Homeward Bound

After spending several days in San Diego, it is time to start heading back to Ohio.

Mike, Paul, and I follow the interstate east past Yuma, Arizona, which usually sets the daily record for the hot temperatures in the nation. We stop every 15 minutes or so, just to dump cold water on ourselves so we can cool down. Five minutes later, we’re bone dry again. When we arrive in Phoenix, we find a small motel with cabins set around a pool. After a trip to the liquor store, we spend the afternoon in the water.

Phoenix is a city that could not have existed before air conditioning. As a result, most of the buildings are less than 30 years old, and, unlike the east coast cities, they were able to plan for the large population growth. Every few streets is a main boulevard. Each of these intersections has a combination of gas stations and strip malls. Occasionally, there is a larger grocery store, or chain restaurant. Other than that, each street looks identical to me. I sure hope I don’t get lost here.

The next morning, we head north on the highway. We stop for a break at a scenic overlook. A few minutes later, an older guy rides up and parks next to us on this little scooter looking thing. You’d expect to see one of these outside a neighborhood grocery store, but not on the highway. We chat with its owner for a short while, before he heads back down the highway. We laugh.

A few minutes afterwards, we head back on the highway. It’s not too long before we pass the scooter. Much to our surprise, he keeps up with us, going 70MPH!! That silly looking thing can move!

We stop for a lunch break, then head to the town of Jerome. This is a remarkable old mining town, built on the side of a cliff. Literally. We entered town on the top of the canyon, looking over the roof tops on the next street. In just a few yards, we make a sharp turn and we are riding on that next street, looking over the roof tops on yet another street. It continues this way all the way down the cliff wall, with probably six or eight of these hairpin turns.

Until 1959, Jerome was a mining town. When the mines closed, most of the people left to find other work. Just a few years ago, the cheap property was purchased and the town was filling with artists and restaurants.

We stop for a drink at one of my favorite bars, the Spirit Room, near the top of the canyon. As we pull in, we see the guy on his scooter. I go up, introduce myself, and apologize for laughing at his surprisingly fast scooter. His name is Dale, and he used to ride big bikes until he couldn’t manage one. He found this scooter, and rides it everywhere. He knows it looks funny, and he’s used to folks making fun of it. But it gets him out of the house and on two wheels, and it goes as fast as he wants it to go.

Jerome, and the Spirit Room in particular, are popular stops for bikers from both Phoenix and Flagstaff. Cold beer and live bands attract a lively crowd. We decide to spend the night here, and find rooms at the old medical/mental hospital at the very top of the canyon. It’s a forboding building, looking like something out of a Stephen King horror story. It was converted from a hospital into a hotel a number of years ago, and you can still see where the oxygen lines came through the tiled walls. Fun.

As the evening wore on, the crowds of bikers at the Spirit Room left to return to the city, and the locals came out. We sat at our table drinking whiskey, smoking cigars. Quite a number of folks stopped by to say hello and chat. They saw the license tags on our bikes from Texas and Ohio, and asked what the heck we’re doing here. I told them that I was on my way home from Sturgis. “But that was a month ago!”, they’d reply. Yep. “Wow!” It was a conversation starter, to be certain. Soon, we were introduced to many of the people in the bar. A fun night.

We returned to the hospital/hotel. Throughout the night at the bar, someone would tell a ghost story about the old hospital, and the hauntings that still are rumored to take place. They would name a room number where the ghosts visit, and check to see if it matched one of ours. But, at two a.m., I didn’t hear the sound of the elevator crashing, as the story goes. It was just another room. With oxygen lines coming out the walls.

The next morning, as we descended the street through town, the terrain changed into desert, marked by large red rocks. We’re just miles from the popular town of Sedona, set near these rocks. We take a scenic detour to view the landscape. We stop to get a few pictures.

Soon after, I’m following Paul, with Mike behind me. We turn a bend, and I look out at the red rock. When I turn back, Paul had slowed down in front of me. I froze up instantly, and grabbed for the break, and was instantly down on the ground in a gnarley smashing of metal on pavement. The front (hand) brake is not the one to grab in an emergency, since all of the momentum of the bike moves to the front end, the steering end of the bike. I tore off the left mirror, turn signal. I’m almost as far from home as I have been on this trip, and my bike is down. Shit.

They life the bike off of me, and I manage to get up. My left elbow is bleeding, The knee has ripped on my jeans, and I can see some more blood. I wait for the adrenalin rush to subside, and realize that I’m banged up, but just a bit. The bike is a little more banged up, but the engine guard took most of the damage, cocked out of alignment, but ridable. Prior to an early retirement, Paul was a doctor. He checks me over and gives me the report. Nothing important is broken on the bike, or on me. We stop in Sedona at a pharmacy, and clean the wounds, and extract some gravel. I’ll live. The bike is ridable. I can get home! YAY!

We continue our ride to the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. We’re at a higher elevation than we were in Sedona, and the trees and brush are only about 7-feet tall. Dense enough, so you can only see about twenty feet in, but not forest by any stretch. All of a sudden, without warning, the trees and brush are gone and we’re on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Just like that. I was really surprised that I didn’t see this coming.

We pull off at an overlook. This is a really deep canyon. The sign tells us that it’s over a mile deep (you can’t see the bottom, but it doesn’t look that far (as if I could measure distance). The sign also says that the other side of the canyon is 12 miles away. Wow. Now the enormity of the distance sinks in. Wow.

We sit on the edge of the cliff and watch while the sun sets. The colors and shadows are changing constantly. I keep snapping pictures. Paul reminds me that I just took some pictures. I reply, “Yeah, but it’s digital. It doesn’t cost me anything.”

Paul, being the great tour guide, had called ahead while we were in San Diego, to get lodging and dinner reservations in the park. The south edge of the canyon has a number of hotels, operated for the national park system. The rooms overlook the canyon, so they are very popular. There are lots of tourists, unpacking their cars, and even deer feeding in the nearby grass. While I am unpacking my bike, the woman next to me screams! She thought the deer were fake, and it startled her when the one close to her moved. Ha! City girl.

We enjoy dinner at El Tovar, a restaurant built in the 1940’s as the National Park System was getting started. The Hardy company made deals with the park system to provide exemplary services, as a way of attracting visitors to the otherwise remote parks. El Tovar was one of their crowning achievements. Now run by the Park System, it continues the tradition of memorable meals with incredible scenery.

It is about 10pm when we finish dinner and walk out to the canyon’s edge. It is a beautiful, cloudless, night, and there is a full moon overhead. The colors on the canyon wall are almost as distinct as they were in daylight. We can see tiny lights at the bottom of the canyon: campfires. This is simply an amazing view, and yet, we’re are about the only people outside. While they are in their hotel rooms watching television, we get to enjoy one of the most incredible vistas on the planet. The stars are visible overhead. I feel so very, very, small.

I wake up and it is Monday morning. In just a week, I am due back at work. What the heck am I still doing at the Grand Canyon, on the other end of the country?!

Paul continues leading my guided tour eastward. We take a few breaks to enjoy the last view of the canyon in the daylight. It looks so very different than under the moonlight.

As we ride, I can see large mounds far ahead. It must be a gravel yard, just like we had in my hometown. As we get closer, I see that someone has spray painted these mounds. It takes me a few seconds to realize that these are not man-made mounds, and that the painting is also natural. This is the Painted Desert. Each mound is layered is many strikingly different colors. There are horizontal stripes of green, yellow, blue, red, and grey, on the mounds and on the wall of the valley. Colors I never knew to be in nature. Unfortunately, we don’t see any places to turn off, and there are cars close behind us.

We stop for gas in Tuba City, at the edge of a river. A Native American walks by me at the gas pump and says “How.” In reflex, I respond, “Fine, and you?” He chuckles as I realize by bonehead move. He easily caught be off-guard. Ha!

As evening approaches, we make it to the interstate. Just as the sun gets low in the sky, we enter New Mexico. There’s a sign “Road Construction, next 75 miles”. Just a few feet later, the pavement turns into small gravel. Shit! This lasts for a few miles, then returns to pavement. Each time I can detect a change in the color of the pavement, I tense up, waiting for gravel. Luckily, that only happens one more time on our way to Albuquerque. Enough to keep me spooked. We arrive in the dark.

The next morning, we get up early and continue our interstate trip east. We enter the panhandle of Texas. Grasslands. Lots of grasslands. Buildings? No. Towns? Nope. Grasslands? Plenty. We come over a rise, and as far as I can see are cattle, grazing in the grass. Thousands of cattle. I have never seen this many in one place in my lifetime. I’m reminded of the John Wayne movies, moving cattle across the open plains. Now I have seen that, and it is amazing. Then, back to grassland, and more grassland.

We stop in Amarillo. I ask Paul if I can spend an hour here. During World War II, my dad was in the Army, and he was discharged from Amarillo. My mom took a train from Cleveland to meet him. They got married at the courthouse. I wanted to prove that I was there by getting a copy of their marriage certificate (which my parents had lost or misplaced over the years). Lucky for me, the courthouse was easy to find, and they were very quick at tracking down and getting a copy of the forms (it helped knowing their anniversary date). Paul and Mike were impressed with how fast I was back to meet them.

Later, when I deliver the certificate to my parents, my mom told me about her experience at the courthouse. She says that there was a cattle drive in town, and the streets were covered in mud. She said that it had been a real challenge crossing the road wearing her white dress. She was glad to hear that the road has been paved and the cows are brought in by truck now. I was glad that I made that stop.

Paul and Mike know a hotel in Oklahoma City, and we get a room by the pool. The water feels great. This is our last night on the road together, as I need to head east, and they need to head south. We enjoy a good meal and I thank them for their company, and guidance on the trip. They have been great fun to travel with, and I know that I would not have seen many of the sights without them acting as my tour guides.

I wake up at dawn the next morning, and head towards Little Rock, Arkansas. It feels strange to be alone on the road. I have spent so much of the trip with Paul and Mike, that it seems odd not to have them nearby on their bikes. At gas stops, there are strangers who strike up conversation, but not the familiar faces of my friends.

I call Bubba, my friend from Tennessee, and make arragements to stay at his house in Jackson that night. The ride from Little Rock to Memphis seems like a purely straight, flat, piece of road that won’t end. There are very few cars, just trucks, going very fast, very close to each other. The bike feels quite tiny surrounded by the semi’s.

It was fun to see Bubba again. He was with me when I started this six-week trip, and it was really great to see him near the end of the adventures. There were so many stories from so many places. This was the first opportunity of the trip to really tell anyone about all of the experiences.

It’s Wednesday night, and I woke up at the Grand Canyon on Monday. While I know that I can easily make it home on Thursday, I don’t want the vacation to end yet, so I decide to spend a few days visiting and riding with Bubba. We spend a day riding around his local area. We ride north to visit some of his friends, his tattoo artist. On the way, we stop by a field and he pulls a clump off of a plant. It’s cotton. I have never seen it in the natural state. The pod has sharp edges, and there are small seeds mixed with the fibers. No wonder there was forced labor to process this!

On Friday, we wake up early and head south and east through the Appalachian mountains. These are not nearly the size of the Sierras or Big Horn mountains, but they are quite beautiful. We ride to Lynchburg, and tour the Jack Daniels Distillery. They have tours on a regular basis, and we are the only ones there for the next tour, until two minutes ahead of time when a busload of Europeans arrive. As the tour guide begins, it becomes obvious that most of the people have probably never tasted Jack Daniels whiskey. The tour guide seems a little disappointed, and goes into the dry, factual, description of the operations. Bubba and I work our way to the front of the group, and we start asking questions. Quite visibly, seeing that there are a few of us to appreciate them, the tour guide smiles and starts adding his favorite jokes to his monologue. We really enjoyed the tour, and he often pulled us aside to tell a ‘politically incorrect’ story. As soon as we returned to the visitor center, he went to a cabinet and pulled out his collection of pins and patches that other motorcyclists had rewarded him with over the years. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any pins, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

Afterwards, we rode into downtown and got a good, but pricey, lunch. We wanted to sample some Jack Daniels, but alas, it is made in a dry county.

Bubba and I headed to Nashville. I have visited the city on a few occasions, and it was fun to return. We made our way to a bar so we could get a sample from the distillery, and a toast to the freedom of the open road.

The next morning, I leave Nashville to head for home. It’s Saturday, and I consider stopping in Louisville, Kentucky, or in Cincinnati just so I could stay on the road for another night. But, its rainy, and it would be really nice to have Sunday to rest at home before the vacation abruptly ends. It is good to be home.

Final: Reflections on the Trip