Thursday, July 6 – Friday, July 7

• Riders & their destinations:
  • Paul & Grady: Tucson, AZ via Durango, CO
  • Eric: Los Angeles, CA
  • Trev: Seattle, WA via Las Vegas, NV
  • Scott: Burley, ID to Seattle, WA
• Highlights:
  • The Stanley Hotel
  • Black, nasty storm clouds & plenty of hard rain for Paul, Grady & Eric
  • Highway 128, a section of the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway

I awake to a lovely morning in Burley, Idaho and after eating breakfast, I saddle up and head Northwest for Oregon. I’m looking forward to resuming listening to my audio book but after several hours of riding, the author has reached the end of his motorcycle tour and my mind is now subjected to a steady diet of his torturous journey of his mind and nothing else. After awhile, it’s too much and I feel myself tiring and struggling to stay focused on the road I’m riding. So I bag it and switch to music. I’ll have to find out what happens at the end of the book once I get home. I sail through the Blue Mountains in NE Oregon, another fine stretch of interstate, and once I cross the Columbia River into Washington, I know I’m going to make it home today. I finally roll into Seattle after 668 miles and lots of albums consisting of rock and roll, classical and New Age. Hey! I still have three days off before returning to work on Monday. My sweetheart, the dog and I head for our boat to do a little cruising on Puget Sound, a very nice end to this vacation.

Back in Colorado, the guys stop in at the historic Stanley Hotel and get to see a genuine Stanley Steamer on display. Further down the road, they start splitting up to head for home. Eric heads out for Los Angeles and gets blasted by some very intense rain in Utah. Trev rides South with Paul and Grady for a spell but upon seeing the evil looking weather further South in their path, he departs and heads West, too. He takes a back road, Highway 128, into Moab that was recommended to us by the owner of the hotel we stayed at in Moab a few days earlier. He says it’s a seriously twisty route with incredible canyon scenery and little or no traffic. It follows the Colorado River and is also known as the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway. As you’ll see from Trev’s photos, we are not misguided and it lives up to its cool name. After that, Trev heads for Vegas where he attends a big poker event over the weekend. From there, he travels through the wickedly hot Nevada desert on his way back to the blissfully cooler Pacific Northwest. He says he’s not felt heat like that since he visited the Sahara in Egypt many years ago. Whew!

Paul and Grady ride into the storm that spooked Trev off and get pounded pretty good with rain, wind and lightning; some genuine adventure touring to be sure. They make it to Durango and find a nice, dry motel rather than a wet campground. The next day, they have a superb ride through mountains of New Mexico and Arizona before they get back to Tucson. Grady has more than earned his ODMC patch and made some new friends. The rest of us have another chapter of stories to add to our touring journals and I have yet another week long ride to look forward to in August. Oh yeah! My adventure gauge is now showing Full once again.

(Click on photos to launch slideshow)

Go to Post Ride Debrief

Return to Ride Summary