Bike Trip Journal

Number 4

d the adventure continues...

 20th: We are still in Flagstaff, AZ. Last night, we both changes our oil and were so grateful to have a place that we could work on the bikes!  Something interesting out here - you can leave the front door or windows open at night and NO bugs come in!!! An occasional fly may come in we are told, but have not seen it yet. Danny has made fast friends with Kim's boys. He rides Van (7 yrs old)  1-2 times per day on his bike and Van loves it!!! 

We drove to the Grand Canyon today. On the way, we stopped at the Cameron Trading Post (an incredible Indian trading post) and they had a double flute!  I had never seen one and was fascinated by it. One is a drone and the other is a regular wooden flute - what a neat sound! We ate at a deli in a grocery store for lunch. The temps today were nice and actually cool as we drove back. At the Canyon, we went in the East gate and rode around to the South rim. Wow is it majestic! Danny had an interesting comment: he said it looked just like an underwater scene. And you know something? He is right! 

On the way back to Flagstaff, we were on a small hwy and I saw a white car off to the side of the road beside my lane. I didn't pay attention to it. Danny was a good distance behind me and as he passed it, he looked more thoroughly and saw that the top of the car was crushed in! It had been heading toward us, skidded off the road on OUR side and rolled. It had just happened minutes before! Others started to stop by that time. If we had been there a few minutes earlier, they could have possibly hit one of us! Thanks Lord!!

  Earlier this morning before we left for the Canyon, I went to the library to write e-mails. I wrote some, saved it on the server and left, thinking it had been saved.

  21st: Got packed to leave and then went to have lunch with Kim. Dave said the winds were 40+ miles per hr. and said we could stay till tomorrow - so we did. This morning, I went to the library to use their computer to check e-mails and  I tried to pull up my saved newsletter. No luck! So I rewrote it. While trying to finish it, my time ended and Danny gave me the rest of his time. I had tried to save part of what I had done today and send it to myself, but it never made it! I even cut & pasted the address???!!! So I went to Kim's office and used one of their computers to write it again. Then that computer would not let me bring my address book up! So I used Kim's computer and it worked! From there, had to go to yet another Wal Mart to try another pair of sunglasses. The ones I had were still rattling in the wind on a bike! Danny had gone back to Kim's to take a nap and I went to a park and enjoyed watching a dog catch a Frisbee. It was so cool to watch him. After each catch, he would run, no, bound around the whole park with gleeful abandonment. Ah, to be a dog! Oh BTW, he was a mutt named Pinky. Got to bed early that night - yea! 

22nd:  We got back on the road by 10 heading back to the east. Dave had to work this morning, but Kim was home when we left and I got to pray with her. It was so great getting to know her better! She is my 1st cousin once removed (did I get that right John?) on my dad's side. Since she grew up in Florida and is over 10 years younger than me, I have not really known her that well. 

As we headed toward the AZ border, we could see the smoke from the Rodeo fire. While we were there, it had increased in one day's time from 60 acres to thousands of acres! By the time we left, it was up to 120,000 acres. We initially saw the smoke from a distance and it looked like a cloud that had settled at ground level. As we got closer we started to drive through the smoke a long way before we hit the main cloud. Danny thinks we were in smoke for about 70 miles. In the heart of the cloud that went right across I-40, it was like an eclipse. The temperature dropped, the sun was blocked out and it felt so weird. 

As we got to the AZ border, I pulled off to go to a store I had seen as we went through here a few days before.  I had wanted a souvenir and had seen some "Indian" blankets being sold at a shop near the welcome center. I stopped and found out they were made in Mexico! Back on the road. Outside of Gallup, NM we stopped to get gas at a Stuckey's and they also had the blankets. I could not resist (even if they are not authentic). Unfortunately, I had no place to put it, so it got tied to my pack.   

Riding today was really hard as the wind really picked up and we were constantly having to battle it. Danny had a sore neck from leaning into the wind. There were 2 times that I nearly went off the road and had a real struggle to keep from going onto the shoulder.

  As we got near Albuquerque, the sky darkened and it started to thunder, lightening and then rain. We pulled into a biker's rain shelter (under a bridge) and waited for a break.  After a few minutes, we started out again and so did the rain so back under another bridge. This bridge already had 3 bikes under it and 2 more pulled in after us. One of the bikers and his wife were members of CMA (Christian Motorcycle Assoc). We were not sure where our campground was located and one of the bikers said he would take us there. The campground (Isleta Lakes & Rec Area) was only $8.00 for a tent site. We were in the Verizon network so I was able to check e-mails on the cell phone as I went to sleep.

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