Holed Up In Hatch part one of four

Durango, and we ended up coming in on a Friday afternoon, having skirted thunderstorms all day it ended up dumping on us 2km before we stopped for the day. On top of that it was blue grass music festival weekend in town and accommodation was a bit thin. This was not going to be a tenting night with all this hail and lightning going on. A room found and we battened down for the night to the sound of thunder in the hills and rain on the roof.


Next morning it was on the road and over the snow covered pass and into some welcome sunshine. We rode up into the Mesa Verde National Park to take in the cliff dwellings. The ride in was spectacular, with high mountain twists and views for miles in any direction. We rode around the rim of the park and marvelled at the construction of the buildings high up under the cliffs. Unfortunately we did not experience the religious pilgrimage and uplift that Twisting Throttle experienced when he was here. All the helmets were gone and I think he stole the last one. Since then the site has been roped off.

Four Corners was closed for construction work so we had to give it a miss so we rode on to the old fort town of Bluff and spent the night there. A lovely quiet country town under the towering red bluffs that give the town its name The mountains and buttes through this country are amazing to say the least and trying to get photos that can show it all are near impossible. All you can do is snap small snippets of what you see.

Next day was to Monument Valley. We rode a gravel side road through the Valley of the Gods and were not disappointed as you could ride up close and personal with these amazing mountain formations. The cameras were smoking by the time we hit the road up the Mugway Pass. This road we will pick up on our return to the Arches National Park by way of Bluff again. To cover these National Parks in this area will require a bit of a zigzag in the travel route.

For us, Mexican Hat was the start of the Monument Valley highway and how good it was. Trying to stop for photos was quite dangerous with all the traffic so Annette just kept herself busy on the back clicking away and filling up her camera’s memory card.

It was a whole morning of marvellous sights and we had to stop and take stock of what we had seen, so nothing like some Navajo roadside art stalls to slow things down a bit.

That afternoon it was onto the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Your first sight of this place takes your breath away. It just goes on forever and the afternoon colours on the canyon walls are amazing. The surprising thing was that at this early stage in the tourist season the place was humming with people.

We camped that night in the park, had the fire roaring and for the first time had a quiet wine for an evening under a starry sky.

Having deer walking around your tent was a strange experience, something that wouldn’t happen in NZ without someone wanting to shoot them, but here it all added to the experience and seemed quite natural.

We spent the next morning watching the sun come up over the canyon but the day was a bit hazy for good photos. We thought we were a bit slow at getting up, but once we were out and about we couldn’t understand where everyone was and why it was a bit dark in the trees. It wasn’t till later in the day that we discovered we were an hour ahead of everyone else and had been for about two weeks. These time zones are a bit of a mixed bag and when you add in daylight saving and the fact that the state of Arizona doesn’t recognise daylight saving you can see where we went wrong. Google solved the problem.

The afternoon was a steady ride up through the Painted Desert to Marble Canyon. We met a couple of bikers from San Francisco and spent the rest of the day chatting and crisscrossing in front of each other as we rode to Hurricane and they to Las Vegas.

Hurricane is the entrance town to Zion National Park and boy this is some park. You can ride through most of it and the scenery was fantastic. Most of the Parks have shuttle bus routes up to the most scenic spots, that way traffic is controlled and people can hike the trails without worrying about parking etc. For us it is not an option because of the security of the gear we are carrying on the bike so we just ride the roads.

Zion was colour, colour, tunnels and more colour. But yet again people were everywhere. In the summer these parks must be a mass of traffic and people so we are glad we are doing them now in the spring, even if the weather is a bit up and down, which is why we are holed up in Hatch for a few days waiting for this storm front to pass before we head up through Bryce Canyon National Park.

The photos will come in four parts.