The beauty is so abundant in this part of Utah, that you just want to stop every few minutes and look at it. The landscape, that is, not Ingalls. |
What can you say about that? Me and the Colorado River. If you try to pee in it, it evaporates before reaching the river. |
Here we are on Schaefer's trail. This is looking back at Ingalls, and in the background you can see the road that leads to the trail. |
That's me and Shrek. In some places the trail was so rough that we practically portaged the bikes through them. That's when it's good to have a strong travelling partner like Ingalls. The dualsport bikes we were riding are not the ideal mounts for this type of terrain, a lighter, dedicated dirt bike would be better suited. We had a blast though. |
A view looking back down on the trail. |
Another view looking back - if you squint a little you can see a couple of mountain bicycles on the trail. |
Again, looking back the way we came. |
This picture was taken at the end of Gemini Arch Trail. You can see the road to Moab below. As we approached this rim (unaware of the drop) there was a nice tight curve with a good high berm. I thought it would be fun to ride high on the berm and kick upa roostertail. Then I saw the drop on the other side of the curve. It's a good thing that berm was solid. |
Me in the red, Ingalls in yellow. |
This is were we stayed in Moab. Fifty bucks a night (off-season, I suppose). Apparently, John Wayne once stayed there. It's not fancy, but the rooms were clean and there was plenty of hot water. |
The route home took us back down highway 191, but all the way down into Arizona this time. We caught Arizona highway 160 over to New Mexico highway 64, past Shiprock and down to Taos, NM. We spent the night in Red River, a little ski resort town in the mountains above Taos. The next day we shot back up through Oklahoma and Kansas to Omaha. We wanted to have Friday afternoon to get ready for the "Moto Mania" track days at Mid-America Motorplex. After a quick oil change, and the addition of a few pieces of safety wire, here we are at the track. That's Frank's trailer on the other side of 'Clifford the Big Red Dodge" and Mac's truck is back there somewhere also. You can see Frank's KLR in the foreground, Ingalls holding his DR650, and Shrek beside him. Ingalls' hopped up FT500 can be seen just over the top of Frank's KLR. |
The next few pictures are of some of my freinds on the track that day at Mid-America Motorplex. This is Frank ripping along the front stretch on his stripped down KLR650. Frank has a reputation for being pretty fast, for an old guy. Young squids on 600 class sport bikes tend to get pissed when he tools past them in the curves. |