springs we headed south toward Brekenridge Colorado.
At Poncho Springs we hanged a right anded to Gunnison.
To be continued in Part 2 of the Rockies Utah Motorcycle Trip...