Mesa Verde, Co, Monument Valley and the Moab region, Utah

October 11, 2010 : Mesa Verde National Park, a $ 10.00 fee for the park entrance and here we go ! Blue sky, not the shadow of a cloud, a temperature in the 50’s and a nice ride on motorcycle to the top. We have selected two guided tours : ‘’ Cliff Palace’’, a must and ‘’Balcony House’’. Then, we were on our own to visit some pithouses and stop along the road. It does not look like we have done much today, but we are exhausted and we think it might be because of the altitude again, as we were always above 2000 meters up to 2613 meters at the highest point of the park. Tonight, our faces are as red as lobsters (cooked ones, of course).


The following day we took the road of Monument Valley and this has been our ‘’fourth coup de coeur’’ with an off-road ride on our motorcycles. I had just started the trail that I fell… again. No harm again, and I went on anyway.

It was really worth the ride, the colours of Monument Valley are breathtaking, and everything is majestic.

That night though, we had no other choice than going back to camping as every motel was full. It was not quite cold that night. And again the following morning, blue sky and nice temperature to allow us to have our breakfast outside before taking the road to Moab. Two hundred kilometers later, we learn that the following week is a holiday for the State of Utah, which means that all motels or cabins are booked. We end up camping again and book for five nights a campsite. We just hope that the temperature is not going to drop.

We spent the next four days in the Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, both parks are breaktaking. This area is the paradise for the outdoors activities : mountain bike, hiking, rafting, off-road motorbike or with 4 wheelers, climbing, sky-diving, you have it all and everybody is very active. In the campings, everybody seems to be in bed by nine o’clock. We guess everybody is tired or ready to be up early the next day to do some kind of activity.

In the Arches National Park, we hike three different trails to see the ‘’delicate” Arch, the ‘’double O Arch’’ and the “Windows’’and two hikes in Canyonlands : the Grand View Trail and Murphy's Trail.

The Grand View Trail is not a very long trail, but worth every step of it. The view is awesome, you see the canyons so far that we noticed that when people arrived there, they automatically lowered their tone of voice. The perfect place for meditation, not a background noise, not a sound, just a deep quietness that fills you and calms you down.

After this, Alain and I decided that we would do another off-road trail. This time, I am riding behind Alain. The Shaffer Road starts within the park with an abrupt slope of 5.3 miles. It was a promising trail as it was written at the entrance that this was going to be rough with steep inclines. Nothing scares us !

Wow, emotions, fears of all kinds, freezing sweats and even wondering, what in the h… I am doing here, or please can I go down now from the motorcycle? A couple of times, Alain asked me to get off the bike, so that he could manage his way through the rocks of all sizes and everytime I was eager to comply... This is Alain negotiating a difficult stretch of road :

 I did not even want to climb back on it. No kidding, he would have asked me to run behind the motorcycle the whole way, I think I would have been happy to comply ! In the end, it went well. We almost fell a couple of times, but I must say that Alain is a really good driver, and 29 kilometers later, we arrived at the end of this. Lesson learnt for next time, when Alain should be on his own for this kind of adventure, with the right tyres and without luggage. Happy to be finished !

On the Road Again tomorrow towards Bryce Canyon and Zion parks...