261 Miles
Everyone should wake up in Monument Valley once in their life. The views are pretty amazing. This is looking north towards the Henry Mountains in the far distance.
Our day did not get off to the best of starts. We planned to go up to The View Hotel on the other side of the valley to grab breakfast. Mac was packed up and out of the apartment first. When Martyn and I made it, Mac was at the bottom of the hill with the bike parked at the side of the road, stripping his gear off. Turns out he had a flat battery. I’m not sure how he made it down the hill unless the bike started and then stopped once he was going or he tried to bump start it and failed. As the “local” on the trip, I was tasked with bringing tools. Fortunately, one of the tools I brought was a jump starter battery. A few Torx screws, and swear words later, with the fairing strapped to the back seat, we were off.
We made it over to The View and while they did serve breakfast, it was for hotel guests only. We settled on pre-packed sandwiches and coffee from the gift shop and perched ourselves on the patio. The coffee was just as horrible as it was up in Moab. Maybe it is something to do with the water or maybe it is the saints way of saying we should not be drinking the horrible stuff.
Last night, we looked into doing a tour of Monument Valley. They were not cheap, $80 plus the entrance fee for the park itself. It was also going to be four or five hours long. We decided to skip it and just ride over there.
It cost $20 per motorcycle to get into Monument Valley and they do not let you ride the road. Turns out you can take the bus and tour the valley anyway without paying for a tour. We decided that we still did not want to do that as Four Corners and Durango were calling.
After breakfast, Mac’s motorcycle started right up. It seemed the ten mile cruise across the valley was enough to juice up the battery again. As we were leaving, Martyn said we should stop for an espresso at the first place we saw. I laughed and told him if we saw an espresso place anywhere between here and Durango, I would buy it for him.
Sure enough, two minutes down the road, right as we crossed the Arizona border, again – The View – was on the Arizona side of the border, there was a billboard for a coffee show in Kayenta serving the best espresso. Cortados on me. It was interesting driving through Kayenta. There was a big boarding school which I assume was for kids from the reservation. The town was like being in central or South America. Dogs were roaming around all over the pace.
As should be expected in the Four Corners region, we crossed state borders a lot of times today. This is our fourth border crossing of the day going in to New Mexico.
As we were heading down the road, I saw a sign for fresh fry bread. I decided we should give it and try and it was well worth it. They were serving soups and tacos but we just went with an order of fry bread. Loaded with honey and cinnamon it was delicious.
Four Corners is on Navajo land. At some point, they got in to the border crossing sign business. It looks like it could do with a bit of a refresh.
I’ve been the Four Corners Monument before and it remains the underwhelming tourist trap it was the last time I visited. All it is, is a quick photo-op rather than a place worth going out of your way to visit. There are so many other places close by that are worth visiting than this is.
The plaza is surrounded by vendors selling trinkets. Mac looked into getting a shot glass as the plan was for tequila tonight. He thought $8 was too much and when he asked what three would cost thinking there might be a discount, she said $24 without cracking a smile. Needless to say, we left without shot glasses.
When I was younger and living in England, I always felt when I crossed the border back into Lancashire that I was home. These days, that is how I feel when I cross the Colorado border; I am back home.
A day riding with me leading the pack would not be the same without a detour. As we came out of Cortez heading towards Durango, I saw a sign for Mesa Verde and so off we went. Once again, my national park pass proved its worth, getting two of us in for free. For some reason, I cannot seem to fathom how big national parks actually are. My mental map must be corrupted by the size of theme park which you can walk across in 30 minutes. When I asked the ranger how far the Cliff Dwellings, which was my only reference for Mesa Verda, were, I was surprised at the about 20 miles and 45 minutes away at the south end of the park. The ride to them was beautiful and well worth the time.
After visiting the park, we headed out and over to Durango where we stopped for groceries for dinner and booze for the evening. We had a little Airbnb place in Bayfield for the evening. It was the old post office for the town once upon a time.
As we were sitting on the deck, out front, having a cocktail someone rode up to the storage units next door on a dual sport bike. Five minutes later, they rolled out a small custom bike and began to try and kick start it. It wasn’t going well so Mac and Martyn decided to grab their right boots and offer to help out. We got chatting for a while and talked bike and his custom in particular. It was a 650 single with a big bore kit taking it up to a 750 built by someone in Arizona. It was quite fantastic. It would be no good for me as it would take far too much mechanical fettling. Eventually, he got the bike running and roared off into the twighlight.
As were hanging out and Martyn was preparing dinner, a truck pulled up at the front door and a big guy jumped out. It was our custom motorbike friend, John, stopping buy. He’d got home and felt that was rude running off and had come by to apologize, none of us had taken it that way. Anyway, even though he was due home for dinner with his wife, he came in and joined us for dinner and drinks. We shot the shit for a couple of hours talking bikes, Colorado, travel, working for Native Americans as an electrician, and the best roads to ride.
Needless to say, our tequila did not last the night. We started with Bloody Marias but quickly transitioned to straight tequila because it was so good.
