Today we are leaving Utah and heading down to Arizona and the famous Grand Canyon. After all the canyons we've seen in southern Utah, I wonder how the Grand Canyon will stack up. The scenery in southern Utah has certainly been spectacular, and most of the National Parks and Monuments were unknown to us until we started researching for the trip. We saw as many as we could until eventually they all began to blur together. Fortunately we have this blog and of course I have been filing the pictures in folders by location along the way, so we should be able to look back and keep things sorted out.
    As we left the hotel on UT-191, there wasn't a lot of interesting scenery until we got close to the intersection with UT-163 . Now UT-163 is one spectacular highway for scenery. It isn't any challenge for the motorcycle, as it is mostly flat and straight, but there are rock formation after rock formation along its 64 mile length. Many of the formations from Valley of the Gods and Monument Valley are visible from the road, and we spent most of the morning stopping to take pictures. There are 2 actual parks called Valley of the Gods and Monument Valley, and both offer 17 mile scenic drives closer to the formations, but the Monument Valley road is gravel and the Valley of the Gods road is dirt. Neither is very good for motorcycles, so we settled for what you could see from UT-163 which is really quite a lot.
  There were lots of Navajo jewelry stands along the side of the road also, so we stopped to see what they had. Unfortunately, it was mostly just tourist stuff, simple beadwork bracelets, earrings and necklaces. Mostly stuff Jody already makes herself. The real stuff is in the galleries and it really is beautiful and well done .
     There were also many motorcycles on this road. Some were just returning from Sturgis, but there were a few foreign tour groups. Mostly French (I couldn't tell if from France or Quebec), Australian, and we even saw a group from Norway. You can tell they are tour groups riding rented Harleys, because even though all are different, they all have quiet, stock exhaust pipes. No way that would happen in a real group of Harley riders.
     Sadly, UT-163 ended and with it went most of the scenery for the rest of the day. As we turned onto UT-160, the road just sort of flattened out and the mountains and formations diminished. Fortunately, we soon came to the Navajo National Monument. This is a very small park, but its chief claim to fame is some ancient Indian ruins from the end of the 13th century. The park offers guided tours down into the canyon and right up to the ruins themselves, but that is a 3-5 hour hike that leaves at 8:00AM. We had to settle for the 1.3 mile roundtrip hike to a vantage point across the canyon that looks down on the ruins . With our trusty telephoto lens, we were able to get some great pictures.     We did watch the obligatory 20 minute movie, and this one followed a ranger led tour group among the ruins, so we at least got to see whet they looked like up close on film. Interestingly, it's called the Navajo National Monument, but the descendants of the 13th century Indian tribe are Hopi.
     After leaving the Navajo National Monument, we continued on boring UT-160 and turned south on US-89S, an equally boring road. So we turned on the cruise control and cranked up the tunes. We were thinking of checking out the Wuptaki National Monument as we headed down US-89, because we somehow gained an hour when we crossed into Arizona. We thought that Arizona was on Mountain Time just like Utah, but it was now an hour earlier. It turns out that Arizona IS on Mountain Time, it just doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. So the result is that in the summer it follows Pacific Time, and in the winter it follows mountain Time. Too confusing for me! But just as we were approaching the exit, the sky all of a sudden opened up and it began to rain . So we took it as a sign, put on our rainsuits, and abandoned any idea of visiting additional National Monuments.
     When we hit Flagstaff, we just turned west on I-40 and finished up the last 35 miles on the Interstate. We are staying in a hotel in Williams, AZ about 30 miles west of Flagstaff and about 60 miles due south of the Grand Canyon Visitors Center on Historic Route 66. There is a train depot in Williams that offers trains to the Grand Canyon, but they are expensive, and the trip isn't particularly scenic, so I think we'll stick with the bike. We will visit the train depot though, when we check out the Historic Route 66 stuff.
     Dinner tonight was at the restaurant next door called Kicks on Route 66. I had the baby back ribs, and Jody had a BLT sandwich. I don't know why I ordered the full rack, as they were HUGE and very delicious, I just couldn't eat it all. A half-rack would have been plenty. Jody did laundry tonight, and we will need to head over to the Post Office tomorrow to ship some more t-shirts back home.

332.1 miles today
14,782.2 miles total

7.730 gallons today
354.711 gallons total