Petrified Forest National Park, east of Flagstaff. It’s an awesome destination.
Sue and I recently completed a 2700-mile road trip in the Subie. The idea was to drive a grand circle through the Southwest, with the apex of our trip being a visit with Joe Gresh at the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico. I asked Joe what to see on the way out and back, and wow, did he have a great list. Old Arjiu had a number of outstanding recommendations, one of which was the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Petrified Forest National Park straddles I-40 (which was mostly built over old Route 66) and it was easy to get to.
The place sounded cool. I’d never seen a petrified forest (or even a tree, for that matter). I remembered being fascinated by dinosaurs and all things prehistoric when I was kid, and the concept of a petrified forest sure fit in that slot.
The Petrified Forest…wow. As soon as Gresh mentioned the place, it became a bucket list item. I had to see it. We had to stop.
An abandoned car on what used to be Route 66.
Like I mentioned above, I-40 is mostly built over what used to be old US Route 66, and when you travel through Arizona, you see a lot of kitsch pertaining to The Mother Road. The sun was in just the perfect location to bring out the best of my polarizer on the 16-35 Nikon lens when we stopped by an old abandoned automobile you see in the photo above. There was a preserved stretch of Route 66 immediately behind it. In that photo above, it looks like it was a deserted area. Trust me on this: It was anything but. There were tourists taking photos at that spot from Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, and more, and I can tell you from reading the body language they were all having a good time. So were we. We all took turns getting out of each other’s way as we took pictures. It was fun.
We drove a little further down the road and came upon the area you see below. This part of the National Park is called the Painted Desert, for obvious reasons…
The Painted Desert in central Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. The colors really are this dramatic. This stop was a grand suggestion from Uncle Joe Gresh.
I was struck by just how beautiful the Petrified Forest National Park was, and then it hit me…I had driven this stretch if I-40 on many motorcycle rides several times before, and it never occurred to me to stop. Folks, take it from me: Don’t make that mistake. Although not as well known as other flagship US National Parks (Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.), the Petrified Forest is a real gem.
Another view of the Painted Desert. It really is this dramatic.Yet another perspective on the Painted Desert. This is good stuff, folks.
There’s only one road that meanders through the Petrified Forest National Park, with numerous strategically-located viewing stops along its length. We hit nearly every one.
One such stop was Newspaper Rock. We thought it would be a rock formation that looked like a newspaper, but it wasn’t that at all. It was a collection of petroglyphs deep in a canyon. The newspaper moniker was related to the idea that early Native Americans communicated with and left messages for each other here. Fortunately, I had my 70-300 lens, and that allowed the reach I needed to get good images…
Cool stuff. Very early Native American newsprint.The people who created these petroglyphs lived here about a thousand years ago. They predate the Native American tribes we know of.
While we were admiring the petroglyphs, a couple of crows landed nearby. By that time I had already put the wide angle lens back on the Nikon, and I wanted to see just how close I could get before the crows flew away. The big black birds were cool until Sue and I were about 4 feet away, and then they took off. They were huge. We actually heard the wind they created flapping their wings.
An old crow in the Petrified Forest National Park. It was a big bird.
The scenery and the roads were stark and colorful. We stopped and I grabbed this photo of Sue and the Subie…
Sue and the Subie. My Outback was perfect for this kind of road trip. Over a distance of 2705.6 miles, the Subaru averaged 28.3 mpg. That included stints in the mountains, dirt roads, city driving, and many 75mph+ freeway stints.
You might be wondering…what about the petrified trees? Where were they?
Well, we saw those, too…
Petrified trees. They are really cool. You can’t take them out of the Park, but once you leave the Park, there are souvenir stores selling things like this.More petrified logs. As I understand it, over the millenia the wood leaches out and is replaced by silica until, oila, a petrified tree remains. It’s pretty cool stuff and this was the first time I’d ever seen it.
This was a great destination. We exited I-40 on the eastern edge of the Petrified Forest and followed the road through the Park all the way to the western edge. From there, you pick up an Arizona country road and follow it west for roughly 20 miles to Holbrooke, where you can get back on I-40. Good times and a great destination. You might want to add it to your list of places to see. It’s worth a trip to Arizona all by itself, and it’s certainly worth a stop if you are passing through Arizona on Interstate 40.
I remember hot summer days mixing concrete with my father. I remember the two-holed hoe oozing mud like Play-Doh through a Fun Factory press. Back and forth you shoved the concrete with each hard pass plasticizing a frustratingly minor amount. The demand never ceased, more concrete was required all the time until the sun and the humidity and the sweat burning your eyes (combined with the resistance of the aggregate) lulled your body into a Zen state of denial. The only way to push on was to pretend it wasn’t happening. “I am not really here,” I’d tell myself.
“More mud!” Dumping another 80-pound bag of concrete into the wheel-buggy I quietly promised that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, become a concrete finisher.
Harbor Freight. Cement mixers. Life is good.
With the $180 purchase of Harbor Freight’s 3-1/2 cubic foot concrete mixer I broke that promise made so long ago. I got mine at one of Harbor Freight’s closeouts. Or maybe it was a parking lot sale. Come to think of it, could it have been one of the 4357 tool disposals that brought my attention to the mixer? These events are held almost daily at Harbor Freight and if you ever pay full price at that store you’re no friend of mine. The mixer came out of the box in a million pieces and it took the better part of three hours to assemble the thing because I am not genetically disposed to look at directions.
I mixed about 400, 50-pound bags of concrete before the key in the larger of the two pulleys fell out. The parts landed inside the motor box so I stuck the key back onto the pinion shaft and swabbed a bit of lock tight onto the screw holding the key. I’ve since mixed another 800 bags with no further problems. In total, about 15 cubic yards of concrete have been run through the little mixer to date.
Gears. Lube. Like the innards of a Rolex, but on a grander scale…Industrial grade. Good stuff, Harbor Freight is.
Maintenance on the HF mixer consists of lubing the drum pivots, greasing the large stamped ring gear and oiling the sealed drum bearing with whatever dregs of slippery stuff I have laying about the shed. I do all these things before each use whether I’m mixing 3 bags or 100.
The drum is sized for 150 pounds of concrete mix. Any more and the tilt angle becomes too vertical and the mixing action slows to a crawl. Depending on which size bag of pre-mix concrete is cheapest, I have mixed as high as 180 pounds in the thing but mixing performance suffered with each additional pound. These are nitpicks. I spent less than a week’s rental to own the HF mixer. I give it high marks.
High tech tilt angle control. Who needs instructions?Warnings? I don’t need no stinkin’ warnings!
It’s funny how life works out. I enjoy mixing and finishing concrete now. I love the smells and textures and the sound of a steel trowel scraping across a smooth burnished surface. These are simple motions that bring back sweet muscle-memories of working with my father and those hot summers when I was young and strong.
Tough gear for tough jobs…the Duluth Flex Fire pants are great!
I didn’t know about Duluth’s cargo work pants 40 years ago. That’s how long I have crawled around in the bilges of boats and after many thousands of patella-miles my knees are shot. Towards the end it got so I’d have to work on my side, putting weight on my hips because my knees hurt pretty much all the time.
Sure, I tried kneepads. Every brand or style of pad cut the circulation to my legs or if they didn’t restrict blood flow they’d fall to my ankles as soon as I stood up. The best solution I could come up with was a chunk of packing foam and I kneeled on that sucker whenever I could remember to drag it into the bowels of the boat I was working on. Unfortunately, memory was the second thing to go in the boat-fixing business.
Kneepad inserts…a fabulous idea.
Duluth makes many styles of pants but the ones that caught my eye are the Ultimate Cargo Work Pants with kneepad inserts. By the simple act of sewing on a hook-and-loop-pocket large enough to hold a foam pad Duluth solved both the sore knee and the blood circulation problems in one fell stoop. The pants run $59 and you’ll need the pads (Not included? Why the hell not?) at $10. 70 bucks was a lot of money 20 years ago. Today, it’s the going rate for any heavy-duty work pants.
The things aren’t perfect. The pad pocket may slide off to one side or the other when you kneel down but it’s not a problem to re-situate them. The material is a stretchy, hot blend that will have you sweating in temps over 75 degrees. Still, it was a revelation to kneel down without pain. The pants put a spring in my knee and I had a newfound confidence in my ability to connect with floors and low-slung mechanical contraptions on a deeper, more meaningful level.
Duluth Flex Fire work pants…good for work and good for riding.
The Duluth pants would work great as knock-about motorcycle riding wear and I plan on using them for just that purpose as soon as it gets a bit cooler. If you are a tradesman or tradeswoman that must work from your knees don’t wait 40 years like I did. Let Duluth’s built-in pads cushion (and save) your knees and extend your career. If I had used these pants from the get-go I could have been one of the lucky ones who kept working on boats until their backs gave out.
This is an interesting video about used bikes under $2,000 that might make for good winter project bikes, and the guy who created it was so taken with the idea of a new CSC bike for under $2,0000 that he included a segment on CSC. CSC is one of our advertisers and both of your blogmeisters (that would be Arjiu and Dajiu) put big miles on the RX3 on rides in China and the US. It’s a good video…our compliments to the guy who put it together. Enjoy!
This is an interesting story about the development of the .45 ACP 1911 and a sister military sidearm, the 1917 revolver, and maybe a little more. To really appreciate the history of these two guns, we need to consider three cartridges (the .45 Colt, the .45 ACP, and the .45 AutoRim), and four handguns (the 1873 Colt Single Action Army, the Model 1911 Colt, the Model 1909 Colt revolver, and the Model 1917 revolvers). Wow, that’s a mouthful. But it’s a fascinating story.
So what is this story about? A tale of two .45s, or of four?
The Two .45 Handguns
Well, it started out as a tale of two…the 1911 Rock Island and my Model 625 Smith and Wesson. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Read on..
The 1873 Colt Single Action Army, chambered in .45 Colt (the cartridges you see on the gunbelt). If you grew up watching cowboy movies (like I did), you know this gun well.
.45 ACP Historical Perspective
To best understand this, we need to go back to 1899, and maybe as far back as 1873. Yep, this tale goes back a century and a half.
In 1899, the Philippine-American War started (it’s also known as the Philippine Insurrection). We sent US Army troops armed with .38-caliber revolvers, Krag rifles, and 12-gauge shotguns to put down the insurrectionists (the Moros), and we found out the hard way that the .38 just wouldn’t cut it as a military sidearm.
General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, who was a captain during the Philippine Insurrection. He had direct experience using the .45 Colt Single Action Army during the American Indian wars. Pershing was America’s only 6-star general, a rank never attained by anyone else. He fought Indians, he chased Pancho Villa in Mexico, and he commanded American troops during the first World War.
In response to this, or so the story goes, the Army tried all kinds of handgun ideas, including the then-new 9mm Luger. There was a lot more to the story than just the concept that the .38 wasn’t enough gun, but it’s the version that is most frequently bandied about and we’ll stick with it to keep things simple. You hear about drug-crazed Moro insurgents, you hear about religious fanatics, and more. I don’t know which parts are true and which parts are, to use a current term, fake news. But I do know that as a result of that war, the Army wanted a handgun with more power.
The idea of a semi-automatic handgun was cool, but the Army thought the Luger was too complicated and the 9mm cartridge wasn’t much better than the .38. The .38 and 9mm bullets are essentially the same diameter (one is 0.356 inches, the other is 0.358 inches), and neither had enough knockdown power.
Our Army went back to an earlier cartridge, the .45 Colt, a rimmed cartridge used in the old 1873 Single Action Army Colt. It’s the six shooter that you see in the old cowboy movies (the one holstered in the photo at the top of this blog). The old 1873 was a single action sixgun (you had to pull the hammer back for each shot). By the time the Moro Wars rolled around, both Colt and Smith and Wesson had double action revolvers. On those, all you had to do was pull the trigger (that cocked the action and fired the weapon). To meet the new need in the Philippines, Colt manufactured double action revolvers (their Model 1909) chambered in the .45 Colt round. The Army was all for it, and they felt it met their needs (at least on an interim basis).
An interim solution to the unstoppable, presumably drug-crazed Moro insurrectionists…Colt’s Model 1909 revolver in .45 Colt, the same cartridge used by the Colt 1873 Single Action Army.
Having played with the Luger, though, the Army liked the idea of a semi-automatic handgun. But that puny 9mm round wasn’t enough back in those days, so the Army invited firearm manufacturers to submit larger caliber automatic pistol designs.
The 1911
The winner, of course, was John Browning’s 1911 design, and the .45 auto came into being as the US Army Model of 1911. It was a new gun and a new cartridge. The 1911 couldn’t shoot the rimmed .45 Colt cartridge used in the 1873 Peacemaker and Colt’s double action Model 1909 handguns. Instead, it used a new .45 ACP round (“ACP” stands for Automatic Colt Pistol), which fired the same big .45-inch-diameter bullet in a rimless cartridge case (actually, the cartridge has a rim, but the rim is the same diameter as the rest of the cartridge case, and that allowed it to work in the new semi-auto).
The 1911 Colt Auto. The new automatics used the rimless .45 ACP cartridge. The .45’s claim to fame is its tremendous stopping power.
The 1917 Colt and Smith and Wesson Revolvers
Fast forward a few more years and World War I started. The Army’s preferred handgun was the 1911, but there weren’t enough of the new semi-autos. Colt, and Smith and Wesson came to the rescue by modifying their earlier big bore revolver designs to shoot the .45 ACP cartridge, and the Army issued these as the Model 1917 revolver.
A US Army 1917 Smith and Wesson. These are beautiful revolvers. The gizmo beneath the grips is a lanyard attach point, which tied the gun to the soldier who carried it.
The 1917 double action .45s were phased out of the Army a few years after World War I ended, and they were sold as surplus to the public (things were different back then). Model 1917 revolvers are highly collectible today. I owned an original GI issue Colt Model 1917 back in the 1970s, when you could pick them up for about a hundred bucks. I loved that revolver, but I stupidly sold it 40 years ago. (When discussing firearms, the phrase “stupidly sold” is inherently redundant. Like nearly all of the guns I’ve sold, I wish I still had it.)
The three cartridges, all in .45 caliber. The one on the left is the .45 ACP, as used in the Model 1911 automatic and the Model 1917 revolver (and my Model 625 revolver). The one in the middle is the .45 AutoRim, which is essentially the .45 ACP but with a rim (that allows it to be used in the Model 1917 revolver and its descendants without a star clip). The one on the right is the old .45 Colt, which has been around since 1873 and is still a popular revolver round.
The 1911 .45 auto? It continued as the official US Army sidearm for the next seven decades. I carried one when I was in the Army. Like a lot of shooters, I think it is the best handgun ever.
In 1985, the Army replaced the 1911 with the 9mm Beretta. That (in my opinion) was a dumb move, and apparently the Army ultimately came to its senses with regard to the Beretta, but they stuck to the 9mm Luger round (now the NATO standard pistol cartridge) when they went to a Beretta replacement. The Beretta is being replaced by yet another 9mm (the SIG).
The Model 625 Smith and Wesson
No matter; there are still many of us who consider the 1911 in .45 ACP the ultimate sidearm. I’m one of those guys, but I’m also a huge fan of the double-action revolver in .45 ACP. The good news for me (and you, too, if you’re a .45 auto fan) is that Smith and Wesson still makes a modern version of their double-action revolver in this cartridge. It’s the Model 25 Smith (or, in stainless steel, the Model 625), and it’s a direct descendent of the old 1917 revolver.
A Model 625 Performance Center Smith and Wesson, and my reloaded .45 ACP ammo.
The Rock Island 1911 Compact
I am a lucky guy. I own both the .45 ACP Model 1911 and the .45 ACP Smith Model 625. You’ve read the earlier ExNotes blog about my Rock Island Compact 1911. It’s a sweet shooter and, at just under $500, it’s a hell of deal. And that Model 625? Wow. The Performance Center is Smith’s custom shop, and that revolver is accurate. It should be; it costs twice what the Rock Island 1911 goes for. But both guns are great, and I love shooting both.
A Rock Island Arsenal Compact 1911, the subject of an earlier ExNotes blog.
I had both of my .45s out at the range yesterday, and I had a blast (pun intended). Yeah, the revolver is a more accurate handgun than the 1911, but like we used to say in the Army, both are close enough for government work.
.45 ACP Accuracy
So just how well do these guns shoot? The short answer is very, very well. After running through a couple of hundred rounds, I thought it might be a good idea to set up two targets, side by side, and fire six rounds at each (the first six with the 1911, and the second six with my revolver). That’s exactly what I did, and it’s the final photo for this story…
Two targets at 50 feet, with six rounds each. The one on the left was with the Compact 1911, and the one on the right was with the big Smith and Wesson Model 625. Are both guns accurate? You bet! They’re close enough, as they say, for government work…
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Incidentally, if you like reading about guns and their history, you might want to pick up a copy of The Gatling Gun. I wrote that book, and it covers the early days of the Gatling (the Civil War), the transition to a modern weapon system after World War II, and modern Gatling applications on high-tech weapon systems. I worked on many of these systems, and I worked for the company that manufactured 30mm ammo for the A-10 Warthog. You can read all about that in The Gatling Gun, available from Amazon.
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As our generation ages off this mortal coil there seems to be a strong conservative trend among motorcyclists. By conservative I don’t mean politically, although most of my rowdy friends have settled on the putative conservative party. I mean in their actions and words.
Post a video of kids popping wheelies or burning up motorcycles and the comment section rapidly fills with sour, tsk-tsk and rote complaints about using proper riding gear, safe riding practices or endangering others. Quite a few commenters will wish death upon anyone not head-to-toe in safety gear. Organ Donors, an insult once used by straight citizens to describe motorcyclists in general, has been co-opted by ourselves and liberally used to describe riders not wearing hi-vis green, stifling gloves, helmets, boots and one of those silver blood-type/medication allergy bracelets sold in high schools throughout the mid-1970’s.
Realizing that the depressing safety-crats were doing the exact same wheelies when they were under 100 years old you have to wonder what changed. Responsibility to the group, to all road users or the prospect of injuring an innocent bystander is regularly trotted out by safety mongers. They sound like lower case communists instead of riders living free like it says on their belt buckles and t-shirts.
So is it fear or wisdom? With death imminent, I suspect fear. Our motorcycles are becoming sodden with anti-lock braking systems, rev limiters (God forbid we blow an engine!), traction control and power management systems. The price we are willing to pay for a motorcycle less inclined to kill us is in the tens of thousands of dollars. If we are so concerned about staying alive to drag down future economies with our failing bodies why not forgo motorcycles and drive a truck?
Our generation believes, as have previous generations, that we know best for the next guys. A do-as-I-say, not-as-I-did type of thing that must drive the young ones insane. We think a motorcycle with less than 100 horsepower is unrideable yet we expect others tap into maybe 50% of that power. If they actually twist the throttle then they become the irresponsible ones.
We are, in a nutshell, full of baloney. We rode without helmets, we rode in shorts and t-shirts, we popped wheelies on public roads, we drank and took drugs and then got on our motorcycles and crashed. We died and we were injured. We cost society money way beyond our true dollar value. And now like bit players in the song “Cats in the Cradle,” we sit behind our screens scolding others for being just like we were.
Former US Army paratrooper, GS rider, and good buddy Mike!
That’s good buddy Mike in the photo above, a very interesting guy I met on our most recent Baja ride. He’s a former US Army 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, and for the last year or so he’s been living off his BMW and camping as he goes. Mike penned a piece on motocamping, and he sent it to us here on ExhaustNotes.
Here’s Mike’s take on this topic…
Camping can be fun and enjoyable for everyone if you plan properly and set realistic expectations. The same can be said for camping on a motorcycle. Over the past year and a half I have made it a point to camp on my moto at least once a week, and for the weeks I have not met this goal there are long weekends and vacations where I more than make up for it.
A man, a motorcycle, and a campsite. It just doesn’t get much better than this.
Throughout the past year I have been frequently asked how I choose a campsite on a moto. In this blog I wanted to answer that question from my personal experience.
For the first couple times using a KOA or other publicly-used campground is a great way to ease into camping. You will be camping, but close enough to stores and facilities that you can begin to gauge what you need and start to define your personal camping comfort zones.
After camping in that environment, and after you invariably get sick of listening to kids screaming and another annoyances from humans, you can experiment with camping for free in National Forests. A good note to remember is that National Forests are free to camp in, but National Parks are not.
A Baja campsite.A National Forest campsite. Note Mike’s mascot peeking out from under the tent.Mike in the morning at one of his campsites. The floral-print shorts were not standard issue 82nd Airborne gear!
Over the past year I found a number of free remote campsites. I use www.freecampsites.com or I look for National Forests on maps. Once in a National Forest locate a Forest Road (FR) and ride a few miles down it. Many of these FR’s are doable even for street bikes but be aware of changing road conditions as you navigate them. You will often see the remains of a campsite marked with stones from a previous campfire. For me this is the perfect indication that someone has camped here before and is a safe location.
Moto camping is an easy and inexpensive way to escape the rat race with less effort then many would think. Moto camping experiences are some of the most rewarding that I have had throughout my adventures. Being so removed from everything as you sit relaxing in the glow of a warm campfire reflecting off your moto is a fulfilling feeling that few venture to achieve.
At the end of his email to me earlier today, Mike asked if I had any rides planned. Actually, Mike, the answer to that most excellent question is yes. I’m thinking about two motorcycle rides, either one of which might involve camping, so your blog today was very timely.
One ride I’m thinking about is another Baja adventure, and this one would involve more dirt riding than usual (at least for me). I’m thinking about a run up to Mike’s Sky Ranch in northern Baja (I’ve never made that trek, and I always wanted to). Another variation, perhaps part of the same ride, would include a leg from Chapala on the Transpenisular Highway near Catavina through Coco’s Corner to the Sea of Cortez (a 23-mile unpaved section). And another possibility is a run from San Felipe down to Bahia de Los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez, which involves about 70 miles on dirt. I’d like to do this on my CSC TT250, just to say that I did. I’m thinking maybe December for this ride.
There’s another ride on the horizon that my good buddy Dan the K is setting up, and he was kind enough to extend an invitation to me. Dan rode with me a couple of times in Baja on the CSC motorcycles, once on his RX3 and once on his TT250.
Dan the K with his TT 250 above Baja’s Rumarosa Grade.
The ride Dan is planning is a much longer adventure ride up to Inuvik in Canada’s Northwest Territories. That ride will involve a lot of camping. It’s coming up next summer, and I’ll keep you clued in on the planning right here on the ExhaustNotes blog.
I’m excited about both rides. On that Baja ride…anybody want to ride with me? Hey, let us know here at info@exhaustnotes.us!
A week or so ago, one of our blog viewers asked if we would add a feature to allow automatic email updates when new blogs are posted. We did, and it’s the widget you see to the right. If you would like to receive an email update when we post new blogs, just enter your email and you’ll be on the update list. We won’t sell or give your email address to anyone else.
We had a nice note from our good buddy Peter today, an ardent ADV rider, Norton fan, and fellow Mesa Verde enthusiast…
Joe, I enjoyed your post about Mesa Verde today. A few years ago Sara and I spent the night there and toured the ruins. We agree, photos don’t give the appropriate scale. Our guide made the whole place seem alive! With that said, there are at least two notable things about Dolores. First, they have a pretty decent motel right on the main drag. It’s owned by a Swede (cannot remember his name) and about 4 blocks away they have a good brew pub. Second, just outside of town you’ll find Colorado Norton Works. Matt Rambo (another Swede) is the owner. He has a very small shop that, as I recall, lacks any kind of sign. Inside you will find a motorcycle shop that closely resembles an operating theater, it’s that spotless. Matt will take your Norton and totally rebuild it from the frame up. The end product is absolutely beautiful and improved in so many ways I cannot remember them all. Matt and John Snead (owns a CNC machine shop in Jacksonville, FL) have also designed an improved electric start system for Nortons. I mention all this because you owe it to yourself to visit the shop, meet Matt, and drool over his rolling jewelry. You’ll love it!
Matt and John are both friends of mine. I have visited Matt’s shop three times and even stayed at his house on one trip.
Peter
Thanks for taking the time to write and convey your thoughts, Peter. I had heard of Colorado Norton Works from Gerry Edwards, another good friend. He spoke of them in reverential terms.
For those of you who don’t know, Dolores is a nice little Colorado town just up the road from Mesa Verde. When my good buddy Marty and I rode the Three Flags Rally in 2005 and visited Mesa Verde (my first time there), we rode along the Dolores River into the town of Dolores. It was pouring rain that day, but we had decent weather during our earlier stop at Mesa Verde.
Somewhere in New Mexico, with good buddy Marty on the 2005 Three Flags Rally. One of these days I’ll post more photos from that trip here on the ExhaustNotes blog. It was one hell of a ride!
Ride safe, Peter, and again, thanks for your note!
Sue and I stopped at interesting spots on our way home from Tinfiny Ranch earlier this month, and one of them was Mesa Verde National Park. I first went there on the 2005 Three Flags Rally with my buddy Marty. On that visit, Marty and I were only there for a quick stop, and I knew it was a place that needed more time.
At the Mesa Verde National Park entrance. It would be another 1000-ft climb and 14 miles of glorious twisties to get to the good stuff.
Mesa Verde is just outside of Cortez, in southwestern Colorado. It’s a great little town.
The whole idea behind Mesa Verde National Park is that Native Americans lived in advanced cliff dwellings about a thousand years ago. It’s real Indiana Jones stuff.
A shot I showed on Facebook a week or so ago. Folks told me it looked fake, and I needed a photo with some people in it to give a sense of scale.As requested.
The place was amazing. We were up on a huge mesa looking down into dramatic canyons, and these dwellings were built into overhangs and crevasses in the canyon walls…
The Tower structure. Several of these little villages had a tower like the one you see in this photo. Maybe the chiefs lived there?Another hamlet.A view from across the canyon at another set of dwellings, this time with my 70-300 lens. All of the other photos were with a 24-120 lens.
While we were there, we met a nice young guy named Tom, a Canadian artist traveling through the US on a motorcycle…
Captain Tom…Tom’s ride, a rented Honda Africa Twin.
Tom was an interesting man and a world traveler. He gave his card to us and I visited Tom’s website. He’s been to many of the same spots Sue and I have visited, including Turkey (one of the world’s best-kept tourist destination secrets) and southeast Asia (another best-kept secret). You should take a peek at Tom’s site; it’s awesome.
Cool stuff, to be sure. One last Mesa Verde photo today, folks…my signature selfie…
In the painted bumper of my blue Subie…
When we were planning this trip, I asked Gobi (that’s Joe Gresh) what he recommended on the ride back to California. One of his suggestions was the Petrified Forest in Arizona. That’s next, folks. Stay tuned!
