Gremlin's Tall Stories

Alarm rings at 6.45am… Kevin had said that the van needed to be loaded by 7am, so dragged the bag down to the van. I should have worn jandals as the car park was crushed stone. Ouch… Bag passed to Kevin, back to the room to keep sleeping (yep, as usual).

8.30am, alarm rings again and I finally get up, shower and get ready. No continental breakfast this morning, but the quick visit to the General Store last night gave me enough for this morning as well. 4 sticks of French bread, yoghurt and an apple was plenty for breakfast. I check on my bike since yesterday it received a lot of rough treatment, and I’m very satisfied when I have no broken spokes, no loose items, and the bash plate is only slightly dinged. There are obviously a few scratches, including the BMW badge, but it’s the hardest time I’ve given a bike and I’ve broken bikes with less. This one has handled the lot, and I’m happy knowing I won’t be getting much else for a while yet. These BMWs are built properly… I know, having broken others and I was mostly on the road while doing it.

Filling on the outskirts of town right next to Highway 12 at 11.30am it was then up Highway 12. Traffic was reasonably light, and while road was quite long, I’ll sum it up as saying most of it was standard fare for what we see on a day to day basis, but the Devil’s Staircase and Devil’s backbone were brilliant.

A road along a mountain ridge, descending into the canyon on a 14 degree gradient… magic stuff. Ignore the speed limit and simply enjoy the road. The americans really do build some nice smooth roads, no decreasing radius bends etc. Went through a few tiny little towns like Cannonville, very cute, very quiet.

At the end of 12, I turned south onto 89, not bothering to stop until the junction with Highway 9. I considered stopping in at the Thunderbird Restaurant, but thought it best to finish Zion National Park first. The temperature had remained in the low 30s all afternoon.

Zion National Park was different to every other park we had been through. It required payment of course, like all the others, but the annual passes were accepted. The mountains were magnificent but it had climbed to high 30s, so no desire to stop much. At one of the tunnels we had to wait. Normally, you can go straight through, but when the RVs want to go through, traffic is changed to one way, as they can’t pass each other within the tunnel. Sitting in 37 degrees, full gear… it got real hot.

Out the other side, the view was well worth it, and pulling off into a layby for some photos (half thinking I should ignore the view and just get past the damn RV) Mark and Gerry, Gary and Barbara catch up. They’d already checked into the lodge and were doing a trip out. We observe some birds then carry on.

I was caught up with photographing things while on the move (including them) that I didn’t see the end of the park. They turned off, I had no idea why, had my camera in hand… damn it, so exited the park, pulled a U-turn, then got to go through the whole fun game of going back in again (including the waiting in line). I didn’t see the guys again and unfortunately got stuck behind 3 cars that loved doing 25mph.

When the temperature topped out at 42 degrees, I’d had enough, and the next straight went past them… yellow lines or not. The run back was easier, a little less traffic and it meant every time I stopped to take a picture, no-one caught up and passed me, so the road was always mine. I did have one car think it best to stop in the middle of the road because there were some goats on the road side. Twit.

Leaving Highway 9, I stopped at the Thunderbird Restaurant since it was almost 5pm and I hadn’t had lunch. They had after all, advertised the best “Ho-made pies”. I simply had to investigate this.

A chicken salad sandwich, not bad, but had better, I loved the fries, making sure to have all the salt and then topped it off with a Strawberry Rhubarb piece of pie. The restaurant was flasher than I thought it would be, but the food nice. The ice water went down like a hot knife through butter. Half the water container disappeared, then the waiter was suddenly providing a bigger glass.

Back on the road, it was only 20 miles to Kanab, which was knocked off easily. Some had gone through the park to (another) the Harley shop, so I wasn’t the last to check in. My own room for the night, I unpacked and jumped in the pool. I tried to be social and write some blogs, but this failed miserably. I was social, showed people some of the best pictures, was shown pictures, also explained my late arrival in Torrey in more detail… I wrote 2 paragraphs for the blog…

Murray had gone down the road to look at some old vehicles and surprised us by coming back on a 1945 tractor. Took some pictures and he disappeared again. As the others headed off for dinner, he returned. We’d agreed earlier we’d look for some burgers for dinner. A lot of the others had booked into an appointment only restaurant… couldn’t be bothered with all that.

Walking down the street, we found a nice Rewind Diner, much like burger king in presentation, but much more than burgers. We walked on, Murray wanting to show me the vintage equipment, and I knew dad would like that, so took some pictures. The bar next to the equipment was putting on live music at 8pm, so since it was 7pm, we went back to the Diner and ran into Roger and Robin.

Roger had chosen a delicious burger and it arrived before we ordered. We promptly both ordered the same burger, complete with fried potato cake… extremely delicious. I couldn’t resist the Dutch apple pie for dessert and tempted Roger and Robin into it as well.

From there, we headed over to the bar for the music. Ken, Murray etc. loved it, but not really my thing, so I headed back to the Lodge to write some blogs. Didn’t get as much written as I wanted to, I blame the movies on TV

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UJHB8fF8bsEuLgwh6