Utah: Riding In The Land Of Rocks And Sand

Glad you're enjoying the trip, Ian! It truly is a spectacular place. Canyonlands is very hands-on if you have the means to get out into the meat of the park. Try going to Yosemite sometime. It seems to be off-limits to folks in vehicles. The only way to truly see it is to hike down into it, which a lot of people can't do for various reasons.

I really like this bike...

Yeah, flat-footing on one side with the help of rock...

Old and new...


Ran into a bunch of this stuff on our way down into Moab...


We hit up our favorite pizza joint for a much-needed meal, then made another trip to GearHeads to pick up some new French press coffee cups. Then it was non-stop up the hill at fairly high rates of speed, racing the sunset all the way. We won...

After loading up we settled in for a nice evening in camp, our last in Utah. This place is so spiritually uplifting, so inspiring, and so good at bringing us down to earth and letting us know how insignificant we really are in the Grand scheme of things. Yes, that's Grand with a capital G. The geological history of our planet is laid bare for all to see here, and it so totally gives me something huge and wondrous to ponder every time I'm here. I was thankful and grateful to have the opportunity to ride here, and I was feeling slightly ashamed for wanting more, for not wanting this incredible trip to end. But end it would, though, as we would be leaving in the morning.
Not before having more trouble with the charging system in the van, though. We'd gotten a new alternator at Parts Plus in Ely, NV on the way out. Now the van was doing the exact same thing it was doing before. We took it to Arches Auto Repair and had the owner go through it and do some testing. Super cool guy, used to own the 76 station on Claremont and College in Oakland. While waiting we walked to Mi Ranchita for breakfast, and it was superb! Tasty, cheap, super-friendly family running it...good stuff!

We ended up turning in our original alternator and getting a free one from the Parts Plus in Moab. Eric is good at swapping them out by now...


1/2 hour later we were heading west with a perfectly-running van!
We drove for hours on end and finally found our spot for the night...one of our favorite hot ponds. And guess what? It was absolutely trashed...again


Seriously, folks...if I ever catch you despoiling one of nature's most precious gifts to man I can guarantee you I will personally shove each and every can, bottle, used condom, cigarette butt, shotgun shell, bottle cap, bic lighter, etc. down your motherf@*#ing throat. Guaranteed.
After straightening the place up...again...it was time for some damned relaxation...

This time we were prepared and had a huge garbage bag with us. We wandered through the sagebrush on the way back to the van and picked up every piece of human detritus we could find. And it was a lot. We found this out there and don't know what it is. Anyone?


This is what we drove away with...

All the way home I culled and edited my photos on my laptop, reliving the trip in every delicious detail...much like I've done with this ridiculously long ride report. If you're still here and hanging with me, thank you! You deserve a medal of some sort! If you bailed long ago...well, I don't blame you
Anyway, thanks again for letting me share and use up precious CafeHusky bandwidth
Just a warning: I might go back to Utah for a few weeks next year. Ride report on the way...of course

I like my TR650 a lot too

That reminds me, I've been meaning to share my super secret Taqueria for a while now... think I'll go check them out for lunch!

Thanks,Walt! Thanks for having the patience to not bail on me And thanks for the info. I figured that's what the post was...something along those lines, anyway.

Ok, Ace. Thanks

And a big to you, too, for being able to wade through the avalanche of photos

Thank you, lanky one!

We'll probably end up out there again next year sometime. I hope!


Ok, now I gotta get to working on the report from the week we spent in Nevada a few weeks ago

Yeah, and you know what follows that, right? You lose it! I fully expect to show up one of these days and see it gated off. I sure as hell would lock it up if it were my property! Grrr...pisses me off to no end just thinking about it

As usual you had a epic adventure. Great ride report and good job on cleaning up after someone else.

Yeah, the Saharas have been way better than I thought they would be. The rear doesn't have a lot of bite on the pavement and it's pretty slidey but the front seems good so no problems there.

The suspension is rough for me. I just saw 118lbs on the scale last night (first time in 20 years ) and I'm afraid the engineers did not have me in mind when suspending this thing. It's good enough for the riding I've been doing with it, and I do like the suspension rather stiff when hustling on pavement, but I'd like to re-spring it at some point. I'm pretty much on one tippy-toe when coming to a stop on flat pavement. I look like a total dork

As far as it being slim and trim? Well, if you're comparing it to my SV650 then maybe It's a big, tall, top-heavy pig compared to my svelte 610. It's all relative, I guess. When I'm riding it it feels great. When I'm pushing it around the back yard or pushing it up the driveway it feels incredibly heavy.

I had the subframe fixed and beefed up, including the holes where the bolts were. I can now use bigger and beefier bolts. My welder guy did a fantastic job on it. We brought it home, Eric immediately took his subframe off and we took it down for a beefing up, too. The guy does fantastic work. I'm in trouble if he retires before I quit riding and breaking stuff

Thanks Big Guy. Well, not only do I not want to sit amongst someone else's garbage, I also don't want the place to get closed off to the public. The sad part is that if it ever does get closed off these jerks will probably just jump the fence and trash it again anyway. The closest town is Battle Mountain and I have a feeling they're locals from there

Sadly, you might be right about that. We always have trash bags for this sort of thing, and I always leave a camp site cleaner than I found it. I hope that in some small way it helps make up for the people that have no conscience or good sense.

Another awesome ride report. You two sure live it up!

Thank you for taking the time to clean up that hot spring... again. I will never understand why someone would want to go to a place like that and just trash it. Good thing we have people like you and Eric to help keep our outdoors beautiful. Hopefully someone catches them someday and feeds them a little justice.