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.
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Glad you liked Bryce - it was my favourite of all those parks too. Just so very different to anywhere else.
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