The 'Delicate Arch' is probabably the most photographed Arch in the world. That was just one of the thousands of spectacular landscapes to be seen near Moab, Ut.
Tom (the senior Cinci Boy), showed up at LAX at 10:45 the 3rd of Nov. We had long planned a Dualsport outing to Moab. I busied myself that Morning driving the 70 miles to LA, Loading up the two NX250s onto the trailer with My DR350, and picking Tom up at the airport.
Tom's Son, Bruce (41), was to come with him, but luckily he decided to go to Denver and ride to Moab with Ian (similar age). Ian had a new KLR650 that he was busting to try out on some tight trails. They would ride together in Ian's pickup with the KLR on a rack across the back.
Tom and I managed to leave LA at about 1:30 PM. Mapquest said that it was a 10.5 hour, 730 mile drive. Not in my Van it wasn't going to be. We figured with eats and gas stops, it would be more than 12hrs, not countng a few hours sleep somewhere around Saint George, Ut.
Even with the hard drive in front of us, we were high on life. Moab is one of the most spectacular places on the face of the earth. We couldn't wait to see it first hand. There is Canyon Land National park northwest of Moab, theArches Natioal Park to the northeast, and the La Sal Mountain range to the southeast with 12000 ft + Mt Peale. Plus if you need anything else to see, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is nearby to the southwest.
LA was a smog/haze bucket as we drove for clean air. These days the smog isn't as brown as it was 30 years ago, but we still couldn't see the nearby mountains. I guess the folks responsible for controlling that sort of thing call it clean smog.
About 100 miles east of LA we climbed Cajon Pass up to the high desert. Clean sunshiny air was our reward. Out spirits lifted higher with the altitude. Tom had been up since 5am eastern time. Tom drove a bit that afternoon, but I didn't want to press his alertness. We pressed on past Vegas toward Saint George.
I knew St George was at about 4500 ft and was worried a bit about it being too cold to sleep when it became time to shut down. We were both calling it quits at about 9pm. We had done 400 plus miles, and knew that it would be easy to finish up the drive on Sat.
I honestly don't remember who took the offramp somewhere after Cedar City and declared it a day. Doug and I had perfected the sleeping arrangement in my van up in Alaska. That'd be me laid across the front seat and Doug in the back for the sleeping arrangement. This was new to Tom.
I slept like a baby. Tom, on the other hand, thought that he could just get away with sleeping in his jacket. Every hour or so through the night, he needed to find more warmth. I slept away...Tom looked for blankets....I slept away....and Tom finally, at around 2am, unpacked his sleeping bag. Live and learn, I always say. It was near freezing at 4am.
Nature had been calling me since about midnight. I fought it until 4am. Since I was up, I took the wheel and started the second leg. With such an early start we figured to get there well before noon.
We were at 5500 ft and beyond. The highest point On I-70 in Ut is 7800 ft, and like the above picture, the country is gorgeous. Tom has a Casio Exilim camera which is taking nearly 4mg pictures along that route. His camera has much better color than mine so enjoy his shots.
I could easily imagine a herd of antelope or buffalo out there in the foreground.
Someone's hopes and dreams from many years ago were illustrated in this burned out ranch site of the past. Kinda looks like someone's watching over the place. Could be, I suppose.....
As we noted some local dirt roads, Tom wondered if we might not unload right there and do some riding....then he wondered if anyone had thought to put the keys into the 2 NXs .....or anywhere. I allowed as how that I didn't know anything about his keys. About that time, my cell phone came into range of a tower, and a message was there from where the NXs had been kept.
The message said that we should make some plans to do something about keys as he (in LA) had the ones that we would need for the NXs.....Hummm. After a bit of silence, and Tom trying to blame it on me.....and me thinking that if it's your bike, you should know where your own damned keys are...
Soon we settled down and devised a plan to see a locksmith as soon as we got to town, but in the meantime, we should enjoy the scenery.
There are some great sites along I-70 between Salina and the turn off to Moab, and some long distances without gas.
This is a piece of the 'Capital Reef' that extends for 100s of miles north and south through Utah.
So we pulled into Moab, after a time change, at around 11am. Tom contacted a locksmith on the second try. He was available for work, and was just up the street. He said this sort of thing wasn't too uncommon.
Anyway he tried to do one thing and another, but said if we could call Arnold and get the key code he could whip one up from the code book. We eventually got Arnold on the phone, and got one key code which promply produced a key for that bike....but the other bike was a rekey and didn't have the code stamped on it.
Now here's the clever thing, and a good thing to know. The keyman said that if he could see the shape of the key, he could assign a number to the depth of each cut for each tumbler, and cut a key from a visual of the key. He said for Arnold to make a tracing of the key, and fax it to him. Arnold did that, and he had a key about 5 minutes after seeing that fax. Very cool.
We felt that the 30 dollars that he charged was a cheap lesson. I bet that I don't learn, though.
And for those of you (like me) who don't have an extry key on board our bike for some reason or another, will maybe be able to make a key tracing on a piece of masking tape, and tape it somewhere on our bikes.....I think I can do that.
Hardly had we finished that little key task, Ian and Bruce phoned to say they were in town. We played hide and seek a bit before we actually made visual contact. They had come into town past a nice little Natl forest campground laid out next to the Colorado River. Golden Passport price was $5, don't you know. After a bit of lunch in town, we followed Ian's Nissan out there and made camp.
Busted plastic parts to follow..........
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