From: Terry Royse To: M&M Riders Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 6:45 PM Subject: Rocky Mountains and Grand Canyon
Short Version:
Hi folks,
Someone told me may last dispatch was too long to read, so here is a shortened version. Kansas was windy. The Rocky Mountains were beautiful. Grand Canyon was huge. JD crashed and broke his leg and flew back home. Dessert was hot. We made it back. How's that?
Ride safe and have fun...but ride, Terry (Santa Claws) Royse
Original version: (See Map)
Hi folks,
What will follow will not be a blow by blow description of our trip but more my impressions and highlights. We met at Jerry's at 8am.
Well, I was there at 7:30am and everyone else was late. I thought they were playing a joke on me, but as it turned out they were just late. JD had forgotten something and had to go back to get it and the Clemons had trouble getting packed up and started.
We ate breakfast and talked about the first leg of our trip. We left and rode to Georgetown on Hwy 460 and ventured through "Sleepy Hollow" and wound up on Hwy 62 in Versailles. We took the BG Parkway to Bardstown and got back on Hwy 62. We lunched at K's Cafe in Clarkston.
We rode Hwy 62 to Paducah. We picked up Hwy 60 and rode it into Missouri. We got on Hwy 160 and pretty much stayed on that to Colorado. We spent the first night in Sikeston at the Days Inn and ate supper at Ryan's.
(Night 1) We arrived in Sikeston at about 9:30pm. JD ot shutter happy and was taking pictures of me sleeping and brushing my teeth.
The ride through Missouri was pleasant. Hwy 160 had lots of twisty-turnies and ran through the hills in southern Missouri. Hwy 160 joined up with an interstate near Springfield and in an attempt to not hit Springfield at rush hour and to stay on two lane highways we took a series of back roads. We didn't exactly get lost, but we did a lot of stopping and asking directions. We finally wound up in Joplin on Hwy 66. We seemed to have taken a long time to get there. We probably should have taken the interstate, but hindsight is always 20/20.
We broke the Kansas state line and found our way back to Hwy 160.
(Night 2) At 9:30pm we stopped in Columbus, Kansas looking for a motel room. There was no motel. This is where JD dropped his bike for the first time. A foreboding for things to come. We were all tired and I think exhaustion played a key role.
We were told to go to Parsons, Kansas (the nearest town with a motel) some 30 miles away. We got to Parsons found a motel....no vacancy....found a second motel.....no vacancy.....got directions to the only other motel in town....the Townsman.....got there and they had vacancies. Of course no one had stayed in this motel since 1957 or so it appeared. An old toothless woman met us at the front desk backed up by shirtless, tattooed gentleman. The song, Hotel California kept playing over in my head. The line "This could be heaven or this could be hell" was especially prominent. But it had a bed and a shower and that was all we cared about.
JD was too tired to go eat so Isom, Donita and I found a Long John Silvers still open and ate there.
We were up and running at 7:30am the next morning. Kansas is just flat. That is all I can say. The wind is pretty much a constant 30mph.
We spent that
We stopped in Dodge City, Kansas. We visited the Boot Hill museum. It contained a rebuilt version of Front Street. I had a Sarsaparilla in the Long Branch Saloon and we toured the displays. That was neat.
Later, we did come across an interesting "wind farm". It had row after row after row of white wind mills (or wind machines) that were about 200 feet tall with blades that were about 50 feet long. We took some pictures here.
We ate lunch at a restaurant ran by an Amish woman. The food was great. Outside a fellow came up to me and ask where we were headed. I told him "Tonight we sleep in Colorado or we die in Kansas". He looked at me like I was crazy. This, later on, would become a battle cry for us...... Tonight we sleep in (the next state) or we die in (the state we were in).
We crossed the line into Colorado. We spent the night at Trinidad. The next morning we took Hwy 12, known as the Highway of Legends. It is touted as one of the 125 Most Scenic Drives in America. For the first 5 miles we could have been in Peasticks, Kentucky. I was wondering how this could have been rated as one of the most scenic rides in America. We were riding in some hills.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS And then we rounded a turn past the hillside and there they were.....the Rocky Mountains. It almost took my breath away. We stopped along side the road to take pictures. There are almost no pull off areas along Hwy 12....something I intend to write the Colorado Department of Transportation about.
As we stood there I pulled my goggles back down over my eyes. I didn't want the others to see the tears welling up. There before me was a life long dream. I was finally seeing the Rocky Mountains. Since I was a young fellow seeing movies about mountain men and Jeremiah Johnson, I had dreamed of one day seeing and riding in the Rocky Mountains.....now they lay before me. I was not disappointed. They were as big as my dreams had made them. From this point on we could have taken a picture every 15 feet and still not done justice to what we were seeing.
Seeing them is not just a physical experience. For me at least, it was a spiritual experience as well. It was somehow a confirmation of the things I believe. Man can build all the great towers and buildings he wants and they may be great, but they fall so far short of the wondrous miracles that God has created. My heart was filled with awe and wonder.
The road turned up through Cuchara Pass at 9,941 ft. You could smell pine and cedar. We stopped at a mountain lake that looked like something out of a picture book. It was pristine and backed dropped by the mountains. At each turn of the road, you think..."It can't get any more beautiful than this"....and you are wrong. Around the next turn is something even more breathtaking.
We came down out of the mountains and came to a small area known as La Vita. There we turned again on to Hwy 160 and started immediately to climb into La Vita Pass at 9,413 ft. The road then dropped away into a long valley passed Blanca Peak (14,345 ft.) and wound its way along side a mountain stream. We could see trout fishermen standing in the stream. And the road began to climb into Wolf Creek Pass at 10,850 ft.
There was road construction here with patches of gravel drives which made the trip a little more harrowing and a little less enjoyable than it might have been but it was still a wondrous ride.
We arrive in Durango at about 5:30pm and began to hunt for a motel. Durango is a tourist town. Motels were not hard to find, but motels with reasonable rates were a little more difficult. After stopping at a couple of places and calling some others, a waiter from a local restaurant who happened by to look at our motorcycles told us about the Days End in town.
It was a nice place with reasonable rates. We stopped there and booked a couple of rooms for 2 nights. We were exhausted but elated. We ate at an Italian Restaurant called Mama's Boys. The discussion was about what we had seen during the day. We wondered how the first mountain men had managed to pick their way through the mountains. We decided that many of them must have perished trying. And then the settlers.....how did they ever get wagons through.
The next morning we awoke early eager for the day to come. We would strike out on the San Juan Skyway. We departed on Hwy 550. The morning was chilly and required leather. After several miles across the valley floor the road climbed to Coal Bank Hill Pass at 10,640 ft. We saw elk, deer and vistas of mountains and passes.
The road wound down to Silverton. Silverton is a small town that has been kept for the most part the way it was in the 1800's except for electricity and indoor plumbing. It was a really neat place to see. We ate breakfast at the Gold King restaurant and hotel. We rolled back onto Hwy 550 and up through Red Mountain Pass at 11,008 ft. The road wound down the other side and at one point opened a pass to see miles down the valley below. Then we came to the town of Ouray in the valley. This is where tragedy struck.
We were about through the town and stopped for gas. The station did not have a store and we were all thirsty. Someone told us there was a store about 9 miles up the road at Ridgeway. We pulled out onto Hwy 550, still in a high traffic area, about a mile inside the city limits. We had gone less than an 1/8 of a mile. Donita was in the lead and spotted a store that looked like it might sell soft drinks. She slowed down to look, Isom was behind her and he slowed down. JD was behind them. I saw Donita and Isom's brake lights. So I began to brake. At that moment, I wondered why I wasn't seeing JD's brake lights. I looked at him and he was looking off at the store, still accelerating. When he looked back, he was about to hit Isom. He locked down on his brakes. The back of his bike began to slide. Then I saw that terrible wobble.....the one where you know that every muscle is being used to try to regain control but to no avail. The bike went down on its right side. JD came tumbling off. He hit on his right leg and shoulder. Then his head hit. He had worn his helmet nearly the whole trip, but had left it on his bike for what was to be a short trip. The bike slid on away from him. He slid for a ways and then rolled completely over 360 degrees coming to rest on his right side. I thought to myself that he had hit pretty hard but maybe he would get up and walk away. He rolled over on his back. Then I heard his groans. The kind that only come from someone who is really hurt. Before I could get my kickstand down a lady from the store was yelling that they had called 911. As it happened, a vacationing paramedic was in the car right behind us. He got to JD before I did and was telling him to lay still. He began to check him for injuries. At first JD was not responding much. I was concerned about his head injuries. His face was covered in blood and frankly looked a mess. JD finally started to come around. The vacationing paramedic was feeding information to a lady who was on the phone with paramedics in the ambulance. I was amazed at how fast the ambulance got there. Ouray did not have medical facilities. The closest medical facilities were in Montrose...37 miles up the road. As it happened they were in the area. I had already spoken to J.D. to let him know we were there with him and we would see to it he was taken care of. A bystander and I had picked up JD's bike. I was amazed at how little damage had been done. It was rideable. While the paramedics worked on J.D., I was talking to Isom about what we could do with JD's bike. Bob Griggers, an older gentleman who owned an R.V. park across the road volunteered his garage. He said they kept the garage locked and we could leave it there as long as we wanted. He was an extremely nice fellow. I walked back over and assured JD that his bike was being taken care of and we would see him at the hospital. I knew at that moment that either his knee was disjointed or his leg was broken. It turned a very peculiar angle as he lay there. They put on all the braces needed and put JD in the ambulance. One of the bystanders told me, "you'd better see to the lady, she is very distraught". Donita was crying. She felt like she was to blame. She had put on her brakes to look at the store. I told her it was not her fault. How many times had we put on our brakes to look at something that day. JD was tired, hot and simply had a lapse of attention. It could have happened to any one of us. A split second lapse of focus in the wrong place at the wrong time and an accident. I rode J.D.'s bike over to the Bob's garage and then we were off to the hospital in Montrose, Colorado. I was in the lead. I stopped at the store in Ridgeway. I knew everyone of us wanted to push hard to get to the hospital but I also knew that everyone was tired and thirsty. I told them we all needed to get to Montrose in one piece to help JD and we needed to rest for a few minutes or we might be next. We sat at the table quietly. Suddenly a funny thought occurred to me. JD had been shutter happy this whole trip. He had already run through five cameras. I said "The most horrific event of the trip and we didn't get a picture." Isom smiled at me and said, "I did. I knew JD would want pictures so I got his camera and took pictures of him on the ground and being loaded into the ambulance." Everyone smiled. I guess it sounds kind of gruesome but we all knew JD would want them. When we got to the hospital JD was in x-ray. When he came out we got to see him. The news wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either. His right leg was broken. This is the same leg he had broken in 1999 in a motorcycle accident. It already was pinned together with a steel rod. Now they would have to do surgery to repair all that. He was scheduled for surgery the next morning. Isom, Donita and I had a 3 hour trip back to Durango. We spent the night there since we had already paid for the rooms and the next morning we packed up our gear and JD's gear, got it all loaded on our motorcycles and rode back Ouray and cleared JD's personal gear from his motorcycle then rode on to Montrose and got a room there to be near the hospital. JD came through the surgery fine. We visited with him for a while after the surgery, went got something to eat, returned to the hospital and finally came back to the motel and flopped. We were all exhausted. The next morning we went to the hospital and we got with a member of the staff to make arrangements to have JD flown home. The lady's name was Lydia and she was a delight. She took care of everything for us....flight reservations, transport from the hospital, wheel chairs at each stop, etc. JD shooed us away that morning. He said he couldn't rest with us hovering over him. So we went for a short trip to Black Canyon about 6 miles out of Montrose. It was a fascinating place. At one point it was said that you could put the Empire State building in the bottom of the canyon and it would only reach half way up the cliff walls. We returned to Montrose and shipped JD 's gear home via UPS. We went by Wal-Mart and bought him a pair of sweat pants with pockets so he could have something to wear on the flight home. We returned to the hospital that evening. JD had been up out of bed and moving around. They had put a new brace on his leg and he was now mobile (with a walker or crutches of course). At this point JD said that he expected us to continue our trip. We all balked at that idea. He told us that everything had been taken care of and there was nothing else we could do. We finally agreed. We came to the hospital the next morning. Isom went up the hall to the bathroom and Donita went to verify everything with the staff. That is when I told JD that I felt I should stay. JD said "If you don't get to see Grand Canyon that would hurt me more than this broken leg. Anyway what are you going to do? Watch them load me in the medical van? Follow me to the airport? Watch them put me in a wheelchair? Wave goodbye to the plane? You have done everything expected and more. Now get out of here before I have to get out of this bed and deal with you." We each gave him some spending money for stuff in the airports in case he wanted something he didn't have and we left. As we left the hospital tears were streaming down Donita's face and frankly Isom and I were both swallowing back some ourselves. I would miss him taking pictures of me brushing my teeth or seeing the flash go off in the middle of the night. I would miss the nightly conversations and laughter about some goofy thing that had happened during the day. I would miss racing him to the bathroom at 5:30 in the morning as we were both old men and our bladders seemed to be in synchronization. I would miss flipping a coin to see who got to shower first at the end of a days ride. We were leaving a member of our little family behind and it didn't feel good.
THE TRIP CONTINUES So we left the hospital, rounded the San Juan Skyway loop and headed for the Four Corners. The Four Corners is where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico state borders all converge. It is in the dessert. It is a large round piece of concrete with a little metal disk in the center. If you stand on the disk you are standing in four states at the same time. The area was surrounded by "Court Day" looking booths ran by the Navajo Indians. We were coming down from the mountains where it had be reasonably cool.....upper 80's to low 90's. As we rode out to Four Corners the temperature increased substantially. By the time we got there I was feeling ill. I asked a Native American woman how hot it was. She said it was 116 degrees on her thermometer at the back of her concession stand and that was in the shade. Isom was getting the chills. Donita was thriving on the heat. She was flitting around from one stand to another shopping for beaded bracelets and necklaces. I spent half my time there in a porta-potty. I soaked a head wrap and neck cooler in water. I drank two bottles of water and we were off. The air burned your skin as you were riding. My grips were almost too hot to hold on to. It became a matter of survival....no longer about comfort. This is absolutely the most desolate country I have ever seen. Nothing but dirt, sand, and scrub brush.....not much of that. The Indians weren't exactly what I would call friendly either. They were business like. Take a bottle of water to the counter....."Two dollars" and they would hold out there hand....never smiled....never said a greeting...just...."Two dollars". But in all fairness they weren't friendly with each other either. I don't blame them. If I had been force from a nice green hillside in Montana and plopped down in that hell hole, I would be ticked off myself. You would look out across the dessert and see a trailer about the size of a small camper with a beat up pick up truck sitting next to it and wonder how in the world someone survived in that environment.
We spent the night in Monument Valley at a Holiday Inn. The rooms were $109 a night for a room that would bring only about $39 a night around here. Of course there wasn't anything for about a hundred miles in any direction so we gladly paid it. We rode the dessert the next day getting up before daylight to try and beat some of the heat. Oh yes, you had to be very careful because sheep, cattle, and horses seemed to roam the highway freely just like deer. You had to wear leather before daylight because it was very chilly. That in itself was amazing. We finally made it to the Grand Canyon Loop. You began to climb from the dessert floor and the temperatures seemed to lessen a little.
GRAND CANYON You ride for several miles on the loop, climbing all the while before you come to the first scenic overlook. All this time you do not see the canyon. I walked down to the first overlook and stood in amazement. Nothing anyone had told me really prepared my for what I saw. The canyon is miles deep and miles across. The human eye cannot take it all in. This had a peculiar effect. While I had distinct images in my head of different locations in the Rocky Mountains, I could not form those same types of pictorial images of the Grand Canyon. It was simply too vast. It was almost like you couldn't get a visual reference. Isom said, "You know if you turned the Rockies upside down and dropped them in the canyon it would just about fill up this big ditch." I laughed but he was right. Donita asked, "What formed this, the river?" I, being the smart aleck I am, replied, "No, it was a really big back hoe." Isom got a kick out of that. As we progressed along the canyon, the elevation increased and soon we were riding through a forest with large pine trees that shaded the road and made the riding much cooler and more pleasant. So the second half of a life long dream had been accomplished. I had seen the Grand Canyon from the back of my motorcycle. Alas all good things must come to an end. The road drifted gradually away from the Grand Canyon and back to the dessert floor. But it rose again to Flagstaff, Arizona.
ARIZONA, NEW MEXICO, TEXAS, OKLAHOMA, ARKANSAS, TENNESSEE, AND HOME Just outside of Flagstaff (8,000ft. plus) it began to sprinkle rain. We donned our rain thinking there would be a storm but sprinkles was all there was. We spent the night in Flagstaff. I am not going to have much to say about Arizona, New Mexico, the Texas panhandle, or Oklahoma. Just refer back to what I said about the dessert. That's what this was. Hot, dirty, wasteland, full of nothing. We were riding I-40. Where the highways crossed the interstate there was nothing. No service stations, no motels, no stores....just a highway crossing the interstate. Their rest areas were pretty much just slabs of concrete you could pull out of traffic on. No restrooms, no water, no shade. Texas provide "picnic areas" with a concrete table and an awning for shade. We stopped at one of them one afternoon, spent from the riding and took a nap. Again, no water, no restrooms. You began to pray to see a building, and that you would make it to the next gas station. In all fairness Oklahoma began to green up a little, especially eastern Oklahoma. Arkansas began to look like home, but was riddled with road construction. Tennessee was almost home, but was heavy traffic (Hwy 51 out of Memphis). God bless Kentucky. It was green and full of gas stations, fast food restaurants, bathroom facilities, water and did I mention it was green. On the way home we spent the night in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Russellville, Arkansas and Eddyville, Kentucky. Eddyville was full of motorcycles. Seems Little Sturgis Motorcycle rally was this weekend. There were more bikes there than you could shake a stick at. Everyone thought that was where we were headed, but we would explain that we were headed for home. Home....we couldn't wait to leave and we couldn't wait to get back. Ain't it always the way.
THE RIDERS I have told you about JD, now let me tell you about Donita and Isom Clemons. Donita had already earned the title "Iron Lady" and she didn't show many chincs in her armor on this trip. She handled her bike as well or better than any one of the guys. On about the fifth day after all of guys had been complaining for two days about being tired she finally admitted that she might be a little tired too. Isom said she was tired all along, but was too stubborn to admit it. Isom said lots of things I thought would get him in trouble but she never seemed to care. I, of course, teased her every chance I got. She said she was going on a diet at the beginning of the trip and hoped to lose twenty pounds while we were on the road. The first night at Ryan's she got cherry cheese cake and apple pie and ice cream. I said that was one heck of a diet. I believe we could sell that one. Then I did my best Dr. Phil imitation with "And how's that diet working out for you?" She received this kind of ribbing every time she ordered something that even resembled fattening food. Isom let it slip one evening that Donita had a wart on her hand. She immediately covered her hand and scolded Isom. That was the wrong thing to do. Once I knew it bothered her, I got on her case. "Playing with toads again, huh?" "Have you been kissing them looking for a handsome prince?" JD managed to turn that one by saying, "Look at Isom. Do you blame her?" Every time we walked into a new restaurant, I would bellow out, "How's that wart doing Donita?" Isom has that good old down home sense of humor. Somebody asked how far do you think you can see on the dessert. "'Bout three days", was his reply. Once he said, "Have you noticed you don't see many dogs out here in the dessert? They must have all died looking for a tree." I watched the way Donita and Isom playfully picked at one another. Once or twice I saw them looking at vista and her hand would slip into his. It made me wish my wife was along with me. I love all three of these people. On a trip like this you either wind up loving the people you are with or you wind up hating them. I love these folks and would travel with them again anytime.
If you had told me that we would travel about three quarters of the way across this country and back and not been in some kind of rain storm, I would have called you nuts. But we did. It was like someone was protecting us. So thanks for your prayers and good thoughts.
One more thing, my motorcycle ran like a top. Black Beauty turned over 40,000 miles on this trip and nothing fell off and it trucked along like it was brand new. It handled the high altitude like it was made for it. If you can fall in love with a machine then I love my motorcycle. Tomorrow I am going to give it a nice warm bath, rub it down, and sometime this next week I am going to buy it something new.
It was a great trip, with the exception of JD's accident. It is nice to be home. God bless you all.
Ride safe and have fun...but ride, Terry (Santa Claws) Royse
|
