Great Alaska Motorcycle Trip

Wednesday 9/13/06

Day four, the hump day! Today's main attraction in Bryce Canyon, but first we need to drive back through Zion National Park. Once again, the weather is beautiful!

Last night, we stayed just outside of Zion, and the route to Brice takes us back through Zion again. That's no real hardship, and I really enjoyed seeing it again from the opposite direction. They are doing some roadwork at the tunnel, and they hold up traffic for half an hour to work, then let it go for half an hour. We got stuck in the work period, but were stopped next to a couple of guys from Canada who had rented Harleys and were touring around. Real nice guys, and we had a fun visit.

After leaving Zion we continued on to Mt Carmel Junction for breakfast, arriving about 10AM. Once again we had a big breakfast, featuring in my case bacon and eggs.

The ride to Bryce was about 75 miles, along fast, smooth 2-lane roads. As we approached Bryce, the hills suddenly turned from grey to red. You can see it in the picture above. The hill to the left is not shaded, it is actually grey colored!

The weather was cool enough that Dick and I were able to keep our jackets on the whole trip, except in Zion. Carl, with a hot engine and a fairing, rode most of the time in his tee-shirt.

This is the parking lot for the first overlook. Dick is locking his helmet to the bike.

What an incredible place! We were here in 1988 on the Winona and Rick wedding trip (Rick and Nonie didn't come, they went on their honeymoon instead) and its even more beautiful than I remember.

We each brought cameras, and often found ourselves photographing each other photographing! A big advantage of Digital Photography is ease of copying. When we got back to Dick's I made CDs for each of us of all the pictures. The pictures in this report are a combination for all three of us.

This is the Bryce Amphitheater. An unbelievable sight!

There is a 18 mile scenic drive with several overlooks along the way. So it was back on the bikes and off to the next spot. I wanted some shots of us moving, because this is the sight I had most of the time.

This lookout is about the halfway point on the 18 mile drive. It was about 4:30PM when we got here, with about 120 miles still to go to the motel. So we decided to turn around here, and save the rest for our next trip.

We stopped for an ice cream shortly after leaving Bryce, as a late lunch. We needed another break at Boulder, a couple of hours later. We stopped at a little contry store. The owner was a very nice lady, and we had a pleasant visit. We continued on over a 9200' summit. I needed 3rd gear to hold 55MPH downhill! There were spectacular views for miles from there. We were passed twice by a group of 10 Harleys. Rt 12 had a fantastic run along a ridge with near vertical dropoffs on both sides, seemingly forever!

Our motel was the Chuck Wagon Lodge. It was a great place, but we were disappointed that the chuck wagon part of it was long gone! We walked about a quarter mile down the road to a restaurant, and had a steak dinner!

Total milage for Wednesday, 233 miles.

Click here to see our Itinerary, and some Maps of the trip.

Back Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Next