I had visions of pulling my DR's carb and going thru it again in this shops parking lot and borrowing their compressed air to blow out the passages.
To that end we went riding North on 89 Thru Kanab nearly to Glendale.....without finding said bike shop. Finally we gave up, but all was not lost. We'd just done 60 miles of new country to me while riding in perfect condition. Whats not to like about that?
Here's what we saw. You can't beat southern Utah!
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
Some of those Cliff alcoves have been used..
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
While we looked for the bike shop, I had been thinking about how to blow that carb out with the small electric tire pump that I carried with me, after all that thing goes to 200 lbs.
I figured that I'd buy a blow gun and a tubeless tire valve stem. I'd hook them together with a 4' piece of gas hose that I carry with me. The gas hose would be my air tank. It worked pretty well. It gave me a short blast of 50 PSI air every 10 seconds. Now I was ready for that carb problem. :clap
Here's a picture...
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
We decided to skip the bike shop since we couldn't find it.... Duh. We turned around and back tracked to Fredonia and then went on toward Jacobs lake and the Navajo Bridges 89A.
Let me say that the weather on this trip had been wonderful so far. Sunshine and in the 80s at the elevations we were running around in and very little wind. I hoped that the weather Gods continued along with us.
89A east of Jacobs Lake is another scenic ride down the mountain and then breaking out on the high mesa that houses the deep gorge of the Co River west of Lake Powell. The Vermilian Cliffs are spectacular on the left with wide open spaces to the right, all done in brilliant earth tones.
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
We had breakfast at a place called 'Clff Dwellers'. It was a small motel and Cafe. It had been there a long time. I asked where were the cave with the Indian ruins. The joke was on me. The waitress said that there were no Indian ruins. The Cliff Dwellers were the people of the motel as they were so close to the Vermilian Cliffs out back. :norton
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| From Indian country Feb '10 |
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| From Indian country Feb '10 |
On to the Navajo Bridges and Lee's Ferry... This is the Co River Gorge that the Navajo bridges cross.
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| From Riding SM4C, Sabmag |
Speaking of Lee's Ferry.....apparently Lee was kinda exiled to run the Ferry since he had massacred a bunch of Mormon men women and children, in his care, over near St George. He tried to get away with it by sticking arrows in the victim's bullet holes and blaming it on the local indians. Read more....
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Lee#Mountain_Meadows_massacre[/url]
.....on the way into Lee's Ferry
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| From Indian country Feb '10 |
We moved on across the bridge to Bitter Springs where we doubled back toward page Az.
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| From Indian country Feb '10 |
That took us up a 3000 ft Mtn and thru a remarkable gap.
The wind had begun to pick up about an hour ago, and was blowing 30 to 40 mph. A hard head wind will slow me down to where I can't pull sixth gear. I struggled with that for the last 2 hours....seemed like 6hrs.
To compound my problem, I'd put a car tire on my bike in order to get better tire mileage. The tire was 1.5 inches larger which weakens my bikes pull. I struggled on over to the Navajo Natl Monument 100 miles away.
The NNM is 10 miles off the beaten path, and their free camping is a little known fact. Seems like the Indians like to give up rights to certain Indian ruin areas so that the Federal protection will keep the treasure hunters at bay. Usually, the Indians retain certain rights to the areas, and often stipulate that they maintain free camping.
Museums and scientific foundation were as bad as anyone in the past 100 years or so. They'd come in and do a bunch of collecting and take the artifact out with them to study, and then put them on display in a museum somewhere. The Indian would like to have all that stuff back.
Anyway, the Indians and the feds have a tense working relationship in these areas. They're working it all out, I guess.
We got into the Visitors Center before it closed for the night. We learned that there was a walking tour in the morning to the Betatakin ruin which we signed up for. [url]http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/betatakin.html[/url]
We went on in and claimed a campsite and set up for an early camp at 5pm.
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| From 2011 SM4C |
It's a pretty nice campground...bathrooms and potable water.
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| From 2011 SM4C |
We had time so we ran back the 10 miles to the intersection of 160 and picked up the makins for a Spaghetti dinner. It consisted of a lb of pasta, a pint of spaghetti sauce and a lb of frozen hamburger.
Nip found a place on his engine to put the hamburger in order to thaw it out on the way back to camp. It Thawed half of it out by the time we got to camp. :rofl
I crank up one of my Alcohol stoves to cook the Spaghetti, and another to cook the hamburger with the sauce. For a first timer, the dinner was great. Truthfully a can of Spaghetti in sause would have been as good. :D
We went to bed thinking about the 2 mile hike to Betatakin in the morning....
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