A ride for Sarah

[sgwilly]

In May I went on a trip with several of my brothers, my father and a good friend. We met out in San Diego, rented HDs and did a 1200 mile loop in 5 days. The impetus for the trip was the passing of my brother's 12 year old daughter due to brain cancer last year. More or less act of enjoying life and fellowship while you have it. Keeping that in mind also helps with getting along with my brothers for several days at a time. The lack of intercoms also helps.

Highlights of the trip included the Palms to Pines Highway in CA, Mingus Mtn., Sedona, South rim of the Grand Canyon, Rt. 66 through Oatman (AZ), the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree NP.


Here's the whole gang on Coachella Vista overlook above Palm Springs, CA.


The road down to Palm Desert was absolutely fantastic.


Next up was some flat, straight interstate to get east across the desert.


Here's Mahoney and Beav heading down Mingus Mtn. toward Jerome, AZ.


The road up and over Mingus Mtn was absolutely beautiful - both for scenery and riding.


Here's Beav - check out his riding apparel. DayGlo riding vest, baseball hat and crocs. I finally had to ask him what he was going for. He said he wasn't worried about crashing - just people hitting him. I guess that makes sense. Sort of.


While we were planning on riding around the north side of the canyon through Zion NP, we only made it to the south rim. Someday I'll get back that way. Left to right is Opie (Dan), Factor (me), Daddy-O (Dad), Mahoney (Larry) and Beav (Dave).


Rt. 66 had some wide open spaces in northern AZ. What impresses me most about this shot is I took it while pointing the camera backwards over my head while riding at 60mph.


The road to Oatman crosses some sparse landscape which included this stop at Cool Springs.


Oatman is a bit of a novelty biker town these days. Used to be a critical stop along Rt. 66 through the mountains. Free ranging donkeys are a main component of the tourist strategy.


Heading south from Oatman to Landing Strip was probably the best roads we got on. Nobody around, open view, smooth asphalt, undulating hills and graceful curves.


Some barren landscape in the Mohave. Glad to be traveling in a pack at this point.


Had to stop and get a picture of this...




Here's the full slideshow if you want to see more...

[Whiskerfish]

Great pics and a very worthy reason to ride together.

[JBz]

Looks like you had a nice ride. Thanks for sharing. JB

[Brant]

Great trip and thanks for sharing. I'm sad to learn of Sarah, but it seems she gave you guys some things to think about.

[Sagebrush]

Great pics Steve, I bet you guys had a great time. Too bad about missing Zion etc. but I understand the time limit thing.

Just a heads up the group I ride with is in the pre-pre-thinking-about-just-maybe planning stages for a southwestern US tour in the May 2011 time frame. Think you might be interested in joining us? If so I'll keep you in the loop.

[Dangeruss]

What a great ride! Nice pictures too, thanks for sharing.

[sunnbobb]

Nice pics and story Steve. Thanks

[sgwilly]

Thanks for the replies. My only regret was the brevity of the trip.

Dean, keep me abreast of your plans. It's a long shot I could make it but I'd like to consider it.

[rcmatt007]

zion is truely gorgeous, looks a lot drier out there than here on the edge of the ozarks (actually, I grew up in Nor Cal and traveled that stretch of 66 a lot in the 50-60's coming out to OK to visit grandparents)

great pics