A Geological Wonderland

Some days just start out beautifully and just keep getting better. When I was loading my motorcycle I struck up a conversation with a wonderful Dutch lady who was on a tour of the sights of Utah. Berdien Blom is from a small town in Holland and she loves to travel to North America. Coincidentally, her first trip was to Vancouver Island and she says that she would love to live in Canada.

Nerdier asked me if I had ever been to Holland. I replied that I hadn't but that my father had been there. Unfortunately it was during the fall and winter of 1944-45 which was one of the coldest winters in memory at that time. My dad told me that people were starving and we're eating tulip bulbs to stay alive. he also said that when the Canadians were trucking supplies to the front, sometimes bags of flour would accidentally fall of the trucks. She told me that she had been born in 1944, and that almost everyone in Holland  lost someone during the war.

We left Moab and headed south to Monticello  On the way we came across a large arch that I have never seen advertised so we pulled over and I took several photos. The people under the arch give an idea of the scale of it.

Wilson Arch

The real story

Carried on to Monticello, UT, where we stopped at the visitor center. The young man at the desk was very polite but he didn't seem to know much about Utah except for the area around Monticello. His accent was a southern one and he told me he was from South Carolina. He also said that he did a mission in Idaho, from which I took him to be a Mormon. He said that he told his mother that he would never marry a western girl, because he wanted to marry a 'southern belle'. His story was that, 'The Lord had different plans for me, because I ended up marrying a girl from Utah and now he's stuck there.

I asked him if he was military because every time he spoke to me he added, 'Sir,' to the end of the answer. He said that he wasn't but that his wife was and that she worked in PsyOps. I joked that he'd better be careful because he could find himself doing things that his wife wanted him to do instead of what he wanted to do. 

Our next stop was at the visitor center at a small town called Blanding, UT, where we met an extremely knowledgeable woman. She told us where we should go and great things to see on our ride to Natural Bridges National Park and beyond. She even knew that the shade trees outside the building were London button sycamores which I have never heard of.

Rocks from the Blanding, UT area

She told us to stop at the rest stop after we crossed the two bridges, one over the Colorado River, and one over Dirty Devil River. That has to be the all time best name for a river that I have ever heard. She also told us that the ride through White Canyon was a motorcyclist's dream. She was right on all accounts, but more o

Sometimes we take wrong turns in life and that's what happened today. Instead of making a right to go to the National Park, I kept on heading south past Hovenweep National Monument, all the way to a crossroads called Bluff, UT. I stopped at the Cow Canyon Trading Post to ask directions. If we had kept going south we would have come Monument Valley National park, but the lady there set me on my correct way so we backtracked the twenty miles to the proper highway.

The way things were

Twin Pillars, Bluff, UT

Cow Canyon Trading Post, Bluff, UT

King Rastus must have been a famous horse in the day.

An old time truck

The trading post had all sorts of Indian (that's what they call themselves in the US) art and a collection of old vehicles. The rock formations there were quite impressive as well.

The ride to Natural Bridges NP was through more amazing scenery. However, I had a few moments of alarm when I rode over some 'road snakes' and my front wheel began to slide on two occasions, and I was only doing about 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph). I hate road snakes and I'm more alarmed when I see them than I am when I see real snakes.

Jim decided to 'chill' at the Park, so Tom, Garry, and I did the nine mile loop where we saw more incredible rock formations and three natural bridges: Sipapu, Kachena, and Owachomo. All were different, but each was very large and unlike the arches in Arches NP which have been formed by wind, these bridges have been formed by water erosion.

Sipapu Natural Bridge

Kachena Natural Bridge

Owachomo Natural Bridge

Cactus Flower

Cactus Flowers

Fantastic shapes eroded by water

The last sight was the Bears Ears. There is a legend for how they got there but I won't tell it here. However, there is a big controversy here because president Obama is going to make this area into a National monument but a lot of people in this conservative state are opposed to that. I suspect that they want it to be privately owned, but then it would pass out of the hands of the people of the US and into the hands of some rich landowners. It seem to me to be treasure that should be preserved in it natural state for future generations, instead of being possessed by a small number of rich people or corporations who will do with it as they please.

The Bears Ears

Our ride took us through one of the most stunning sections of highway I have ever seen. White Canyon is hemmed in by red cliffs which loom over the highway. The variety of red tones in the rocks continues to surprise me. When I post photos the reader will see what I mean. At the northern end the canyon broadens out but the rocks are still as impressive. I have coined a new expression for this part of the world; 'Utah, A Geological Wonderland'.

Leaving Bluff, UT

After crossing the Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River, we climbed out of the canyon and made a stop at the Hite lookout. From this vantage point we could see the land that we had traversed and the Colorado River where it flows into Lake Powell. The lookout gets its name from a small town that was inundated by the rising waters of Lake Powell after the Colorado River was dammed. The lake was named after a Civil War veteran, John Powell, who was the first white person to explore the Colorado River.

Jacob's Chair

Jacob's Chair

Colorado River

We crossed this bridge over the Colorado River  to get to the Hite viewpoint

Typical sedimentary rocks from the area

Colorado River entering Lake Powell

We rode the highway mid-left to get to the viewpoint

Colorado River

Colorado River

Roadside rest stop

From there we continued nort to the small town of Hanksville where we stopped for gas. This is the most unusual store  have ever seen. It is inside a rock formation. Apparently, rather than erect a building, someone decided that it would be a better idea to excavate the space from  the rock. I imagine it saves on air conditioning costs in the summer and heating costs in the winter.

Appropriately named Hollow Mountain store, Hanksville, UT

The extremely windy final run in to Torrey, UT, took us through the Capital Reef National Park. The highway cut through the bluff is world famous, and rightly so. Again, cliffs loomed over us as the road snaked through the canyon that took us to Fruita where there are native petroglyphs carved into the sandstone.

Scenes in Capital Reef National Park

We arrived in Torrey around 7:00 pm. after having seen a great deal of spectacular scenery and covering more than five hundred kilometres (three hundred miles) in 100+F temperatures once again. The restaurant attached to the motel serves good food and we had a lot of laughs as we ate dinner.

In one of the more unusual events on this trip, Jim sprung his big surprise on us. He wore these pants to the restaurant. After dinner he took a smoke break outside and as he was strolling around the parking lot, I swear he was noticed by an older gentleman dressed in the local attire of checked shirt, blue jeans, suspenders and a cowboy hat. He looked at Jim and gave his head a shake. The photo below will be all the explanation you need to understand why.

America, the not so Beautiful

America the Beautiful

Dusk in Torrey, UT

However, and this is a short rant, it really irritates me when a motel/hotel offers 'Free WiFi' and when you book in, it is glacially slow. We have had this problem at Motel 6 on several occasions but the Broken Spur is the absolute worst. There should be some kind of requirement for a hotel that charges more than one hundred dollars a night to provide WiFi that provides internet speeds to a minimum standard. Tonight it took almost four hours to upload a video to YouTube. I was able to load that same length of video in between three and twenty minutes at several motels on this trip, so it shouldn't be difficult to do.

At rest for the night

Tomorrow our plan is to ride the 110 miles (180 km) to Bryce Canyon and spend as much time as we want exploring the scenery. I'm looking forward to this part of the journey tremendously.