The Copper Canyon Adventure

Days 46-48

These days were spent crossing the infamous Copper Canyon (El Barranca Del Cobre) – a beautiful area which rivals Arizona's Grand Canyon in scale, but is totally lush and even the rocks are green (which is why it was misnamed the Copper Canyon although the rocks are actually green from lichen rather than copper). The vast majority of travellers travel across this area by a famous and picturesque train line, ranked among the top train journeys in the world. However, our Lonely Planet guide said there was a 'new road' through, for 70km of which you would need a 4WD. Reading this to mean there was a new road we decided it was a great way to see the area by bike. Actually what we should have understood, though, was 'there is a new rough track, 70km of which you will need a 4WD, but all of which you will wish you were in a 4WD if you are not'. So our proposed 70km of unpaved road turned into 200km of unpaved road, about 100km of which was very hard work!

Thankfully we'd already decided before we left to break the journey into two days thanks to some local advice but it wasn't until the unpaved road began – the last 30km of the first day – that we realised what we were letting ourselves in for. Having averaged around 15kmph on this section and being about 15 km from our first night's destination we had a choice: return to Creel and take a paved road back round to the coast, adding a few days on to the trip, or continue on with the knowledge that we might have a lot more of this type of road to do the following day! We decided to carry on: we didn't particularly want to go back along the road we'd just done and knew was awful, so the unknown and the promise of spectacular scenery seemed a better choice. Plus, Ric was sort of enjoying it!

Just after we got to our break point for the night, in a quaint little mountain village called Cerocahui, the heavens opened and the rain came flooding down. There was lightening and storms for many hours all around the area and an astonishing amount of water everywhere. Excellent as our timing was to avoid the rain (we also avoided another heavy shower while having lunch that day), we knew the effect on the 'road' for the next day would not be great. We set off at 8.20am in the morning for our mammoth off-road journey - around an hour later than we intended as it took us until that morning to realise the clocks had changed (2 days ago)! On the advice of our hosts we had to decided to lengthen the day slightly to go up to a beautiful viewpoint 20 minutes off our route – definitely worth it, especially as the terrain hadn't been too bad up to that point. But the road got a lot worse as we knew it would – winding steeply up and down canyons the road often looked more like a rocky river bed than something you'd want to drive across, and due to the previous night's rain there were little streams to ford all over the place. The last 90km flattened out into a road made of sand; thankfully our exhaustion forced us to be 'relaxed' – the best way to be on such a surface.

The terrain was as bad and in places worse than anything we'd encountered before, even on our off-road course, but also compared to then we were on bigger bikes, loaded with luggage, with only one off-road tyre each, and with the controls not really in the right positions for standing up! Despite this we managed two exhausting days with only one drop each: Emily on the first day when we got held up going up a steep rocky hill by a very slow truck (speed is the only way to get up such a hill – stalling is bad!), and Ric on the second day when he looked round to check Emily was still with him (awww). No damage was done to the bikes that we couldn't fix with a hammer, and the other damage to Emily's bike from contact with a large rock was easily fixed by bending the brake lever back into place. To make things a bit more challenging for Ric, though, his bike decided to go down to one and a half cylinders for a large part of the toughest section on the second day (and recovered itself later on when things got easier).

Extremely tired, hot, sweaty and dehydrated from spending many hours on the pegs we arrived in El Fuerte at around 5.30pm, having only had around an hour in breaks all day, and found a beautiful lodge for the night. Ric accidentally got them to knock 10% off the price and we're staying here for an extra night to recover, give the bikes some TLC (they took quite a beating, and it's a miraculous feat of German engineering that they still work at all), and sample the local river fish for which the town is famous. For those that are interested, we think we found the cause of the failure on Ric's bike – a loose connection on some spark plug electronics, probably from a sloppy mechanic at the last service point.

It was a great few days, and we did enjoy some really special scenery, but next time we think we might just take the train like all the other tourists!

Into Mexico

Days 43-45

We crossed the border to Mexico almost accidentally: nobody checked our passports, asked us any questions, or tried to sell us the visas, permits and insurance that we needed. So we suddenly found ourselves in the 'other side' of Nogales, a crazy place with cars coming from all directions, crowds of people on the sidewalks and in the roads and a heat and humidity we hadn't noticed so much on the American side of the town. All we could do was to get out so we did, fast! 20km down the road we found a whole complex dedicated to removing tourists of their money – everything we'd missed on the border was here and with a sigh, we complied.

We've ridden inland into the mountains and the lushness of the land around here was surprising to both of us. It's wet season so we've seen a fair bit of the rain responsible for the greenery (heavy downpours of big droplets), but the odd cactus amongst the vegetation indicates a different picture in the Winter months. The stunning 250m waterfall we stopped at certainly had a decent flow going over it in any case. Other surprises have not been quite so pleasant. The first time an army truck emerged from a corner driving toward us, complete with men at the ready on the guns on top was a bit of the shock! But we've got used to seeing the army in little conveys on the road and at check points, and the one time we've been stopped and our bikes searched they were a pleasant enough bunch!

The roads have for the most part been fine but slow so far, for two reasons: they've been incredibly twisty coming up into the mountains, and there are a whole host of obstacles ranging from rocks and trees from landslides, to cows, horses and donkeys wandering about all over the place! We also chose to take an unpaved road for part of the journey yesterday rather than a much longer paved section which was interesting – the severity (though not the length) was every bit the match for the Dalton Highway in Alaska. More of that today or tomorrow (depending on if we overnight in the Copper Canyon) when 70km of unpaved road is the only option on the route we want to take. Unlike the USA there aren't many places to stop and take pictures on the roadside in safety, hence the slight lack of photos for this leg of the journey.

Stage One Complete!

Days 35-39

After hanging around in Grand Junction for longer than anticipated we were keen to hit the road and had a list of National Parks we wanted to visit: Canyonlands, Arches, Natural Bridges, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon... the list went on.

These parks are all within easy driving distance of each other, and a lot of the 'trails' to points of interest are under a mile from the road so seeing the highlights of the parks is pretty easy, even if you're clad in motorbike gear. And each park was definitely worth seeing! Moreover, each park had it's own lures which made it very difficult to leave – hikes into canyons or to further-off features, mountain bike trails, river rafting, etc. Not to mention the amazing landscapes at every turn which you could photograph or just look at for days. The number of photos Ric took would indicate that we were in each park for days, or even weeks – we've narrowed it down a lot for the blog! We particularly liked Bryce which has a fairyland look about it (left hand pic below), and it was a relief to us that even after visiting all of the other canyons, the Grand Canyon was still suitably grand (right hand pic below)!












The parks are all basically in the desert, and so the weather was HOT most places, with the exceptions of Bryce and the Grand Canyon where we were at a fair altitude and the temperatures went down to around zero at night. (At these points we were COLD of course, especially on one slow and memorable drive back from sunset in the Grand Canyon when the temperature plummeted and deer were leaping into the road from every direction!) In the hot times Emily developed a bit of OCD for checking her heated grips weren't turned on, so much so that the one time they were accidentally turned on she forced herself not to check for ages thinking it was just her obsession talking... Emily doesn't do very well in the heat. So on a couple of occasions in the parks, when travelling at low speeds and stopping a lot, we rode without our jackets on – unheard of for us sensible people! But we felt the lowered risk of heat exhaustion outweighed the increased risk of a skin graft if we crashed :-) And we were still far more sensible than a lot of bikers we see, often riding along in shorts and a t-shirt and no helmet!

We got through our list as far as the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, having fitted as much of six parks into five days as is humanly possible and were exhausted! So we decided to save the other parks on our list for another trip and hole up for a couple of days resting and planning for Central America instead.


Days 40-42

We're currently camping at a site near Phoenix which has a swimming pool and some air conditioned communal areas, both essential in the 40C+ heat which is the norm in the summer time. Due to the heat it's the off-season here, so it feels like we have the place to ourselves at times. We've even got to watch some TV (well, a series on DVD that we brought with us) for the first time in 6 weeks!

The exciting news is that after a bit of time catching up with things and planning we're off to Mexico tomorrow! It'll be a 6am start as we try to ride in the cooler portion of the day – and we've been told that it's even hotter in Mexico.

Sulphur & Servicing

Days 28–30

We didn't have time to read up on everywhere we were going to on this trip before we left England so we skimmed over the highlights for rough route planning and reckoned we'd read the guidebooks in more detail as we went along. We haven't really done that so Yellowstone, Wyoming came as a complete shock to us – it's amazing! I think we were expecting another National Park similar to Jasper et al, but with a geyser or two, which it's not at all. The amount of thermal activity here is staggering, as is the enormous yellowstone gorge and we could have spent a week exploring it all and revisiting the best bits. We even missed our first opportunity to go to a rodeo in favour of the park!

After an extended couple of days in Yellowstone we left the sulphur smell behind and headed South through Teton National Park. Reminiscent of our drive through Glacier National Park we couldn't see much past the cloud and drizzle, but there were a few hints of some dramatic peaks and glaciers.

Day 31

The day started heating up as we left the lush green mountain valleys and rode into the Wyoming Prairies with some very long straight (and rather boring) roads, seeing our first genuine cowboys on horseback on the way. Gradually we started to see glimpses of the canyons to come in strange rock formations beside the road. We took a route recommended to us into Flaming Gorge canyon with it's beautiful red rocks which was a nice break from the otherwise dull prairie-land, and arrived in Grand Junction, where we are now, after a record-breaking (for us) 420-mile day.

Days 32-34

We're now having a pit stop in Grand Junction while we have the bikes serviced, new tyres put on and a few unexpected fixes made. As a result our stay here is becoming a fair bit longer than we planned, but it's all good because we're camping atop a beautiful canyon in Colorado National Park and Grand Junction actually has an unexpected wealth of good eateries and quirky hang-outs. Ric's been a little under the weather (at quite a convenient time), but hopefully we should be back on the road again tomorrow, heading into canyon country proper with our rejuvenated bikes and selves...

Spanish

Ten days before getting to Mexico Emily decided it was about time she tried to learn some Spanish! A couple of days in and thanks to the wonders of Michel Thomas, she's now able to say quite a few useful things, very slowly. More importantly Ric's been touching up on his Spanish and is all set to be chief interpretor.

Into The Lower 48

Days 25 - 26

Refreshed and ready for the road again, we left Christina Lake and headed East. We enjoyed our first ferry of the trip to cross a lake and rode what was apparently voted the best motorbike ride in British Columbia. It was pretty nice, once we'd got past all the RVs (it was a Canadian bank holiday)!

The following day we crossed back into the USA (or “the lower 48” as Alaskans like to call it) and Glacier National Park via Canada's Waterton Park. The parks promised beautiful views and nice riding but mostly we just saw the inside of a cloud (and no silver lining). It was cold and very wet – to the point where we were almost ready to hole up in a motel for the rest of the day after crossing the border, until we found out that the weather could be even worse the following day. So we decided to push on and take the Going To The Sun highway across Glacier National Park (after putting on practically all of our remaining clothes and drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate). The first half of the road – the climb – was entirely in cloud and drizzle, such that at the worst point we could only see about five metres in front of us on the winding mountain road! But the road lived up to its name and when we came over the high pass we broke out of the weather – looking back you could see the cloud spilling out and dispersing behind us. And in front we could see the hanging valleys, weeping walls and glaciers that we'd read about, and most importantly, blue skies! It was dry that night, so no wimping out in a motel for us – instead camping in the same site as a number of other bikers who all wanted a piece of our story and to tell us all the must-see sights along our way!

Days 27-28

After that cold episode we were very pleased to have pleasantly mild weather as we headed to Yellowstone, admiring Montana's big skies and mountain views along the way. We made an essential pit stop to book the bikes in for a service and sort out a spare part for the stove. The bikes are also proving to draw more and more attention, such that we have to have at least one or two chats every time we get off. It's all good, though – we're picking up loads of hints and tips, and are certainly mixing with the locals!

Later stages of the drive to Yellowstone had us riding through some old Western “ghost towns” left over from the mining era. We also had our first authentic pancake breakfast in a classic diner complete with man at the bar in cowboy boots and hat, and a pretty blonde waitress called Candy.

... And Relax!

Days 20-21

Our next planned destination was Christina Lake to visit some relatives - Ric's third-cousin-once-removed, Bob, and his wife Jane. When we woke after our second, less rainy night in Banff the skies were clear, so we made our way East out of the Rockies in the growing heat through Banff, Yoho, Glacier and Revelstoke National parks. We stopped at the iconic Lake Louise and had lunch by Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks where we were tormented by a couple of squirrels who were after our lunch (see the “please can I have some more, sir?” photo, but we managed to fend them off with a cucumber). Just before we pitched up in Revelstoke we rode the stunning “Meadows in the Sky Parkway” – a road that took you within a short walk of Mt Revelstoke summit, with brilliant meadow flowers and fantastic views in all directions.

Then South through the Okanagan Valley, a big fruit growing area with lots of wineries. We can say first hand that the cherries are excellent, although we held out on the wine till we were settled in Christina Lake :-) Just a few days beforehand some serious forest fires had caused thousands of homes to be evacuated and the road to be closed – fortunately these were now under control but we could see some of the burnt out hillsides on the way through.

Days 21-24

Bob and Jane have a beautiful lakeside cottage on Christina Lake, and are the perfect hosts. We've been sleeping in a bed for the first time in three weeks, and have enjoyed canoeing, mountain biking, and swimming in the 26C waters of the lake – almost not refreshing enough in the 37C temperatures we've been having! We've also had some invaluable advice on what to see in our next stretch through the states and have made some important route decisions.

Bob & Jane's daughter, Jen, also came out for the Canadian bank holiday weekend yesterday, which meant that Ric got to meet a fourth cousin for the first time. We've been having such a great time here that we decided not to leave! Well, for a day longer than planned anyway, and we'll be off tomorrow instead of today as we originally intended.

The USA Plan

We've been warned by many people about the dangers of Mexico and in particular Tijuana and have become less and less sure about our original idea to go into Baja California via Tijuana. For example one fellow biker informed us that there have been 300 murders in Tijuana every month for the past two years, that the police had been lined up and shot, and that a corrupt army were now running the place! As per the last post, we're also pretty worried about totally melting in the heat around the Las Vegas area where the temperatures are expected to reach 45C. So our new plan is to cross the border South of Tucson, missing out LA and Las Vegas. This buys us a bit of extra time to explore more of the canyon country which we've heard great things about (and much of which is at a higher and thus cooler elevation).

So after a wonderfully relaxing few days we'll be hitting the road once more in the morning; first East back into the Rockies and then South into the USA at America's Glacier National Park, down to Yellowstone and onward.