Zion and Death Valley

After saying goodbye to my aunt and thanking her for housing me and my bike, I made my way south of Phoenix to a bike shop where hopefully, the electrical demons that haunted my auxiliary lights and my horn would be exorcised in a ritual that only a dealer technician could safely perform. Three hundred dollars later I was on my way, all lights working and one horn in need of replacement (no parts available for that).

With a commitment near Los Angeles later in the week, I decided to briefly head north to escape the heat. Six thousand feet in elevation gain to Flagstaff and things cooled down a bit. And since north was the direction of the day, I pushed on to Page, the town closest to the dam in the Colorado River that holds back lake Powell. I enjoyed an excellent trail run and some great red rock-near-water scenery.

I got an early start the next day so that I could put some miles behind me and then enjoy the afternoon on foot. Heading west from Page, one passes through the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, a huge area where giant uplifts of soil and rock provide good evidence of how certain of the earth’s features have been shaped. I’d been through a northern portion of the monument before and it was good to also see some of the south. (I remember liking the northern section better).

With little time to lose, I sped west again to my all-time favorite park, Zion. This was my fourth visit and I could see myself returning many times without complaint! I found a campsite and hopped the shuttle into the park’s valley. Given an entire day, I would have hiked to observation point, but with only four hours of light, I decided to run the several miles and 1,500 foot rise up to Angel’s landing. Who was I kidding? – I’m in no shape to actually run to the top of that! I did hike/jog more than half of it, then back down to the valley floor and most of the way back to camp. Although the park has no showers, it does have streams. And on that day, a nice dip in the water felt very good indeed (funny thing is that I was the only one swimming).

After a decent night’s sleep in Zion (it would have been better than “decent” if I had removed a couple rocks from underneath my tent), I headed southwest toward Las Vegas. In doing so, I lost the elevation that I had gained two days prior, so the mercury went back up and Paul resumed sweating heavily.

I stopped by the Vegas BMW dealership. They didn’t have a replacement horn either. But that turns out to be okay since the horn has started to work properly again (it had never completely stopped working; it just started to sound muted). And at about the same time that the horn came back to life, two auxiliary lights completely died. I have no confidence in the work performed at the Chandler (near Phoenix) BMW dealership. After all, they clearly can’t even perform an exorcism.

I didn’t realize my lighting malfunction until I was 100 miles out of Vegas, well on my way to Death Valley. I’d never been to Death Valley before but I’m very glad to have visited. I entered the park from the east and went to Furnace Creek (or “crick,” depending where you grew up). Then down to Badwater where the elevation is -282 feet, the lowest point in the US. On the road, my GPS reported that I was -270 feet, so while I suppose that it may have been hotter elsewhere in the park, I find it difficult to imagine. I absolutely recommend that anyone visit, but they should be prepared to drink as much water as possible but to also realize that they’ll never keep up with how much they’ll sweat, especially if they wear a big hot power ranger suit like I do.

From Death Valley, I rode southwest to Barstow CA. Tomorrow’s ride to a town near Los Angeles will be short as measured in miles, but possibly long in terms of time if L.A. traffic lives up to its reputation.

This weekend should be pretty interesting; I’ll be taking an off-road motorcycle riding class geared toward ginormous dual sport bikes such as mine. You can be quite sure that I’ll be wearing all me protective gear for this!!