Moab, Utah to Bonneville Salt Flats

From the Mecca of off-road to the Mecca of speed...  In this leg of the trip, we head North and West from Moab, Utah to the Bonneville Salt Flats on the Utah-Nevada state line.

 

It was a beautiful but hot morning in Moab.  After breakfast at the Love Muffin Cafe, we explored the OHV areas and watched some Jeeps tackle the trails. Heading North out of Moab, we spent several hours checking out Arches National Park.  From Arches, we decided to make our way along a dirt road to a attractive camp spot along the San Rafael River.  We had the whole valley to ourselves and woke up to one of the most beautiful morning scenes yet.  Riding through the "Baby Grand Canyon" was spectacular, and we even came across a group of riders from Seattle that were doing the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR).  After we came out of the canyon, we decided to hook up with section three of the UTBDR.  It was such a great ride that we decided to try section four after lunch.  Unfortunately, the slick, clay mud partway into the route clogged our street-oriented tires and prevented us from finishing.  We doubled back and camped outside of Provo along a stream in a beautiful canyon.  This morning, we stopped in Salt Lake City to check out the BMW dealership and have some of the best Al Pastor tacos in the country at Chunga's.  A long boring stretch of highway brought us to the rained out Bonneville Salt Flats and a super-cheap hotel room in Wendover for the night.  Here are our photos from this leg of our trip:

Jeeps climbing "Baby Lion's Back." The main Lion's Back trail was closed.

Matt wanted to see what it was like to ride on the rocks of Moab.  This is the entrance of the "Fins n' Things" trail.

Made our way North to Arches National Park.  Weather was beautiful but very hot.

Delicate Arch

Remote campsite at the entrance of the Baby Grand Canyon.  Just off of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route.  Had the place all to ourselves.

Petroglyphs  in the Canyon

Small gorge along section 3 of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route.

After a big rainstorm, the road on section 4 of the UTBDR was too slick for our street-oriented tires.  The clay mud stuck to our tires, and we lost all traction. Had to turn back and pick a different way.

Breakfast burritos with sausage, potato, peppers, onion, and avocado.  Campsite in Hobble Canyon, just outside of Provo, Utah.

 Bonneville Salt Flats were very wet.  The World of Speed event that weekend has been cancelled.  Lots of disappointed racers around Wendover.

Tomorrow we'll head North and try to do some more off-pavement riding in the Owyhee Mountains of Idaho.  Our trip is more than half over, but we're still trying to make the best of it.

- Matt & Brayde

Photos From the First Five Days

We've reached the halfway point of our trip and are finally somewhere with internet access. Brayde and I rolled in to Moab, UT, the off-road Mecca of the world, late last night and decided to get a room so that we could do much needed laundry, take showers, and post photos.

Since Wednesday, we've ridden across Washington, Idaho, South through Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, and back into Utah to Moab. We've managed to do a good mix of backcountry byways, dirt roads, and highway.  We've ridden some awesome roads and seen some beautiful landscapes so far in the trip.  Rather than write pages and pages of text, we decided to make this a photo posting.  Enjoy!

Wild Horse Wind Farm Visitor Center.

Made our annual pilgrimage to White Bird Idaho to drink $1.25 ice cold beers at the Silver Dollar.

Night two campsite at Grand Jean, ID.

Road out of Grand Jean, ID.

Craters of the Moon, ID.

Airing down the tires at the start of an 80 mile stretch of dirt road out of Blackfoot, ID.

Breakfast, somewhere between Idaho and Wyoming.

Road between Blackfoot Idaho and Alpine Wyoming.

Many people herding cattle that day.

Morning scene at campsite at Flaming Gorge NRA.  Laundry drying, breakfast, scenery.

Dirt road through Flaming Gorge NRA.

The top of Douglas Pass in Colorado.  Reminiscent of roads in Switzerland.

We're looking forward to the next half of our journey . Today we'll ride through Arches, and then pick a few more destinations in Southern Utah before heading back North towards home.  Next time we get internet access, we'll be sure to post more pictures.

- Matt & Brayde

That Time of Year

It's that time of year again:  work is slowing down for the season, and we have our usual vacation time blocked off after Labor Day.  What's our plan?  Twelve days of riding with no plan or destination.  Pack the bikes with camping gear, check the weather report, pick a direction, and go.  We'll probably head South to stay warm, find some good dirt roads and remote camping spots, relax and unwind.  We'll be sure to post pics and updates from our preparation and the road.

Cheers,

Matt

Memories from Switzerland

It has been seven months since our trip to Europe.  I was going through a notebook of meeting notes from Germany today and came across this wine label stuck to a page inside it from a dark, cold, rainy night in Caux, Switzerland.  The lady that ran the place wanted us to try their own wine, made specially for the hostel and restaurant.   I think after a bottle of wine on empty stomachs, I figured it would be good to save the label to remember the night later.

- Matt

Oktoberfest in Stuttgart then Back to the States

(I apologize for the delay on this post, ending our European adventure. Life gets busy sometimes. I hope you don't mind the picture quality; they were taken with a cell phone.... and we may have had a couple beers.)

It was supposed to be a relaxed evening before our early flight back home to the U.S. Plans have a habit of changing with us though, and they certainly did this evening.

Upon checking into the hotel by the airport, the kind lady at the front desk suggested we check out the Oktoberfest happening in the city.  She said it was boring out here by the airport and was sure we'd have a good time at the festival.  It seemed innocent enough.  We've seen crazy pictures and video from the big Oktoberfest celebrations in Munich, but this one was probably much smaller and a lot more tame.  Why else would this little old lady be suggesting that we go?  Before we even had a chance to say no, she had already written directions and a schedule for the bus and trains for us to get there.  I guess it couldn't hurt to go check it out for a couple hours and then get some sleep.

After a bus ride and a couple train transfers, we started to notice a lot of drunk local kids all dressed up in lederhosen and dirndls getting on and off the trains.  We could sense that we were getting close to something big.  When we arrived at the fairgrounds, we could not believe the scale of this event.  We have never been to anything this big, loud, bright... and drunk.  Imagine hundreds of thousands of VERY drunk people packed shoulder to shoulder in a setting similar to one of our State Fairs back in the U.S.  There were several beer halls that you needed reservations to get into, all with people dancing on the tables with large beer steins.  After about a half hour of wandering, we figured out where to go to get some beers and checked out all the food stalls.  If this is the Stuttgart Oktoberfest, what the hell is the Munich one like?  I can't even imagine.

After enough beers to feel comfortable in that setting, we decided to call it a night and get back to our hotel for our early flight in the morning.  Even at late hours of the night, their public transport system works flawlessly, getting us back to our room with ease.

We couldn't think of a better way to cap off this trip.  It has been an experience of a lifetime, and we can't wait for the next one.  It'll be another year before we both have enough vacation time to do something again, but we're already planning for it.  Thanks for following along.

- Matt

The Home Stretch

It's bittersweet that our trip is coming to an end.  While it will be nice to get home to the U.S., I'll really miss riding over here and the freedom of not having a set schedule. Today we'll make a short ride from Konstanz back to Niedereschach to drop off the bikes, pack up our luggage, and say our goodbyes to everyone.

The home-stretch went by quickly.  It was our first time on an Autobahn with the bikes during this trip and really doing anything more than 100 km per hour.  You get used to riding slow after a week of 50-80 km/hr through twisty Italian and Swiss roads, so buzzing along at high speed on a wide highway seemed like a big deal at the time.

After arriving at the Touratech HQ, it was now time to un-pack both motorcycles, then re-pack everything into our airline luggage.  This proved to be a lot of work.  All of our riding gear had to be packed carefully and loaded into the bags while trying to keep within the weight allowances.  If we had any more gear packed with us, we would have been over the 50 lb. limit.

We had a nice lunch together with our friends at Touratech then got a ride to Stuttgart.  Our flight is very early in the morning tomorrow, so unfortunately we couldn't spend any more time in Niedereschach.  We have a hotel booked by the airport and plan for a relaxing evening with an early bedtime.  Plans always seem to change with us though...

Laundry on the Road

We learned awhile back that it's a waste of room to bring any more than a couple sets of clothes on our motorcycle trips.  The majority of the day, we're just wearing a base layer and a riding suit, so other clothes don't get much wear time anyway.  Here are a couple tips to keep your bags a bit lighter on any of your trips:

Plan to do laundry on the road every couple days - You can do laundry just about anywhere.  Hotel sinks and bathtubs are great, but if you're camping, any creek or highway rest stop sink will do.  We typically bring pre-made packets of laundry detergent meant for use in a sink, or fill up reusable bottles from the Woolite jug at home.  Doing a small load of laundry is easy.  Below is a video from Helge Pedersen and Globeriders where he describes  his method.  If we are lucky enough to be somewhere with two sinks, one person will wash and the other will rinse.  Then we wring out the wet clothes, roll them in a towel like Helge, and hang the clothes up to dry.  The whole process takes maybe 20 minutes to do all of the laundry between the two of us.  This is a far more sophisticated way than showering with your clothes on.

Buy clothes designed for traveling - Many outdoors clothing companies make clothes with special materials that dry quickly, wash easily, and resist odor and wrinkling.  These garments are great because you can typically wash them and they will dry in about 15 minutes.  They usually pack much smaller than normal clothes, too.  Brayde has a dress made out of the materials and we both have pants, shorts, and shirts.  A small investment in some travel-specific clothes will make a huge difference for your trip wardrobe.