BULKR8

It's been a week since Dad and I flew home, and unfortunately it's back to reality, which means the insanity of catching up on 3 weeks of missed work. Looking back though, it was completely worth it. Dad and I rode a lot of miles and saw a lot of great things, and overall we both had a fantastic time together. I know having spoken to Dad this week, he's been telling everyone he meets about the trip and Mom has mentioned that his face lights up every time he talks about it. For me it's been the same. I came home to a collage of photos on my office window that a friend of mine at work has been posting for everyone to see, and everyone has stopped by asking me about the trip. It's ... read more

Today was our last real day of riding and while we didn't put a ton of miles on the bikes (c'mon, haven't we done enough already?), we did see a lot of different things. We started the day a little later than normal, hitting the road around 10:00am after breakfast. We started by heading downtown to Mormon Square to see the Mormon Temple and a lot of the other buildings and sites in the downtown area. We started by visiting the assembly building which was like many other churches inside, but had an enormous organ. We wandered around and took some pictures, and then stopped into the John Smith Memorial Building to visit the Family Search Center to see if they could help Dad find some information about his parents and grandparents. It was really interesting. ... read more

It was another pretty easy day today which is good because 6,000 miles is starting to take a toll on us. My shoulder is starting to ache earlier each day than it did at the beginning of the trip, and we're getting worn out earlier after fewer miles. So another easy day with just over 200 miles was nice again. We left Golden this morning and made a quick stop to see Buffalo Bill's grave. Neither Dad nor I knew that in addition to being a scout captain in the Indian wars, and of course running his traveling circus, he was also a Master Mason. From here we headed down I-70 about 20 miles to Colorado Route 40 which will take us almost all the way to Salt Lake City. We passed through the Rockies again ... read more

The day began with a trip towards Arches National Park on a clear, calm, sunny morning. The ride in was again very beautiful with red rock cliffs along the road. We rode through the park and saw a lot of the main arches they have viewpoints of, but didn't do a major hike through the park to some of the others. Delicate Arch is the one on the Utah license plate and we saw it from a distance instead of a 3 mile round trip hike. We also saw Balancing Rock, which really boggles the mind how a large boulder can be perched on top of a rock spire like that. Overall, the park was amazing, and it's really impressive how many hiking and off road trails they have that would be amazing to spend more ... read more

We had a longer mileage day today, but still managed to see quite a bit, and still get in to the hotel early since a lot of our miles were on the highway. We left Ridgecrest this morning and caught another windy day across the northern Mojave Desert. After about 50 miles, we were on to Interstate 15 for the remainder of the day through California, Nevada, Arizona and in to Utah. The wind got really bad for a while to the point we were riding leaned over pretty well, but the worst part is that it was gusty, so at times we were almost blown right out of our lane. The wind was so strong that in Nevada we came across a pickup truck towing a travel trailer that had been blown over. It seemed ... read more