It’s “Grand”, alright…!!

Our first real ride in the U.S.A. has been a memorable one… We covered 820 km and spent twelve hours on the road…!!

Mary went out of her way to assist and ferry me around Phoenix to collect the Big Fella.

I left the home of Mary Pacini in Gilbert, Phoenix at 6.45 am, a good time to get out onto the road, considering the heat that would later envelop the area…!!

Mary’s beautiful home, where the Big Fella took up a fair portion of her garage…!!

Mary is a friend of Patricia’s and hosted me for the few days I was in Phoenix.

Last night we had a very pleasant dinner with her friends Mike and Lorie, who have traveled extensively throughout the south-west, and were able to give me advice on which were the best roads to ride on my way to the Grand Canyon…

Mike has ridden a variety of bikes over the years and his current favourite is a Kawasaki Versus, the same bike that my friend Adrian in Bogotá, Colombia, rides… We swapped travel stories until after the bewitching hour and I thoroughly enjoyed our evening together…

Jake’s Corner Grocery Store, was obviously a classy place…!!

I headed north towards Payson on Highway 87, winding my way up into the mountains, and was soon at around 2 000 m.a.s.l. The temperature was far more pleasant than it had been in Phoenix, and for the remainder of the day, I would not be affected by the hot conditions I had been expecting…

I came close to running out of fuel about an hour north of Phoenix… I had expected to find fuel far more easily in the US than I had in South and Central America, but in these sparsely populated parts, fuel stops were far and few between…!!

My luck was continuing to hold out though, and with my range reading “0” I spied a sign for the small town of Tonto Basin, and beneath it the logo indicating fuel was for sale there…

Before I reached Tonto Basin, I came across a roadside store that had a fuel pump outside and refueled there… I also filled two of my spare fuel bottles, knowing that I would be using them sooner or later…!!

Jake’s Corner was a general store that sold supplies to both local and campers visiting the Theodore Roosevelt Lake and it’s environs, which was just a few miles down the road… The friendly owner and I chatted for a while before I bade him farewell and headed back towards Highway 87…

This sign posted on the wall of the General Store had me smiling… I had seen a similar one with a South African twist to it back home…

I passed through the little town of Pine and rode on to another little village named Strawberry… The hills in this area were covered in what seemed to be natural pine forests, the trees reminding me of the Patula species back home…

My plan to ride the 50-odd km of dirt road west of Strawberry was thwarted by this sign….

Mike had suggested I ride the Fossil Creek road on my way to Camp Verde, instead of taking the main road that would lead me back towards the Interstate 17, and on to Sedona…

The road was a hard-packed, gravel track and wound it’s way through the low range of mountains east of the Interstate. I was looking forward to seeing the beautiful scenery that Mike had described to me the night before…

The Forestry Department were taking no chances…!!

A few miles outside Strawberry, and having been on the Fossil Creek road for only a short while, I came across signs that had me turning around and heading back the way I had come.

The road had been closed to all traffic due to fire hazard warnings which today were listed as “Extreme”…

The massive fires burning in Colorado, obviously had the local authorities on edge, and they had decided to keep all traffic out of the sensitive forested areas in this region…

Back on the ’87, I missed the turnoff to Sedona, believing that I would only end up being turned back again by fire hazard signs… I ignored all of Gi-Gi’s instructions to “turn left at the next intersection”, and by the time I realised that I had ridden too far north to hook up with the Sedona road, it was too late to turn back…

The highway took me onto a high plateau where the pine trees gave way to low scrub and a few stunted trees…

An open invitation to high speed…!! The road leading to Winslow, was devoid of traffic and other obstacles which might hinder our very swift progress…!!

There was hardly any traffic on this stretch of road and I could see far into the distance. I figured this was as good a place to give the Big Fella a blast and with a steady twisting of the throttle, we were soon cruising at 180 km/h, getting rid of any carbon build-up that might be lining the throttle bodies…!!

The small town of Winslow was perched on the edge of the I-40, and we turned east on this wide expanse of road and headed towards Flagstaff…

I hooked up with a few Harley riders and we rode together to the turnoff that led north towards the Grand Canyon… They stopped for fuel and a late breakfast, while I continued north, eager to get to the Canyon and from there decided where I would spend the night…

I rode through the Navajo Indian Reservation, past the town of Gray Mountain and on to Cameron, where we turned west on the H-64 and rode through rain for the a few miles before reaching the entrance to the National Park…

Entry to most National Parks in North America cost about $20.00, and I had plans to visit at least a dozen of them over the next few weeks… Mike had advised me to purchase an Annual Pass, which cost $80.00 and was valid for a full year… This is similar to our “Wild Card” back home, and will allow me access to all the parks I intend to visit without having to trouble my wallet again…

As I took the turnoff to Desert View, my heart rate increased significantly… This had always been one of the places I intended to visit on my tour… It had been a long time coming…!!

A short distance from the main entrance was the first view-point of many I would stop at to stare in awe at the magnificence of the Grand Canyon… This area is what is known as the Southern Rim, and “Desert View” is on the far eastern side of the Canyon…

I was surprised at the size of the parking grounds and the hundreds of vehicles I found there… Apart from the cars and large mobile campers, I also saw dozens of motorcycles, and noticed that none of the riders wore helmets…

I tied mine to the back of the bike and decided to ride through the park wearing a bandana only, and this was only to keep the sun burning a hole through my pip…!!

The viewpoint was built on the edge of the canyon rim, and a large stone watchtower, whose bottom floor was taken up by a very well stocked curio shop, allowed visitors to climb up a series of stairways to the very top, where the views of the canyon were spectacular to say the least…

From atop the watchtower at Desert View, I stood staring out over the Canyon in wonder… The Colorado River snaked its way through the bottom of the canyon…

The Grand Canyon is considered to be one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and is almost 450 km long and 30 km wide in some places… The Colorado River is almost a mile below the rim of the canyon in places…!!

Whe an elderly gentleman asked me what I thought of the Canyon, I replied,

“Well sir… It’s certainly the biggest crack I’ve ever seen…!!”

He and his family “cracked up” with laughter and then spent the next few minutes asking me about my trip… I was dressed in full riding kit and obviously attracted many a curious glance from the visitors at the viewpoint…

Another “megatick” on the GBWT… The Grand Canyon…!!

The Grand Canyon attracts almost 5 million visitors a year, and is one of America’s top tourist destinations… The first European to lay eyes on this particular geological fault, did so in 1540…

And the Big Fella got to see it close up too…!!

I rode on through the park, stopping at the various viewpoints and meeting up with other riders doing the very same thing… We all stood staring out at the walls and myriad of colours that the sun was exposing as it began it’ slow fall to the west…

Like myself, many people stood silently while they absorbed the spectacle… People seemed to whisper to each other rather than talk in normal tones… At one such viewpoint, where there were far fewer visitors, I was able to sit quietly and reflect on the long rides I had made to date, and all the fantastic natural wonders which had come before this one…

What would you give to change places with me now…??

I cruised slowly through the park, enjoying the feeling of being without a helmet, the sun beating down on my face and when I was moving, the wind blowing over my head and shoulders…

When in Arizona…!! No helmet laws in this state, so I joined all the other bikers by not wearing mine…!!

The main camp was abuzz with tourists, the parking lot packed to capacity… I parked in the shadows of one of the building and walked out to the main viewing area… It was blazing hot at this point and I wished I was wearing the light clothing that everybody else was wearing…!!

I decided not to stay in the park, even though it was going on 3.00 pm… I made my way towards the main exit and stopped to take a photo there… A guy came running over to ask if he could take a photo with me in the picture, and I handed him my camera with gratitude…

After a wonderful ride through the park, I was ready to take my leave and head towards Williams…

Good coffee in Red Lake…. Seriously…!! I mean it…!!

I rode through Tusayan, a touristy village just outside the park and then bombed south towards Valle and Red Lake, where I stopped to shelter from a sudden rainstorm that had me soaked in minutes…

On Interstate 40, and looking to get off…!! Or maybe make a dash for Los Angeles…?? Not…!!

I was surprised at how high the sun still hung in the sky on the approach to Williams, where I had planned to spend the night… I judged that there might still be at least two hours of good riding light left and made a snap decision to ride on…

I took the I-40, heading west to Seligman, where I turned off onto the historic Route 66, happy to be off the interstate highway and onto narrower country roads…

Not that there was much to see in these parts… The surrounding lands were flat, broken here and there by a series of low hills…

Route 66…. Not the most glamorous section….!! That would have to wait for my return from Alaska…

At Hackberry, I slowed down to see if there was a place to stay and could not see any… In fading light I lit the afterburners and tore west towards Kingman, and entered this industrial town just as the sun was setting… Kingman seemed to be a truckers hub, as hundreds of big rigs were parked on the roadside or in lay-bys, their drivers sitting around on camp chairs, shooting the breeze…

Racing trains to Kingman… Some of them more than 100 coaches long, like colourful snakes twisting through the countryside…

Motel 6 was the cheapest place I could find before nightfall, and after checking in, I shucked my jacket and lay on the lumpy bed for half an hour, thinking about the long ride I had just made and the 12 hours I had spent on the road…

I realized that with these great road conditions, I would be able to cover fairly good distances if I needed to over the next week or so, and getting to Vancouver by the 10th or 12th of July was no longer a worry…

Phoenix to Kingman… All in a hard day’s ride…!!

I checked my route for the following day, and changed it to culminate in Bakersfield instead of Death Valley, confident that I could put in another big ride and still take in a few of the sights I wanted to see…

After a short walk to a nearby convenience store to get “supplies” (you know the ones…!!) I ran a critical eye over the Big Fella, checking the small oil leak from the gearbox that Victory BMW had not been able to take a proper look at… I wondered if they had topped the gearbox oil up like I asked them to…!! If they had, the Big Fella wasn’t saying…!!

He was as disappointed as I was by the shoddy service we had received in Phoenix…!! The bike had run well and certainly showed a turn of speed that we had long last had a tilt at… But still, there were many small things that I had hoped to sort out before the long ride to Alaska, and I wondered when next I could afford to stop for a day or two and have them sorted…

Not for some time, I suspect…!!

©GBWT 2012