14. Oh shit! It’s Zion

Aug 3, 2009 Uncategorized

With a name like Zion and all the hype I had heard about it, I was prepared for it to rock my world with its awesomeness. I even got lost in my own thoughtz while riding through the desert on the way there and wondered if maybe it was like some magical places with tons of crazy shit and colors. Then I figured no, that probably isn’t the case. If it were, I probably would have hear about that by now, unless the locals keep it hush hush…

The thing about Zion is it’s in southern Utah. If you never been there before, then you should consider your self lucky and do nothing in your life that would force you to drive through it or even worse – stop there. You can believe whatever religion you’d like; I don’t really care. I’m going to toss this blanket statement out there and assume everyone in southern Utah is a Mormon though.

The small towns there are just so fucking spooky. It was like something out of a M. Night Shamalan movie. I hate his movies, but he can at least portray creepy shit well. I stopped at this little drug store. It was filled with 10-15 females of all ages. They all wore the same style bland, one-color dresses. “Oh, I love your beige dress.” “Well I like your beige dress. I see it’s a slight bit darker than mine.” They all had the same hairdo with this huge bump/ball of hair above their foreheads. And they all had the same expressionless face. It’s just so damn creepy. It’s like they aren’t alive, but they aren’t dead. They are just there, breathing and talking. It’s like they aren’t looking at you, but instead look right past you.

I asked her for directions to Zion to ensure my assumptions were correct. I immediately thought I’d rather get lost than to stay in this store talking to this woman any second longer. My end of the conversation quickly became “Yep, sure, thanks, ok, bye”. I figured if I stayed for a moment later they were try to harvest my unpure flesh.

I couldn’t take a picture, but I really wanted to. Here’s the best I could do with google

But eventually I made it Zion. I barely found a place to camp at this park. It was pretty busy. After getting change to pay for spot I ran into another rider on a GS BMW bike at the camp-fee drop off box. He said he drove through and all the spots were full. I told him he could camp with me. The spots were huge, and I only had my little tent. He managed to find the site while I paid for it.

His name was Pedro, and he was riding a mid 90s 1100 GS if I remember correctly. More importantly though, he had a hard bag on top of his bike where a passenger would ride. It was filled with ice and Coronas. What a nice refreshing way to end a long day of riding. He offered me a beer and we shot this shit for a couple hours at our camp table. He was a professor at the U of A in Tucson, AZ. He was headed south back to his home in Tucson. He told me the route he had taken to get down to Zion and which parts were fun and which parts should be avoided. I used that knowledge to plan my route the next day. Then we went to bed. Let me just note that his tent made mine look like a mansion. I was almost embarrassed to be in what I thought was a small tent. His tent was like shrink wrap over a sleeping bag. A coffin would have given him more room.

Pedro woke up earlier than I did and hit the road while I was still dozing. I woke up with back pains because my sleeping pad was leaking air all night. Here are the pics of the campsite I took in the morning.

I looked at my map that came with my park pass and saw a cool looking road. It was quite a climb in elevation and ended at a reservoir. It only looked to be about 20 miles each way, so I figured that would be a nice was to explore the area with the bike. So off I went. It was gorgous, and everything I had hoped for. Lots of twists to accompany the never ending hills. I decided not to take pics until my way back down the hill though. I figured I should see it all first to determine what is worth photographing and what isn’t.

When I got to the reservoir the road switched from asphalt to gravel. I was really excited for a chance to cruise on the gravel road. It was no dirt trail, but it was my first real time taking the bike off of pavement for an extended period.

Here is a pic from the far side of the reservoir

I figured the road would wrap around the reservoir back to where I started. I mean that makes sense, right? Why would it only go 3/4 of the way around a lake? After a while when I had gone past the half way point and began coming around the back side. The dirt road got pretty rough. The gravel had become more like a densely packed fine dirt. There were also many large bumps and potholes.

I became very nervous about dumping the bike and having a bad spill. There were large rocks and big holes. Those two things kind of work against each other and made things difficult. I scraped my skid plate a couple times and also scraped the bottom of one the bags. As nervous as I was I also had a blast doing it. Then I got to a point where there was a fence in front of me that went to the waterline and the road stopped. Oh shit!

So now I’m stuck on this rocky road trying to turn the bike around without dropping it. This picture really doesn’t due the rough road justice, but this was where I parked the bike when I reached the end of the road.

A view of the water from the same area

I manned up and got turned around and made it all the way back without problems. Once I got off of the hard dirt road and back on the gravel one I was so excited! I felt like I had really accomplished something by successfully navigating all the bumps, rocks, grooves, and holes along the way. I had that high-on-life feeling. I was really pumped and in the zone. It made me wonder if that’s how really healthy and outgoing people feel all the time. I mean I hike here and there and it’s nice, but the rush from this couldn’t really be matched by anything else. I had that feeling of all the hairs on my body standing on edge, but it wasn’t like the typical goosebump sensation. It also furthered my desire to buy a dirt bike.

Here’s one last pic from the side I started on that had a small boat launch ramp

Here are all the pics I took on the way back down. This area was just breathtaking

After fending on the vicious off-road challenges from earlier, I was feeling pretty invincible. I pulled off the road for this picture, but I almost lost it trying to get going in this fine gravel. It was sort of a humbling experience struggling on the edge of the roadway.

I had similar traction problems with this fine sand too

I probably took too many photos, but around every corner I kept thinking how great it all looked.

This next series of photos were taken as I drove through the park on my way to southeast Utah later in the day. Enjoy

That part of the ride was pretty nice when I wasn’t behind a car. There was a really long tunnel that was limited to one-way traffic. I would have loved to pull over and take pictures from the open spots in the walls of the tunnels, but that wasn’t allowed.

Later on in the day I was just cruising through southern Utah. Here are the photos I pulled over to get