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Westward Distraction: Day Fifteen

By Thom | January 16, 2008

Vernal, UT to Hot Sulfur Springs, CO

Great day!!! I got my motorcycle back (after paying $90 to get 1 valve stem replaced!). I hit the road and never looked back. For most of the day I just was happy to ride and get out of the heat. The landscape started changing and it was getting cooler. I ended up butting up against a rainstorm so I stopped at a coffee shop along the way and struck up a conversation with a coupe guys and the owner. One of the gentlemen had a BMW GS1150 (mmm dreamy) so we talked for quite a while and I got some tips on where to ride for the next couple of days. A while later the store owner realized that I had a rowing shirt one – he actually competed on the US Olympic team!!! We talked back and forth for about an hour after the shop closed and then I was again on my way towards the hills.

I decided to stop in this small town for a bite after a couple hours, then make the 13 mile trek out to a campsite that I found. I stopped at “The Wagon Wheel” to eat and found that there was a Motoguzzi parked out front. I pulled up next to it and took a picture, the owner – a guy from Minneapolis – whose name I can’t remember, end up taking to me about the whole thing and how he got it. He ended up winning it on an eBay auction from a museum in Arizona, started to ride it home and it broke a piston rod in Denver. He had the whole thing rebuilt (lotta $) and was riding it around for the next month. We ate and talked until 11 and then I head towards the campsite. I don’t know if I slept at all during the night. I had not seen anything that related to bears when I registered, but I was worried that I didn’t suspend my backpack with food high enough in the tree and I was going to wake up to a big ol brown bear eating my stuff. Nothing did end up happening and I walked over to my neighbors, who I swore I woke up during the night and explained my ordeal. They were from New York and had been driving out to that exact campsite for 18 years. They told me that there were no bears, nor had they seen anything bigger than a deer in years. So we had a good laugh!

Nice rainbow over the Rockies