Tuesday – Grand Canyon, Arizona

Route 66 and the Grand Canyon and on the piss with some Harley boys, what a day 🙂

Well, a slow’ish start to the day as I was trying to contact the US post office that I was going to use as a mail drop, this took some time as the phone number I had was a fax number although it said phone, go figure. In the end I gave up, there is no phone number I can find, so I figured I would go look for a USPO somewhere on the ride today and ask them about it. I also had another drama with Travelex, I could not log in to see my balance, I tried a bucket load of combinations, but no go, so I tried to phone them but that was not helpful, the 24 hour help line is useless unless I did something wrong. Oh well, I will look at that another day as well, the computer on the phone told me my balance.

I finally left around 10.30am and headed north east on Route 66, the famous highway. In fact I did not realise this but the motel I was in was actually on that highway 🙂 The first little place I saw a few miles down the road was called Hackberry, it is just a store really and an old servo so I went straight past, but I decided to turn around just for a look, and maybe they had some food 🙂

I met the owner Amy and we chatted for a fair while, a lovely lady with a firm belief in a number of issues 🙂 I took a few photos of the place, including the men’s dunny walls 🙂

And a few outside the dunny 🙂

A nice store and is apparently on the internet with an increasing range of gear. If you are interested have a decko here

Amy told me about a post service in either Peach Springs or Seligeman, so I continued on, the road was starting to rise and it was getting greener and cooler.

I had been seeing these strange series of signs on the side of the road with words on them but never caught on to what they were about, so I decided if I see another one I would stop and see what is going on. Here is a sequence, each series has 5 signs and I found out later they are for an old famous brand of shaving gear.

Burma Shave is the company who used to put all these signs around the place, just to help stop accidents. Here is another quick medley

There were a lot more of these that I saw, all fun, but eventually I got into Seligeman, apparently this is where Route 66 started. I went to the US PO( actually the US Postal Service) first and the lady said, as long as I addressed the mail to myself with ‘General Delivery” I could go there and show ID and pick it up. They will not tell you if you have mail over the phone, just show up and ask for it. I also posted a few items including the April photos, so when they arrive at home, I can clear space on my HDD. I was going to get some lunch at the RoadKill joint afterwards but it looked closed for construction, I looked at this other place, but they were busy so I left.

I eventually went in here, just cos a lot of other bikes were there, I think they were Russians on a Harley tour. I bought a great American hotdog with a side of battered onion rings and a drink, a great meal and all for $4, I might try that again one day 🙂

The whole town was bustling, I guess the history is a great draw card.

There were a lot more of the funny signs that I took photos of, but I won’t bore you with them, but about an hour later I did notice a change in the scenery as I was now heading north towards the canyon and the road was climbing all the time.

Elk warnings, so I kept my eyes open real well, they look like they can do damage. I eventually arrived at the park entrance around 3.20pm and it was getting a bit cooler as I was now around 7000ft above sea level.

I had no idea what there was to do here so I booked only the one nights camping at the Mather Point campgrounds. At $18 a night, not cheap and not much with it, but that seems to be the norm over here in America, the tent people get nothing, if you own an RV, you are treated real well.

Once the tent was sorted I decided to go find out where things are and have a look at this canyon. I eventually found the correct trail to follow and arrived at the rim of the canyon.

Well, I have to admit, it was well worth the visit and the view was spectacular, which you would expect with all the hype 🙂 This was just a small taste as I had been to the visitors centre and there was a lot of stuff to go look at. I cannot ride my bike down into the canyon though, it is either by mule or shanks pony, bummer, in fact that is the only way down there at all. The price for a mule ride down and back is $165, a bit out of my budget and apparently they are booked ages in advance, up to a year, I could turn up at 6am and see if there is a drop out, nah, forget that.

Not to worry, it was now about 6pm, so I decided to go sort out some dinner etc. There was no shower in the campground, there is one outside which cost $2, but it is a fair hike there and you would be all sweaty again after so I had a body bath in the dunnies which is close to my site. So is the drinking water tap which I specifically asked for. While I was sorting a few things out, along came a couple of blokes who queried me on my bike, so we got chatting, it turns out they ride Harleys as well, not polish them. They invited me up for a beer which I accepted, which turned into two (Bud Lights). Which then turned into me riding down and buying a slab between us and we spent the rest of the night drinking Budweiser heavy, it was a great time, dinner, what dinner, I seemed to have missed that bit.

That is Chuck and Bob while it is still daylight, Chuck is from Palm Springs, California and Bob comes from Arkansas. They just happened to go on a ride for a week which has turned into three so far but it is about to end.

A bit later it got mighty chilly, but their camp site had a stack of wood so we had a good fire to bullshit around. The damm smoke followed me everywhere as usual 😉

It was great to meet you two, and maybe it will happen again 🙂 It was a late night around 11.30 before we packed it in, but only cos we run out of piss!

Day – 199 miles and 320 km
Trip – 6,464 miles and 10,403 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom
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