Day 44 Aug 5 to Sedonna and the Grand Canyon

mileage 397
total mileage 14,301
camping fee $76 ... rain led to a motel.

I left my ridgetop camp early in the morning, I was lucky, no rain last night. Down thru a pretty canyon until I came to Jerome. Jerome is at 5000 ft and built on the side of a cliff. Very neat but all for tourists, the cafes opened about 10am and all had fancy names...and I'm sure the prices were too. I continued descending thru clarkdale and then into cottenwood before I found Randalls cafe for breakfast, a good place to stop.


Then it was onto Sedonna (picture is at entrance)a very pretty town located in the center of a large canyon. Rock walls no matter which way that you look. And a lot of the houses are designed to blend with the rock color and are of pueblo design. The road to Flagstaff runs thru another awesome canyon.
On the way to the Grand Canyon I found the Planes of Fame Air Museum. I had to stop and ask...yes they are a new branch of the Chino, CA museum and some of the planes from Chino have been moved here, most importantly the Zero, Me-109 and the OKA suicide bomber. I also found that the cost of a ride in a P-51 has gone from $175 (last time I went) to $750 (fuel price increases due to most of it).


What can I say about the Grand Canyon? It is the biggest hole in the ground that I have ever seen. It was overcast so it was hard to show the colors. I'm glad that I had my senior card, big savings. I talked to a Gold Wing 1800 rider who was telling me that he had a Valkyrie and really missed it. I told him that I had a wing and didn't miss it :) All thru the day I've been just missing the rain, lots of wet roads but I'm still dry.

After leaving the park I talked to a rider from British Columbia who had only been about 10 minutes in front of me and he had gotten soaked. Timing is everything :). We discussed routes, he was going NW and I was heading NE. He warned me about a big storm in the Moab, UT area. I told him it wouldn't be the first one on this trip.



I headed North thru Monument Valley where many westerns were filmed and finally changed into rain gear about 1/4 mile before hitting a front but it didn't last long.. Went into UT and headed to Blanding. I had been planning on camping about 10 miles North but I could see there was a major storm so discretion won and I got a motel room, only my forth of the trip. By the time I had unloaded the bike the storm was upon me. I had a nice dry comfortable room. But the storm messed up the wireless transmission, knocked out the digital channels though the analog still came thru and no cell phone. As it turned out I turned on the John Wayne movie "The Searchers" and watched it, of course I recognized all the scenes from Monument Valley.