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By Lynx, on June 14th, 2010 
Goosenecks State Park, or Goosenecks of the San Juan as I’ve seen on some maps, is a cool place. If I remember right I think the San Juan river flows through 5 miles of canyons in a 1 mile stretch as the crow flies. Pretty impressive, like a mini grand canyon. It wasn’t even on our map, its just a little spur off the main road a ways. The road is fantastic riding too, no traffic, nice pavement, and some nice sweepers.
If you look close you can see a couple of rafts down in the water, there was a lot of them. Back in Mexican Hat there was parking-lots full of cars of all the people who had gone out rafting earlier in the day. Looks like that’s the thing to do in these parts, it looks like fun. A good idea for something to do if we come this way again.
Continue reading Goosenecks State Park
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By Lynx, on June 13th, 2010 
We left bright and early and headed to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Remember this is a park on the Navajo Nation and not part of the US Parks system. Our parks pass doesnt count out here and they didn’t seem to care that one of us was Navajo either, oh well it was worth a shot to save a few bucks 🙂
All I can say is Wow! the landscape out here along the roadways is amazing!
Its hard to describe how we’ve already blasted through a 400 miles and only now is the trip starting to get exciting, you know that feeling you get when you’re the furthest away from home you’ve ever been and everything from that point on is new ground? The real journey begins here, everything up until now has been to get to this this starting point. From here on we don’t know what the road up ahead will bring us. Its like that moment in the Lord of the Rings where Samwise realizes that everything from this spot on is someplace he’s never been before. Up until now its been the same old stuff we’ve seen before but now its starting to sink in that you’re on an epic adventure and this is just the beginning.
Continue reading Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
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By Lynx, on June 12th, 2010 
Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Arizona in June? For me, one word HOT! So of course after wearing my super thin clothing and ditching the liner in my motorcycle gear we hit an unexpected cold front and it was down right freezing..
It was overcast and trying to rain much of the way but not doing anything but generate lots of cross winds
Continue reading Arizona
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By Lynx, on May 14th, 2010 Its almost that time again.. Time to get out of town and hit the road on another epic road trip!
The plan this year is 4 weeks and 11 states.
( Google cant handle this many points and I’ve had to break up the map into 2 parts )
For those who’ve been wondering where I’ve been and why I’ve not been posting for the last several months getting ready for this trip is why. Because I’m the only systems administrator for my company and built much of the infrastructure for everything I’m the only one who knows how everything works. So over the course of this entire year I’ve been trying to document, train others, automate and make things as robust as possible so the company doesn’t fall apart while I’m gone.
Anyway, the plan is 1 week through Utah to check out all the awesome National parks through there that we haven’t seen yet. Then 1 week in the Tetons and Yellowstone, another week from there through Glacier to Seattle. Leaving us with one week to get home. This’ll be one of those trips of a lifetime that I’ve been wanting to go on since I first got the Yamaha 3 years ago.
We learned a lot on last years trip, as far as packing, comfortable distances, and realistic expense budgeting. Plus we already have much of the gear needed thats been slowly pieced together from the last trips so I wont have as much of an upfront equipment cost.
For this years shakedown runs: next weekend we’re going to the AspenCash Spring Rally in Ruidoso, NM and the week after that we’re spending three nights in Mesa Verde National Park over Memorial Day weekend and doing the San Juan Skyway and Million Dollar Highway, one of the top rides in the US. Its better to always do some sort of short, or in our case long, shakedown runs to make sure everythings working as planned so you don’t have those unexpected breakdowns half a country away.
Riding season is finally here! Stay tuned.
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By Lynx, on April 10th, 2010  1914 Excelsior Auto Cycle We were invited down to another antique engines showing this weekend. This one was being held at a guys house near Las Lunas, NM and I was told that he was a director for the Albuquerque Museum and had quite a nice motorcycle collection. To go see some old bikes we decided to take the old BMW airhead for its first long distance ride to see how she does.
Wow is all I can say. He had such a wide selection of bikes going back to 1914 in various states of restoration but his garage was just amazing. I’m aspiring to have something halfway close to this by the time I retire. The garage was built into a hillside and as far as I can tell was almost the entire footprint of the house with the living quarters on top. I’m blown away by how neatly organized everything is and just how many bike parts there were laying around.
Continue reading Classic motorcycle collection
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By Lynx, on December 12th, 2009 
Last Day. We had an awesome time at Colorado Gators, I think it was the highlight of the trip for Cece, but now it was time to head home and the weather looked to be turning bad that afternoon on the way. So far every day it was supposed to be extremely bad weather we stayed insulated in a pocket of fair weather with storms all the way around us. Our last trip was the same way so maybe our medicine wheel really works, but better not to tempt fate.
The imposing ruins of this old church stood guard over an old cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. The roof was gone and the whole building gutted except for the exterior walls. The place was deathly quiet and the wispy clouds preceding the oncoming front gave it a surreal other worldly feel. Spooky.
Continue reading Day 14 – Santa Fe or bust
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By Lynx, on November 21st, 2009  Cuchara Colorado One of our best days so far, nearly getting to sleep in a real hogan with buffalo right outside and getting to cruise through amazing mountain vistas all day. My friend Patrick asked why we went halfway across the country when we have such good riding right in our own back yard. Well I guess you dont realize what you take for granted until you have to do without.
Colorado Highway of Legends Scenic Byway is spectacular. I highly recommend it if you want to spend several hours going through switchbacks, along mountain lakes and through some of the best scenery we’d seen during the entire trip thus far instead of taking the 1/2 hour by Interstate to get to the same place.
Cuchara is at about the halfway point, it sort of reminds me of Cloudcroft or Timberon, New Mexico except with less paved streets if thats possible. I love all the log cabins and rough sawn timbers with bark still on them they use for siding. It’s a mountain mans town, my kind of place, way out there. Not too far distance wise but takes a long time to get there no matter which way you go.
Continue reading Day 13 – Roaming the Colorado High Country
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By Lynx, on November 20th, 2009  Trinidad Colorado Back at the Colorado Visitors Center in Lamar we had gotten some great advice that The Highway of Legends was not to be missed. Originally we had planned to go through Walsenburg to cut some time off our route to camp the next day on Navajo Lake. I sure am glad we rerouted, Trinidad turned out to be an amazing little town. Brick streets everywhere and very cool old brick and stone buildings. I could have spent a whole day just looking at all the neat architecture in this place.
We found out later this was suposedly the sex change capitol of the US, didnt seem any out of the ordinary to me. Then again we arrived late and left before most places were open 😉
Continue reading Day 13 – Trinidad, Colorado
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By Lynx, on November 18th, 2009  Hollywood's Old West Dodge City’s Boot Hill Museum may have been a little too touristy for some people with the shows and curio shop and movie set style buildings according to some other online reviews and comments from some locals, but the actual museum exhibits were very interesting and well done giving a good depiction of life on the plains in the Old West.
They show a little bit of the Hollywood’s version of the Old West that everyone knows and is familiar with to contrast with the actual Old West.
Continue reading Day 11 – Boot Hill Museum (2): Life in the Old West
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By Lynx, on November 13th, 2009  Dodge City Boot Hill Museum We got into Dodge City, Kansas fairly late but there was a few hours left until Boot Hill Museum closed so we decided to check it out. Its about as much of a tourist trap as you can expect to find with lots of curio shop trinkets in the gift shops that you can get in other curio shops just about anywhere else and the Front Street mock up is just a facade like an old movie set. That being said I still thought it was a interesting place to see with all the artifacts, guns and things inside. You can get a sarsaparilla and watch a can-can show, unfortunately we were too late for that, see mock gun fights or get your name printed on various wanted posters from an antique printing press. People really into life in the Old West would enjoy the museum parts and kids would like the touristy and show bits.
Talking to some of the old locals in town later there seemed to be a bit of a love hate relationship with the Boot Hill Museum. First they didn’t like it because its fake and not authentic and too touristy and detracts from the real history of Dodge City. I can understand that, many places in New Mexico have done the same thing. They also said that they were sad that at the same time that pretty soon the Museum would be the only place left where people could see our history and the way things were. Apparently theres still a bit of a sore spot that all the graves were moved from Boot Hill Cometary and those old wounds had been reopened as more artifacts and things were discovered and relocated during the course of building a new highway through town that was still being worked on when we were there. I didn’t get the whole story on that. So these residents anyway loved that the museum had worked hard to collect and preserve and display all the artifacts showing how life used to be but at the same time the buildings and setting is artificial.
Continue reading Day 11 – Boot Hill Museum
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