Day 3: Casas Grandes to San Juanito

Brayde and I woke up early to take a walk around the village of Casas Grandes before breakfast.  All the local children were on their way to school, and it was fun to watch all of them with their backpacks and uniforms.

After a great breakfast of huevos a la Mexicana (Brayde‘s favorite!), fresh fruit, and potatoes, we walk over to the ancient ruins of Paquime for a quick look around.  It is amazing how advanced their culture was with their water storage, architecture, and horticulture.

Today’s ride is one of the longer ones, but the roads are twisty, and the scenery is breathtaking as we wind our way up to the upper Sierras.  Passing cars on the highway and through the towns is reminiscent of our adventures in Italy and the Swiss Alps.  The system is very efficient once you get the hang of it but takes a lot of trust in the other traffic.

Along the way our entire group was stopped by a Policia Municipal.  He, Alfonso, and Juan have a long discussion while the group waits nervously.  It turns out they just wanted to know who we were, why we were riding in such a big group, and where we were headed. 

At one of our rest stops, we are approached by some Tarahumara Indians who are selling candy.  Juan quickly jumps into the support truck and starts inflating balls for the children with an air compressor.  The children were very happy to leave with some new toys to play with.

Lunch in the city of Guerrero was delicious.  A bowl of beef soup was followed by huge platters of chiles rellenos, enchiladas, steak, and guacamole.  For dessert, we were served what had to be the best Mexican apple pie and vanilla ice cream on Earth.

Tonight we stay at the beautiful Noritari Lodge outside of San Juanito on the rim of the Copper Canyon.  Our hostess greets each of us with a hug and a kiss on the cheek before we even have a chance to dismount our motorcycles.  We also meet Ivan, an additional guide who will be with us just for the Copper Canyon section of our tour. Within minutes of meeting him, we can see why MotoDiscovery has incorporated Ivan into the trip: he has a deep level of knowledge about the area and answers every question we can think to throw at him.

Dinner was amazing.  Everything was home cooked by their chef.  I peeked into the kitchen to check out their setup--complete with a woodfire stove--and even managed to get the recipe for a a great, smoky sauce made with olive oil and roasted chiles. I’m looking forward to trying my hand at it when we get home. Stories from the day were passed around the table over a bottle of wine, and then we all retired to our cabins for the night.  Tomorrow will be another long day as we begin our descent into one section of the Copper Canyon.

Day 2: Douglas, AZ to Casas Grandes, Mexico

Matt with riding buddies Chris and Kris

We get to know our group a little better over breakfast this morning, then take off for the first step of the trip: crossing the border into Mexico. Luckily for us, Juan and Alfonso are old hands at this process, and after waiting through a couple different lines, we’re all set. Mexico’s less concerned about us entering the country and more that we’ll sell our bikes while we’re here. So, we each have to pay a deposit on a sliding scale, based on the ages of our bikes, which will be refunded when we return to the US. This is tracked by placing a sticker with an RFID tag on our windscreen, which we’ll surrender when we cross the border again at the end of the trip.

putting RFID tags on--they had to either be on the windscreen or easily accessible for our exit in a couple weeks

Today’s ride is pretty tame but gives everyone a good chance to get a feel for the roads and traffic laws. Some lessons we picked up:

• Juan warned us about all the topes we’d encounter, which are speed bumps in any place where you should probably slow down, like when entering towns, school zones, etc. Some of them are marked, others aren’t; some are tall and mean business, others are just a series of raised pavement markers.

• Even though the speed limits are posted in km/hr, people seem to interpret them as mph. And much like Europe, you can more or less pass anywhere and folks will accommodate, regardless of road striping and oncoming traffic. This is especially helpful at the topes because the bigger vehicles have to basically come to a stop, but thanks to our bikes’ high ground clearance, we’re good to go.

• People only use their turn signals to indicate when you should pass them, not to announce their own turning intentions. This could get interesting!

• Alto (or “stop“) signs are really just a suggestion to maybe slow down and yield. Unless you see a policía SUV nearby. Then come to a stop.

We pull off for lunch in the shade at a roadside quesadilla stand. These particular quesadillas are made out of queso menonito, or “Menonite Cheese.” Turns out this particular region of Mexico has a significant population of Menonites and Mormons, dating back to when both groups were getting pushed out of the US territories for their beliefs and practices.

We come into the town of Casas Grandes to stop for the night, but first we check out a local pottery shop that still carries on the tradition of making pottery in the old Pueblo way.  After we helped make some, we naturally had to buy some.

tradition requires the use of a brush made from a few strands of family members' hair

MotoDiscovery really hit the ball out of the park with tonight’s accommodations in a beautiful hacienda-style inn. We regale our first day riding in Mexico over cold cerveza and tequila, then hop in the back of a pickup and head to a neat house-turned-restaurant for some fine dining. If this is what’s in store of us the rest of the trip, we’re going to come home fat and happy!

riding to dinner the local way: back of a pickup

Belgian-Mexican fusion for dinner--yum!

- Matt & Brayde

Day 1: Mexico, here we come!

Today, we arrive in Douglas, Arizona to kick off our adventure through Mexico with our friends at MotoDiscovery. We left home four days ago, picked up a few fellow tour members along the way, stashed our trailer in Tucson, and now here we stand at the historic Gadsden Hotel. It wasn’t hard to find: just look for the place with all the adventure bikes parked out front.

The building is unassuming from the outside, but as you enter the lobby, you can see just how grand this hotel was in its heyday.  Marble staircases and columns are accented by the original Tiffany stained glass ceilings and windows.  This hotel is supposedly haunted, and a thick binder of guests’ accounts of ghost encounters confirm.  Supposedly, Pancho Villa rode up the staircase on his horse back in the day while shooting his guns into the ceiling.  The seventh step of the main staircase has a chip in it that they say came from Villa’s horse.

We meet the rest of our group for beers and a trip briefing. There are 15 of us in total, with 2 tour guides, Juan and Alfonso. We can tell this is a good group and will be a laidback tour down through the Copper Canyon , out to Sea of Cortez, and back up the Baja Peninsula. We’ll be riding roughly 1,500 miles, about 400 of which will be dirt. We can hardly wait to get started!

- Matt & Brayde

Foggy Winter Ride

We had a nice ride with a few work friends last Sunday.  Starting off in the morning from Seattle, we took all the nice twisty back roads towards Snoqualamie Falls and then up to Sultan to have lunch at our favorite bakery. After lunch we continued East to Index, then back West to check out a recently re-opened ORV area called Reiter Foothills. 

It was quite cold at 36 degrees, and foggy enough to slow down our pace, but all-in-all it was a great ride for January.  Here are a few pictures from the day ride, including a washed out road near Index, Washington.

Washed out section of road outside of Index, Washington.

End of the road.  Literally.

Nathan and Brayde at the Reiter Foothills ORV Trailhead.

Happy Holidays from Matt & Brayde

Happy Holidays to all our riding friends and family.  We hope the new year brings many exciting adventures.

Cheers,

Matt & Brayde

Come Ride with Us: Mexico Copper Canyon & Baja Trip!

Brayde and I have exciting plans for the Spring of 2014:  We will be helping Skip, and the crew at MotoDiscovery guide a group of riders through some very remote areas of Mexico including the famed Copper Canyon and the Baja Peninsula.  This will be an 11 day trip starting in Arizona in March, and ending up in Southern California.

If you'd like to join us on this adventure, click the link below to learn more about the route and sign up for the tour.  It's a really good deal considering all that is included.  You can always email us as well if you're interested.

Hope to see you out there,

Matt & Brayde

http://www.motodiscovery.com/TOURATECH-Copper-Canyon-to-the-Baja-Expedition-Motorcycle-Tour

Silver City, Shaniko, then home

The last leg of a trip is always bittersweet. The miles between you and home are shrinking instead of growing, there are more days behind you than days left in vacation; then again, by now you feel relaxed and regenerated, and the need to ration food and clothing is diminishing. Because we didn't push further South on the first half of our trip, we can take it easy on the daily mileage to get back by the end of the weekend. We end up wending our way north and west through northern Nevada and Southern Idaho, over into our favorite riding areas in eastern and central Oregon. Matt has a couple favorite destinations that we shape our route around: the living ghost town that is Silver City, ID; and a once restored and now for-sale town, Shaniko, OR. Along the way, we put on several more dirt miles and dodged a few thunderstorms. 

So far, we'd been fortunate to have sunny skies, but as we neared the Nevada-Idaho border, our luck ran out. As we rode along Hwy 225, we ended up playing a game of leapfrog between a pair of ominous black clouds. The raindrops are so big and heavy here that it feels like hail when we're riding at highway speeds. Luckily, we found an alternate path along a dirt road that skirted us around the storm, so we took it. By nightfall, though, the rain caught up to us, so we ended up watching the lightning from the comfort of a hotel room.

Silver City, ID, was once a booming mining town in the late 1800s. As is the natural progression of these things, though, it went bust and was a ghost town by the early 1900s. It is now slowly being restored here and there by a handful of residents, but it remains largely closed off during the winter months because you can only get to it by dirt road on a mountain pass. Pretty neat place. Well worth the trip.

The town's hotel still functions today and hosts the only restaurant in operation.

Another group of visitors traveling in style.

One of our last campsites for awhile, outside of Burns, OR

To make the most of our time left, we picked out some of the twistiest roads we could find. This, of course, took us through the John Day Fossil Beds and into the town of Shaniko. Shaniko was a rail hub in the early 1900s, but once trains were diverted to another line, it effectively became a ghost town. In the 1980s, an investor came in and restored an entire historic district, probably with grand ideas of tourism profits. Doesn't seem that's really come together yet, though... 

All in all, another great ride for the books! You can see our whole route below. Thanks for following.

3345 Miles Total in 12 Days

- Brayde & Matt