Motorcycle Tour Day 2

What a day and what luck we seem to have. In the complete rush of life in the week leading up to vacation I never even took the time to check the weather online. Seeing as we were planning to spend two full days on a motorcycle, and we own rain gear, you would have thought I would have planned our packing accordingly. But I didn’t bother. We just left on blind faith that it would be nothing but sunny in Arizona and boy did we luck out. As it turned out it had rained for several days right before we arrived and apparently thunderstorms were surrounding us yesterday, but we never saw a drop. As a matter of fact we almost never where under cloud cover and the day was spectacular.

We left Prescott nice and early and it was nice and cool. We both needed to wear fleece under our motorcycle jackets. We had more mountains to climb and between the unreal scenery and the exhilarating ride you would swear you were on a Disney amusement park ride (that you could control). More hairpin S turns that cut right into the side of the mountains. And just to add more excitement to the ride was the fact that Karlo still has a cold and you never knew when the next sneeze was coming. Yikes.

Our first point of interest was an adorable town on the side of a mountain called Jerome. It’s a very artsy town lined with little shops and galleries. Karlo totally lucked out and avoided me shopping in them due to the fact that we rolled into town before anything opened. Oh well.

The next stop was spectacular Sedona. I’ve been to Sedona in the past, and I knew it was named one of America’s top 10 most beautiful places, but it still blew me away. It is hard to find the words to describe this place. Here, maybe some pictures are in order:





We spent a couple hours exploring here. We drove up to great lookout, visited a chapel built into the side of a cliff by Frank Lloyd Wright, and shopped around a beautiful artists’ colony. I didn’t want to leave and I already have retirement dreams. Too bad Karlo wouldn’t let me pick up a real estate magazine. Or maybe I should say, “Good thing Karlo didn’t . . . “

Half of the ride back South was terrific. The views were great, the temperature was perfect, the roads were made for motorcycles and we were in Heaven. I just wish we had helmet cams.

But our Heaven soon turned to Hell. The further South we drove (and the more elevation we lost) cranked the temps up about 100 degrees. Add to that the fact that the last 100 miles were on a highway (my least favorite place to ride), there was heavy holiday traffic, the windshield on the BMW is terrible compared to our own bike, and did I mention it was 1,000 degrees out? I sat on the back of the bike for the last hour praying to God that we would make it home alive. Karlo drove 80 – 90 mph the entire time, passing everyone on the road and I was nearly in tears (holding onto my helmet -- and my head the entire time). I was never so happy to get off a bike in my life.

Thank goodness we arrived back at our hotel just in time for happy hour. Lord knows I needed a drink!