Welcome to Boring, Oregon.

nev

Super Térrarist
Another cold night, the ground level at Bryce is 7777ft asl, but once the sun came up the temperatures rose quickly (to thawing temperature mind you). We headed north from Bryce, through farming country. The road was a bit dodgy in places with corrugations and bumps, and it was 45MPH limit, but we putted along enjoying being out on the open road. There were a few canyons along the way including this just before Antimony where we stopped for breakfast.

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What do you do if doughnuts just aren't good enough for you? Supersize them and put bacon on top, of course.

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At lunchtime we stopped at a petrol station for lunch and a bloke in a car saw the Alaska plates on the bike and started chatting about our trip. He was a rider and interested in where we'd been and where we were going. He finished the conversation about 10 times, but every time he'd think of another question to ask us or another trip on where to travel or stay. The thought of two Aussies flying halfway around the world and taking the road trip he always dreamed of had him spellbound. Eventually about after half an hour he finally dragged himself away and got back in his truck.

We stayed off the main highways for most of the day until the last few km into Provo.

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Provo itself is surrounded on at least 3 sides by mountains, which were mostly snowcapped. This means good riding is guaranteed into and out of the city through the valleys.

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Even pedestrians can enjoy the bends

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nev

Super Térrarist
From about Yosemite NP onwards, the daily weather forecasts didn't change much, and this carried through most of the days all the way from Bryce in UT and onwards north. Cool mornings, daily high temps around 15-18C, scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms in the afternoons, which usually started brewing around 4pm. Because we were trying to keep the daily distances down to 350-400km we were usually off the road before 4pm anyway. Some days it was as early as lunchtime, and most of the time, the rain stuck to the hills, and the roads stuck to the valleys, so even when it was raining right in the area where we were, we stayed dry.
 

goodie

...
Once we left Mesquite we were almost immediately in Utah. We rode through Zion National park to Mt Carmel Junction. On our 2010 trip we arrived at Mt Carmel Junction dripping wet and freezing cold.

Pete, Jimbo and I stayed at Mt Carmel Junction 2011 for a night. It was a beautiful day and we had a dip in the creek behind the accommodation.
We had an encounter with a group of Harley Riders - German dentists, accountants and what have you - fake tatooes, the works, on rental bikes.
They stayed at the same accommodation and ate at the same place as we were. But when they learnt that there was no beer with the meal they had a hissy fit! Hilarious!
"Watt? No beer..?"
Since Pete and I could follow their conversation we had a very enjoyable time..
Hello - we are in Utah, a Mormon state.
Here we don't work on Sundays and we definitely don't drink alcohol! - But we don't need to wear helmets!
 

nev

Super Térrarist
Pete, Jimbo and I stayed at Mt Carmel Junction 2011 for a night. It was a beautiful day and we had a dip in the creek behind the accommodation.
We had an encounter with a group of Harley Riders - German dentists, accountants and what have you - fake tatooes, the works, on rental bikes.
They stayed at the same accommodation and ate at the same place as we were. But when they learnt that there was no beer with the meal they had a hissy fit! Hilarious!
"Watt? No beer..?"
Since Pete and I could follow their conversation we had a very enjoyable time..
Hello - we are in Utah, a Mormon state.
Here we don't work on Sundays and we definitely don't drink alcohol! - But we don't need to wear helmets!

There were two things on this trip which were consistently good. The weather and the beer. I don't drink that much at home except on hot summer nights, or if we eat out, but because we're eating out every night of the week on a trip like this, I usually have a beer with my evening meal. The craft beer market in the US and Canadian states we visited was well and truly thriving. Just about every restaurant we ate at had a selection of beers from local brewers. In some cases they were listed on the menus, or in other places the waiters could rattle off a list of local beers they had on tap. Hefeweisens, golden ales, pilsners, very hoppy IPAs - and more dark beer varieties that I don't drink so I don't remember. In fact I can only recall one place we went to where the only available beers were from the big brewers, Miller, Coors, Budweiser etc. (and I am very happy to report that we encountered no shortage of beers in any of the places we stayed during our 4 nights in Utah on this trip.) Also, the beers were almost always served in Pint glasses and generally cost $4-5 which was often only marginally more than a softdrink, (and in some cases, the same price or even 50c cheaper than Jo's softdrink).





Monday morning we headed off to the post office to which my parcel for the new autocom headset had been sent.
Spoke to the lady behind the counter. "no sorry this is not a standard delivery post office"
"but someone sent me a parcel addressed to this post office". "if anything was received here it would have been returned to sender" "ummm." "or it might be at the other post office which does mail delivery" "errr.. where is that"... "well it's on something and something" "I have a tracking number" She disappears for about 3 minutes to the back office and returns with a package in her hand, and starts giving me a lecture on how you can't send mail to a post office that's not a general delivery post office. A few minutes later the new headset is in Jo's helmet, and tested and off we go again.

Today is a short day. We only need to go about 150km north, so I hook in part of my original plan which had been altered to get to Provo and we head into Wyoming.

Heading out of Provo

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and into Wyoming

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After lunch at Kemmerer we stopped at Fossil Butte National Monument. (It's not really a monument, the US has all these different classes of protected sites, National Parks, National Monuments, National Preserves, National Preserves, National Recreation Areas, but I think they're all administered by the National Parks Service). This is an area which is very rich in fossils, and the fossils found there are some of the best preserved from any location in the world. Although the ground level here is almost 7,000ft asl many of the fossils are from an age when this area was below sea level.

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The fossils are amazing to see up close, but not very photogenic (actually most of them were casts of fossils, and the originals are in other museums or in private collections)

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From there we headed west, past Bear Lake, and over the hills.

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Now as previously stated, the rain generally stuck to the hills and the roads to the valleys, but the hills between Bear Lake and Logan needed to be crossed. We got up one side of the hilll dry, but a few minutes of heavy rain on the way down the other side. Fortunately it didn't last too long and soon we were in another valley, winding our way beside another river. Without wanting to spoil the rest of the story I can tell you here that this was the only rain we rode in for the entire 29 days that we had the bikes. A few showers here and there, but nothing that required more than a few wipes of the visor to remove some rain drops and some wet roads.

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jo

I'm a wimp!
Yosemite National Park is a very popular spot for rock climbing. During our visit - the the Ranger indicated that there were people climbing. We all tried to find them but with the naked eyes - it was very difficult to find them.

Only after, zooming into our photos, that we found out there were at least 11 people climbing El Capitan

In a very small section - there were 5.
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jo

I'm a wimp!
There were always threat of rain but it was always beyond our reach. The dark clouds and rain in the distance provided a nice photo.

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nev

Super Térrarist
We arrived in Logan in between rain showers. After we had showered and settled in I went through my nightly process... take a backup of the camera SD card, take a backup of the video camera card, take a backup of the GPS track, recharge batteries in the communication devices, plug in phones and whatever else needs charging, and then fire up the computer and check the weather for the next few days. What I saw wasn't pretty.

It was Monday, and I had already planned the next 3 overnight destinations. Current location and Destination 1 was to be wet Tuesday but better on Wednesday, destination 2 wet on Wednesday and better on Thursday, and destination 3 wet on Thursday but better on Friday. It had only been 5 days since our last non-riding day in Yosemite, but it was an easy decision to make. Stay 2 nights here in Logan and have a rest day Tuesday. It was a good move.

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It rained all night and for half of the next day. We did a bit of exploring around the town on foot, and found a great woodfired pizza shop which is always high on Jo's list of places to eat, and their "Big Lou-bowski" pizza was a highlight of the trip.

Found a coin dealer who had in their window a collection of Zimbabwe currency,
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All the way from one dollar,

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up to one hundred trillion dollars.

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