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Sedona
us with our friends, Rod and LilWOW!!!
We just spent 16 days at home in Alberta Canada and although it was certainly winter there, the weather was in our favor. It was cold, but not really that unbearable, until about January 02 when it started to snow. It snowed and snowed and then snowed some more and the temperature plumetted. As we now sit in southern California, in 75 degree weather, watching the temp at home we are thankful we are here and not back at home as the temp there is about -33 C. That is cold!!!!!
I am not going to blog about our 16 days at home, other than to say it was more than wonderful. We spent every moment we could with our kids and our grandbaby. Our days at home were busy with visiting our family and friends and when the 16 days were over it was harder to leave this time. Harder to leave the baby, not so hard to leave the cold.
We arrived back to Phoenix Arizona on January 10, 2011. Rod and Lil, our Alberta friends, who were vacationing in Phoenix picked us up at the airport and took us over to pick up our bike. We
Out for a ride together
Rod, Lil, Rene and I enjoying local food, drink and music at an old "ghost town" near Apache Junction AZ packed the bike back up and as I stayed in the car with Rod and Lil, Rene rode the bike over the the beautiful home they were renting in Athemn, Arizona. We visited the night away in the hot tub and out. We talked with them about the next leg of our journey, travelling into Mexico and Central America. We have been talking to many folks along the way and the more people we talked too, the more confusion we were feeling about travelling to Mexico and Central America. We went to the Canadian Foreign Affairs travel site and found and read the travel advisories about Mexico and even Guatemala. The site does not recommend travel to either of these places. Also, many of the people we had been talking too at home and in the southwest here are really questioning travel to those countries on a motorcycle and by ourselves. Most people are saying that being just the 2 of us and being on a motorcycle leaves us quite vulnerable. We were feeling that way too and as we talked more and more with Rod and Lil, the clearer it became. If we were with a group of other
travellers, or even in a vehicle, it might be safer. Even people who are in favor of us going, were saying things like; travel only during the day; only park the bike in safe compounds; don't go out alone at night and plan the route. Not sure how fun that sounds, even if were are safe. Neither of us want to feel like we need to be looking over our shoulders for the next few months. So.... that means our travel plans needed to change.
Sounds easy right? The world is big and there are so many places to visit, it really should be easy???? Well....not so easy. We had our hearts set on Mexico and Central America and to change gears and go somewhere else takes some pretty hard and strong emotional energy. We threw out a bunch of different ideas, asked our friends and family about ideas and have decided that Thailand is maybe the place to go. More about those plans and thoughts later. I want to talk about the great time we had with our friends.
January 11, 2011
We woke up in this wonderful home with our wonderful friends and decided to go on
Rod and Lil
Riding through the rocks a road trip in Rod and Lil's rental car. Rene and I had such a great time in Sedona Arizona before Christmas and we wanted to share that with them, so off we went to tour the country side and the beautiful red rocks of Sedona. We had a wonderful day, singing in the car, looking at the scenery and enjoying each other's company. We spent the day out, bought steaks for supper and had a marvelous BBQ dinner. What an incredible day.
January 12, 2011.
Yeah!!!! another day in sunshine and warm weather. Rod and Lil rented a Harley for the day and off we went on another adventure in Arizona. We rode to Apache Junction. We stopped for lunch at an old ghost town. Great burgers and beer to share. After lunch we continued on to Tortilla flats. The road to the flats was an amazing winding curvy rode with these great huge cactus and rocks on each side. Really cool ride. After checking out the little town at the end of the road, we headed back to Miami Arizona. Rene and I had also been through this pass before, and it was wonderful so away we
Just outside of Yuma AZ
Park the RV, unload the ATV's and rip around the dunes!!!!! went again with our friends. This pass took us through a high mountain pass and although it was beautiful, with the elevation it was COLD, so we turned around and headed back to the house. We arrived back at the house at 7:30 pm tired, but feeling fine after a full day of riding. It really is great to ride with friends. Nice to share the sights, sounds and smells with fellow riders. Had a dinner of clean up foods. Food that neither of us wanted to take with us the following day as we went our seperate ways. Had another evening of great talks, some good belly laughs and some serious conversing.
January 13, 2011.
Rod and Lil were flying home to Alberta and we were continuing our journey, so after bringing the rental bike back, cleaning the house and drinking a couple cups of coffee together we went our separate ways. Rod and Lil of course, to the airport and Rene and I headed towards Tucson Arizona. Just a quick note here to say thank- you to our dear friends, not just for having us in their home, but for being the ones to help us work
Border Fence
Truly incredible measures for safety and security??? through re-thinking our travel plans. To have these great friends that we trust, admire and love help us to change our hearts means so much. THANK YOU SO MUCH Rod and Lil. Love ya lots and here's to many more biking adventures together.
We arrived at the hostel in Tucson at about 2:00pm. We sat on the deck while we waited for the office to open. After checking in and settling ourselves in our room, we continued hammering out our travel plans. We spent the evening talking and working through some ideas and plans. We hit our bed mentally and emotionally exhausted, but feeling at peace with our decisions.
January 14, 2011
The sun was hot and high in the sky when we woke up. We were feeling lazy and so had a relaxing morning of sitiing in the sun eating our breakfast, drinking coffee and visiting with other hostel guests. We also went for a walk-run and at about 2:00 we jumped on the bike to get some supplies. What I needed more than anything was a new pair of eye glasses. While in Alberta, my glasses fell off my face and the frame broke. I managed to
wear them with a cracked frame for quite a while, but at some point the lense fell out and I drove over the lense with Amanda's van. I still had my sunglasses, so my plan was to wear my sunglasses until we hit Mexico and once there buy some new glasses. Well....since the plans had changed, I needed to bite the bullet and just go buy some. Especially if we were headed to Thailand. I wanted glasses before heading there. We ended up going to Lenscrafters as they were the only place that could make the glasses before we left Tucson. In fact, they had my new glasses ready for me in about one hour. Oh my it is so great to have them. Distance is the issue for me, so being without glasses is not impossible, but oh how nice to see things in the distance without squinting and straining my eyes. Picked up the other supplies and groceries we needed and headed back to the hostel. My parents are on thier way to Sky Valley California and plan to arrive in their winter home on the 15th. We wanted see them at their place before we left and
hopefully be able to park our bike with them for the next couple of months, so waited to make final destination plans until we spoke with them. Spent the evening watching a movie with the other guests and off to bed.
January 15, 2011
Another lazy day, except...... while we were eating our breakfast, we talked with a hostel guest who was raving about this amazing Yoga class he attended. We decided we should try it out so off we went at 10:00 to Yoga. We spent the next hour, stretching and contorting our bodies in poses that seemed inhuman. I have regularly taken Yoga classes at home, so felt pretty confident I could handle Tucson Yoga. Rene had never taken a yoga class, so really had no idea what to expect. Well I had never taken a yoga class like this one.!!!!!! I sweated and huffed and puffed my way through some of the most difficult human positions possible. Rene as well moved and stretched his body like he never had before. We both did O.K and at the end felt like we accomplished something quite amazing. We treated ourselves with a wonderful coffee after and laughed and
joked with each other about the funny noises we heard from each other while contorting our bodies. Back to the hostel we went and spent the next couple of hours basking in the sun, reading and listening to music. At 2:30, Rene and about 4 other guys turned on the TV and parked their butts for the next several hours watching 2 games of football. I finished the book I was reading, worked on the blog and listened to the guys yelling at the refs and telling the professional players and the refs what they should be doing and how to make the plays. I love to sit and listen to the arm chair athletes. Quite entertaining!!!!!
Oh yeah, the same guy who told us about the yoga, also talked about eating Indian food. I suggested he teach me how to prepare some Indian food, so we decided to make Indian food for dinner. He arrived back at the hostel with all the fixins and together we made and enjoyed a wonderful Indian dish. Football ended at about 9:30 pm. Visited with our new friends and then off to bed we went.
January 16, 2011
Woke up to a
hot and wonderful morning. Decided to go to church this morning in Tucson. We had looked on the internet with another hostel guest the previous evening and he found us a Medodist Church within walking distance. Service started at 10:00 am so at 9:00 ish off we went to find it. We found the church with the correct address and it turned out to be a African American Methodist Church. No problem with us, in fact we were quite thrilled to find an AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church as we didn't get the opportunity to attend this type of church in the deep south. We were warmly welcomed by all and after almost 3 hours (yes, I said 3 hours!!!!!) of some pretty wild, crazy and amazing fellowship, we walked out definitely knowing we had been to church.
After church we went to a local market to purchase some groceries. Quiant little market with lots of asian groceries. We bought some fresh veggies and some chicken and headed back to the hostel.
Rene watched some more football and I did some more work on my blog and read my book. I am getting used to having few responsibilities!!!!
Connected with
Sagurao Cactus
massive cactus along the way my parents and they are confident we can leave our bike somewhere in the park that they live in and they are able to bring us to the Los Angeles Airport. After talking to them I got on the internet and booked our one way flights to Bangkok, leaving on January 22. We decided to go just one way as we are not sure we will spend the whole of the next 3 months in Thailand, or if we will fly somewhere else in the world until we come back to our motorcycle at the end of April, beginning of May.
January 17, 2011
Monday morning and we left Tucson. We are headed out towards Palm Springs, where my parents are. As we were leaving Tucson and stopped at a red light in town, this homeless guy gives us the thumbs up. While grinning from ear to ear, he peddles his bike quickly over to us and in a hurried voice excitedly tells us that we can go a couple more blocks down the road and we will see a church that hands out free bag lunches and if we had time we could sit and have a hot
bowl of soup. I didn't think we looked destitute and down on our luck while one the bike!!!! Anyway we had a good laugh and roared away. We may one day need a bag lunch and a hot bowl of soup, but thank God, it wasn't on that day.
We drove through the desert all day and had to stop several times to take pictures and stare at the gigantic Saguro cactus'. The saguaro is a large, tree-sized cactus. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. state of Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, a small part of Baja California. Saguaros have a relatively long life span. They take up to 75 years to develop a side arm and can have up to 5 of these arms. The oldest Saguaro is believed to be 150 years old. They are fascinating plants and seem to have their own little piece of the desert.
We drove most of the day and stopped for the night in Yuma Arizona. It was a hot desert drive so the setting sun and cool of the night was wonderful. By the time we stopped in Yuma, it was almost dark. We had some
dinner, watched some T.V in our motel room and fell asleep.
January 18, 2011.
Woke up again to a hot sunny day. Our first interesting sight was more sand dunes. More great huge dunes with nothing but the tracks of ATV's and human feet. It appears that folks, park their R.V's just about anywhere on the dunes, unload thier ATV's and spend their vacation roaring up, down and around these massive sand dunes. Looks like great fun!!!!
The next interesting sight was the amazing fencing that is just outside of Yuma on the Mexican, US border. This fence is a border fence that is aimed at securing U.S. borders and reducing illegal immigration. As of January 22, 2010 roughly 643.3 miles of fencing (344.8 miles of pedestrian fence and 298.5 miles of vehicle fence) along the Southwest Border has been completed. As we were driving we could see sections of the fence from the road.
Much work, time and energy goes into keeping Mexican people from coming into the States.
As we carried on our journey we stopped for lunch in Niland California. Had a great burger, with onion rings in this little cafe that smelled of cow dung.
Indian Food
Good food with new friends, Madu and Soloman in Tucson AZ Looked outside and sure enough, there was a big cattle truck loaded with cattle. We wanted to find Niland, because just north 3 miles of this little nothing town is a community known as Slab City and a monument known as Salvation Mountain. Slab City is a free R.V park in the middle of the desert. The park has no running water, no electricity and no other services. It is built on an old abandoned navy base. Many who live there are snowbirds, others are nomads and yet others are permanent squatters. It looks like an old hippy compound with lots of unique and different means of keeping life simple. Before entering Slab City we stopped at Salvation Mountain. Salvation Mountain is a colorful art installation covering much of a small hill. It is made from adobe, straw, and thousands of gallons of paint. It was created by Leonard Knight to convey the message "God Is Love." Another of Leonard's expressions "Keep It Simple". Rene sat with Leonard while we were there and chatted with him about his creation. He is a man in his 70's with a weather worn face, who is very proud of his work. After chatting
with Leonard we went to explore this mountian. We did as Leonard suggested and followed the "yellow brick road" to the top of the mountain where there is a large cross. It is quite an amazing piece of work. Kinda crazy if you ask me!!! While I was exploring the area I slipped in some fresh bright green paint. Almost landed on my butt, but caught myself just in time. But...I now have a small green smear of Salvation Mountain on my leather chaps. Oh well....just a part of the adventure right? After spending about an hour exploring this neat creation, we jumped back on the bike and headed off. We followed that shores of the Salton Sea.
Now the Salton Sea has it's own story as well, so in a nut shell it is one of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth at -227 below sea level. It was once a thriving beach destination and appears to be on the rise again after some years of fall off due to the poor quality of the water and unkeep. Anyway we didn't stop to check out the sea, rather we rode on the distant shores. After
Salvation Mountain
Rene and Leonard Knight the creator of Salvation Mountain a full day of see all there was to see in this neck of the woods we stopped for the night in Indio California. Stayed in a rather questionable cheap motel, but we went to a local watering hole, watched some locals sing Karaoke and fell into bed.
January 19, 2011.
Woke up and started on our way to my parents place in Desert Hot Springs. When we looked at the map it appeared we were only about 20 miles from their place last night.
After a quick bite to eat and stopping to gas up (the most expensive gas yet in the States) we headed off to Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree national Park is named for the Joshua Tree that is native to this desert. Joshua Tree National Park has two deserts; the higher Mojave Desert and lower Colorado Desert. There are many interesting plants and rock formations within these two desert ecosystems. For example in the Mojave Desert there is a whole little "garden" of Cholla cacti. Then in the Colorado Desert, in the same park, is the Joshua Tree and these wonderful rock formations jutting out of the earth. Such a cool place and
Salvation Mountain (3)
Entrance to the museum riding on the bike with the sun shinning on our faces.... well the world is a marvelous place. We stopped for some lunch in a town called 29 Palms. Way more Palms than that, so not really sure how it got it's name???
After lunch we headed to my parents place. We arrived at their home about 3:30 pm. They were out and about , so we went for coffee and explored a little bit of their resort. What a nice place!!!!
After coffee we just were going to sit and wait for them to return and within minutes they were home.
January 20-21, 2011
We had a wonderful time with my parents and their friends for the 2.5 days we stayed with them. I'm telling you, if this is what retirement is all about..... I'm in!!!! My parents spend about 3 months of the cold winter in Alberta basking in the sun in Sky Valley,California. They just play and hang out with their friends in the everyday warm sunshine. The resort has activities to do everyday. There are several swimming pools, golf courses, games, entertainment and shopping close by. Your days can be as full as you want
them to be, or as relaxed and lazy as you want them to be. We played shuffleboard with them, we went for a swim in the pool and we even went to an evening of entertainment of a family of fiddle players. It was a absolutely wonderul time of just hanging out. Thanks Mom and Dad!!!!
So that ends this blog of Arizona and California. We love the sun and are thankful for the friends and family we got to spend time with on this leg of our journey.
The next part of this adventure is sure to bring more interesting sights and people, so ........ stay tuned.
As Gordon Lightfoot sings......."I guess it must be wanderlust or trying to get free... Carefree Highway......let me slip away, slip away on you"
And so we remain........
In the Grip of Grace
Rene and Crystal
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Erich & Meggie Clausen
non-member comment
have fun in thailand
Hey guys, we love reading your reports, have a fun time in thailand! Just wanting to let you know that Larry and Linda just became grandparents today, a little girl. I guess they need not have worried about missing it on our little party after christmas. Somebody didn't count right. Anyway all the best, Meggie & ERich