143 Miles
On these motorcycle trips, it is always good to plan some two night stays. It breaks the get up, pack, ride, unpack cycle. We decided Moab was a good place for us to do this. The cooler, wetter weather would move over us and it was mid way through the trip.
Our hotel had breakfast included. Mac said he was going to make the most of it and get the best value from the trip. As with most included motel breakfasts, it left a lot to be desired. I gulped down cold hard boiled eggs and toast. The coffee was horrible and not finishable.
After such a miserable breakfast, we did not want to risk a bad lunch so we decided to buy sandwiches from a deli around the corner. We got a recommendation for the sushi restaurant across the street for dinner.
Our main plan for the day was to go into Arches National Park. A couple of years ago when I visited with Lisa, I spotted a road leaving town that followed the Colorado River. We had missed it coming into town with my panicked quest for gas yesterday.
It turns out it is a well known byway with recommendations just to travel along it, Utah Highway 128.
When you live in a city or in the mountains, it is hard to imagine a road so long and straight that it just disappears in the distance. That’s not the case here in Utah and the American West. It almost seems like around every corner the road will disappear in the distance. One of my mental games on these roads was estimating how far distant objects might be. It was easy for them to be 10 miles away.
Growing up as a kid, there was little better than watching a “cowboys and indians” movies. The landscape along the highway seemed like it had been created just for those movies. I could imagine the Sioux or Arapahoe warriors sweeping down from on high to attack us.
We had no place in particular to go along Highway 128. I picked Cisco because it was there, knowing it was a ghost town. Mac and Martyn were a little taken aback when we pulled in. They had ideas of a modern town with high tech equipment. It seemed like there might be a few people living rough there. There were a few downtrodden camper vans and shacks. While there was activity at the Buzzards Belly General Store, it certainly wasn’t open.
It did look like a few of the people living there were of a creative ilk. They had the first car of a Cadillac Ranch planted but little else.
I’m not sure if Mac looks like he’s a cast member for the old Taxi comedy series or acting in one of the men in black movies.
After a quick wander around Cisco, we turned around and headed back down the highway towards Moab. The only alternative was to take I-70 which we had done yesterday and it is nowhere near as beautiful and interesting.
I tried running ahead of Martyn and Mac to get video. I wasn’t quick enough to switch to video mode for Martyn so he has to do with just pictures.
I was able to switch to video mode for Macbean’s pass along the road.
Our next stop after running the highway was to visit Arches National Park. The last time Lisa and I visited a national park she had qualified for the senior entry fee and bought an annual pass. This time, I qualified and went with the no brainer of a liftime pass. Eighty dollars for lifetime versus twenty for an annual.
Having learnt from my last visit, we pushed on all the way to the back end of the park to see some of the arches. It is easy to get caught up with every stop and not see the interesting stuff.
While we did get off the bikes at the path to the Landscape arch, we were had full motorcycle gear with us and had no interest in hiking all the way there with 80ºF temperatures.
For lunch, we found a picnic area with benches and shade. There were some interesting people there who were on a Peace Corps 50th anniversary reunion. They had all met in Tibet in the 1970s.
The same applied with the delicate arch. We went to the lower viewing area but we were not hiking all the way up with all our armored clothing.
At this point, I started to get worried about gas as I was running low again. My reserve light was on and it was counting down to zero. The good thing was, you spend a lot of time climbing on the way into Arches. On the way out, there’s a lot of downhill and my miles to empty swung all the way back up past 20 miles to empty. More than enough to make it into Moab.
The light was pretty much perfect on the way out when we stopped to view the Courthouse Towers. I like to think of the three gossips as judges in the courthouse.
Mac and Martyn were intrigued by the helmet laws in Utah and Colorado. Both being you are only required to wear one if you are under 18 as long as you have eye protection. Given our slow running through the park, they decided to ride out without helmets.
When we got back, we cracked the beer and Bloody Marys again while sitting on the balcony. Last night’s had been nice and spicy. Tonight’s were blow you head off spicy. At first, we put it down to not having shaken the first bottle properly and having all the spicy sediment in the bottom. We tried another round and they were just as bad. It turned out that when I’d picked up the mix at the supermarket, I had picked up one bottle of Zesty which we had the first night and Extra Spicy which debuted on night two.
We had been told to make reservations for dinner at the sushi restaurant. Unfortunately, they had no availability for two days so that wasn’t going to work. We decided to wander over and see what they could do. We were in luck, immediate seating at the bar. The sandwich guys recommendation was not wrong. We had some excellent sushi and cold beer.
