Day Thirteen

We awoke just a little late his morning, at 6:15 AM. The hotel we stayed at had just about nothing for breakfast so we just packed up and went down the road 17 miles to get our first "real" breakfast of this trip. It was 58 degrees when we got rolling, but by the time we got the the restaurant it had already climbed to 70 so we knew the day would be a hot one.

Breakfast was outstanding. We stopped at the Thunderbird Restaurant in Mt. Carmel Junction UT. This is the intersection where we turned off of US-89 onto UT-9 which would take us directly into Zion National Park. The restaurant is part of a hotel and the whole place was quite well appointed and decorated and obviously very well maintained. They seated us right away and we got to watch the hummingbirds feeding in the window next to our table while we waited for our food to come. I wish I had gotten some pictures, but once again my camera and phone were both out on the bike. I got a veggie omelet which was outstanding, along with some really good hash brown potatoes and two sliced of honest to goodness fresh baked whole wheat bread. OK, so I ate 900+ calories for breakfast. I knew I wouldn't need to eat much else later in the day.

Just as we were about to leave, a couple of guys pulled in on a pair of BMW R1200-RT's. Larry chatted them up and found out they were from Missouri on their 32nd trip out west! He said they had been doing one long trip a year of 5000 miles or so but they were thinking about trying to do more, but shorter trips. We let them eat and headed off on our adventure.

Day 13 Track

From the restaurant, it was just a short hop of 15 miles to the entrance of Zion National Park. I really cannot begin to describe the beauty of this magical place. I am posting a pic here but I uploaded all the photos I took in Zion to my flickr page so if you really want to see them click here.

Shortly after entering Zion from the east entrance

The speed limit for the entire park is just 35 MPH, which normally would be too slow, but not here. You wanted to ride slow so as to see the beauty. It also made it easier for me to snap photos while riding using my left hand to operate the camera without stopping. We did stop once and I took a couple but most of what you will see on flickr were taken while moving. It was approximately 10 miles from end to end and it took us about 23 minutes to traverse that, including the one stop which was only about 2 minutes.

Even after we left the park there was still some pretty awesome scenery as we headed west north west to pick up AZ-9 which then took us north up to I-15 just north of Toquerville. From here is was about 30 miles up I-15 to get to our first waypoint of the day - Cedar City. Since this was an interstate with a posted speed limit of 80 MPH, we managed to cover that in 24 minutes and then we went looking for the post office. Once again, as so many times on this trip, the post office had NO city or state identification on it. So it was plan B which was a city sign that Larry had spotted on the way in.

Cedar City Utah

Next up was some backtracking back onto I-15 this time southbound. It was 43 miles on I-15 to get to our next waypoint - Washington UT and this time we were rewarded with an appropriately labelled post office - even though we had to park on the sidewalk and stand in the street to get the photos we needed.

Washington, UT

By now the day was high and so was the temperature. It was already in the upper 90's so we decided to don the cooling gear - that's shirts soaked in water put on under our jackets to effect evaporative cooling. It works VERY effectively - until the shirt dries out - which may be anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or so. It works so well in fact that at first, especially if you've already been really hot, it actually feels a bit cold! But soon that turns to cool relief until the moisture is all gone and you start getting hot again. We would repeat this effort 3 times to get us through this day where we rode in temps as high as 112 degrees, with most of the afternoon running between 106 and 110. We would stop for gas in Las Vegas NV where we originally thought we might stay for the night. Thanks to the interstate we were well ahead of schedule so we decided to press on to make Bullhead City NV, which is just 40 miles from the California border. We got into our hotel at about 2:45 PM and it was easily 110 degrees at the current elevation of just 557 ft. I have to say that never did a hotel lobby feel quite so good as it did today.

Tomorrow it is Needles CA to run the last segment of Route 66 that Larry didn't finish when he and his son Larry Jr (Bud) ran 66 back in 2007.

Stats for today: 375 miles in 9:13 elapsed time, 6:32 saddle time