Continuing on toward Bryce Canyon, I was nearly left speechless (yeah, I know, like that could happen) by the beauty of the rock formations. Like an idiot I didn't have my GoPro on, but fortunately Dan has snapping shots from his camera that he had on a tether on his jacket. So the pictures are his. I eventually stopped and put it on to capture the rest of the area. Brilliant red rock and weird formations all along the way. This area is what made me resolve to take Vicki back here with me some day.
Along with the beauty was danger though.
The crosswinds were pretty vicious all day long. Along SR24 just outside of Torrey, Utah I had one of the scariest moments riding yet. I was safely passing a pickup truck when just as I was getting past the nose of the truck I got hit with a hard blast from my right and pushed me within inches of the dirt shoulder, which at better than 75mph would have been, well, bad. Yeah, you could say my adrenaline had kicked up to 100%. That day Utah tried to kill me twice with switching crosswinds, but I don't hold anything against it. A bit later after getting out of the Capital Reef area I found myself riding beside a really interesting dried riverbed canyon. It is in the area of Jacob's Chair. I have no idea what the name of this area is, but I named it "Cowboy Canyon" because it looks like so many cowboy movies where the robber gang rides into a hidden canyon with a dried riverbed for a road. It went on for miles and I was entranced by it.
But eventually we got out of the canyon area and ended up on the flats heading toward Hanksville. By then the winds were really howling and starting to pick up sand - definitely not fun. It was around 5pm and after getting gas we decided to eat dinner at Duke's Slick Rock Grill. It looked decent and the food was really good. I had an odd embarrassing moment. I was trying to text Vicki to let her know where I was. The problem was that I didn't know where I was. So the waitress comes up while Dan and Bill were out getting something from their bikes or in the bathroom and I ask her "I know this sounds pretty stupid, but where am I?"
With that straight line she could have gone a lot of directions, but she was nice and just told me I was in Hanksville. I thought it was pretty funny, though. After dinner we headed south on SR95 trying to find a place with showers to camp. I looked on my phone while at dinner and found a couple possibilities in Blanding and once we got in the sun was nearly down.
After a bit of trial an error we ended up at the Kampark which was behind a gas station which doesn't sound too great, but they did have showers and it wasn't really that bad a camp, especially in the straits we were in. Protected from the wind, we finally got our showers and had a decent night's sleep. It was well-earned too as this was my biggest day ever - 560 miles!
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
