Traveling Across America: Day 12

Gabe and I started the day with breakfast next door to Marble Canyon Lodge. We then rode to and walked across the old Navajo Bridge and it was amazing. It is such a work of art. I think that the beautiful back drop with the red rocks along with its shape makes it so incredible. The bridge spans just over 800 feet and the Colorado River is more than 400 feet below! It’s so cool, especially knowing it was built in the early 1900’s. They recently (1990’s) built an almost identical one to keep up with today’s volume of drivers.

After checking out the bridge, we headed to the North Rim Grand Canyon. About 20 minutes after leaving Marble Canyon, we could see reason approaching quickly. We stopped and got into or rain gear. Good thing we did! We hit a lot of rain and then climbed in elevation and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in just a few minutes. It continued raining and dropped to about 48 degrees. I was very chilly, and so was Gabe, but we pushed through and made it to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, it was incredibly foggy and it was hard to see the the true size of the canyon. So we got coffee to warm up. We hung around to watch some of the fog dissipate and luckily we were able to see some parts of it. I’ve never been there before so I was a little disappointed. But, the cool part was that I was able to get good pictures with the fog and the canyon. I feel most people get the same pictures on the best days, so it was different.

Then we took a ride to Point Imperial with no luck. The fog was too thick. We couldn’t see more than 20 feet. So, we headed north to leave the park and then headed west to make our way to Zion National Park before the day ended.

We got to Zion and it was gorgeous! I didn’t know much about Zion National Park, so I was shocked.  Right after we entered, we were lucky enough to see some longhorn sheep up on the mountains.  The mountains are just incredible!

While riding through the park, we saw others hiking.  We decided to stop and take a hike.  We hiked up to the top of this one trail and there was a magnificent view of the valley.

After we hiked, we rode through the rest of the park and arrived at the visitor center where we decided to head to Las Vegas. Our goal was to ride through Death Valley the next day so we wanted to go through it early.  We didn’t want to get to Vegas at a late hour because we were staying at a friend of a friend’s we’ve never met. We thought that we were going to get to Vegas around 10:30 in the evening.  However, there was another time zone to cross and we completely forgot about it. That worked perfectly!   We cruised for three hours and arrived at about 9:30.

We were quite hungry when we got to Vegas, so our friend’s friend, Kim, took us to the Peppermill Fireside Lounge.  On our way, she took us through the strip. The amount of lights in Vegas is unreal.  Now I know why the Hoover Dam has to generate so much electricity haha.  We didn’t stay out or explore the strip since we didn’t want to be rude, but we were also exhausted from riding.  Overall, it was another great day to see what this country has to offer.

Butt Pain Meter: 3/10 (stopping and hiking really helps)