Loren writes from the West Coast:

July 10, 2006
The towering mountains wore down into sand, which gathered in great dunes thousands of feet high. So great was their weight that the dunes sank into the earth and, with the primordial rains, became an inland sea. The creatures that lived and died in the sea left their white skeletons and ivory shells in layers hundreds of feet deep. When the sea had dried to dust, the earth heaved and its heart cracked and bled vermilion down the face of the tortured rock. And water seeped from the earth and became creeks and the creeks trickled together until they became a river. The river was called Virgin. And when she was angry, she cut the rock a thousand feet deep and ran red with the silt of the wound.

Of course, this all happened before we got to Zion. By the time we got there, they had built roads into and of that self-same rock: rusty coils of narrow lanes that switched back and forth up the face of the red cliffs until the cliffs became too steep and they were forced to bore into the crushed dunes and doomed crustaceans a tunnel over a mile long. Woodstock seemed to relish the throaty rumble of the bikes in the tunnel and made an almost continuous, Homerific  “Wooo-hooo”, matched only by Buckeye’s own from the Conestoga.

And we were only getting started! Eastern Zion was not as precipitous, but the rock was even more disjointed and jumbled. Odd outcroppings, weird walls and preposterous protuberances greeted us at each twist and waved goodbye at each turn. If Nature was a stand-up comic, eastern Zion would be her riff. OK, we’re outta here! Zion was history as we slipped through the pines and dropped off the mesa down to Mt. Carmel Junction. (Brief stop: Buckeye and Cutter Kate had to pee. OK, OK! But someone has to maintain the verisimilitude!) Now Highway 89 North is a very beautiful stretch of nearly untouched nature. Man’s art here is gentle and merely a taming of the grasses. The conifer covered cliffs remain. Rain threatened, so at Hatch we donned our rain gear, but all we got was a rudimentary baptismal. A right on Highway 12 and then “Oh my Gawd! How do they keep coming up with this stuff?!” Yet a new compilation of red rocks called (where do they get these original names?) Red Rock. Weird stuff. Stacks of rocks like little men—monks maybe, passing judgment on we who passed by. Then a verdant plain on the top of the mesa—grasses, and animals to eat said grasses. Right turn at Ruby’s Inn and we are on our way to Bryce Canyon. The fragrance of pine is palpable, a little at least, above the stench of RV diesel. We lunch at the Bryce Canyon Lodge. A short walk to the rim and the stunning vista presented itself like a melted Creamsicle plantation. Orange, pink and cream against an azure sky was enough to suck the breath from one’s lungs.

We backtracked to Highway 12 and turned to the east. We dropped off the mesa through a canyon that might as well have been part of Bryce. Down and down, through the pines, through the pinion and into the scrub and cactus. The great white and red cliffs of the Escalante Staircase stood guard on our left. And then we began to climb the stairs. Up and up, until the scrub gave way to pine and aspen and then to nothing at all. At 8,000 feet or so, we topped the mesa and found a vista that reached over cut and folded rock all the way back to San Diego. Un—freakin—believeable! Down and down, through the pine and aspen and errant cow and/or deer-on-the-road. Then it got really weird. It got kinky, actually. The road simply could not make up its mind. Rightleftrightrightleft and down, down, down. Pink, white, red—no white! Wait, no pink! No—what the hell color is that? “This road is totally freaking me out!”, says Buckeye as we snake down Devils Backbone—a road on a ridge with a thousand feet of oblivion on either side. And then, only then, do we get to Capitol Reef National Park.

There are simply not enough superlatives to describe the beauty and number of shades of red and the number and possible configurations of rocks in Capitol Reefs. Indeed, the entire length of Highway 12, from the Highway 89 turnoff to the lunar landscape of the eastern edge of Capitol Reefs is probably the quintessentially finest motorcycle road in the world. For variety, bike-friendly curves and simple beauty, there is none—absolutely none that can compare. I pity the poor eastern Long Reach Long Riders. They have no idea. For the entire run, much of the pavement is wet, but we have yet to meet a real rainstorm. We have threaded the dreaded rain needle between the storms and we are lucky indeed! At the junction of Highway 24 we gas up at the Hole-in-the-Mountain (Kitsch, but no match for the Bonnie Springs Motel.) The road now is mostly straight and mostly fast up to I-70. Right on I-70 to meet some hellacious crosswinds. We get to wear the tread off the left sides of our tires as we lean into the wind. The Conestoga is swinging in the wind as well. Soon we head south off the freeway to Moab and Arches National Park.

Smooth sailing into Moab—not! The rain we missed dumped its load petulantly on Moab instead and the result was a mudslide across the main—nay only—artery into the town. Massive earth movers are clearing the road in the flickering light of Highway Patrol strobes. Traffic moves slowly through the morass, kicking up red (it’s always red) mud, caking the bikes with rust and brown. “My poor baby!” cries Woodstock, with regards to her nearly-new Harley Davidson Heritage Softail. Our destination is the Moab Brewery where the manager, a certain Michael Miller, has generously donated the evening’s repast to help the riders defray the cost of the trip. We are served by an auspiciously named host called Vivian. She certainly was vivacious and very funny. We were treated like royalty, as were all the guests in the pub. It was good food, good company and good fun. But we are dog tired. It has been an eleven hour ride and we are ready for bed at the Sleep Inn Moab (get it?). Poor Tiffany at the front desk can’t deal with a cranky biker (Grits) and gets flustered trying to take in the Conestoga license number which Grits can call from memory and does so at least a dozen times. “I’m sorry 6L24 what? Tee hee!”

“It’s late and I’ll do the damned web log tomorrow!” says Grits, who is even now a day behind.