Holiday Archives - Page 7 of 22 - Round the World by Bike

The photo-gallery of the last post were missing and now added – sorry for that ;) Las Vegas we left without gambling or visiting any Casino – probably we saved a lot of money ;) Therefore we had a nice evening together with Brit, Jacob and some friends of them at the old strip of Vegas and we explored the colorful `Valley of Fire´ together with Jacob on the motorbikes on our last day.

Breathtaking, gorgeous, magnificent, striking, amazing… whatever word you use it will not explain how you feel in these sceneries of the National Parks. Following more or less the Colorado River we visited parts of the Escalante NP, went through the Capitol Reef NP, spent a full day at the Bryce NP, drove through Zion and up to the Kolob Reservoir and finally we explored the north and the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We hope we can transfer an idea off all this impressive beauty we saw with the pictures we selected.

On the way to Las Vegas, where we are now, we drove a part of the famous Route 66. The road on its own was pretty boring except the stops where they display all the oddities of the old times; nevertheless a good alternative to the Highway and probably it helped us to escape the thunderstorm. Actually we have been lucky all these days with the weather. Pretty often we could see a black wall, heard the thunder rolling, saw the lightning but except strong winds and a few drops of rain we never were caught by one of these storms. Cross finger it stays like that!

Las Vegas is HOT! And we are lucky that we found a place at Brittany’s and Jacob´s home to stay. Sascha’s AT seems to drink a little bit too much oil and sometimes I can see a dark cloud coming out of the exhaust. As well he has misfires continuously. He just has an eye on it at the garage. For the evening we plan to investigate Las Vegas and its famous Strip. Sascha is keen to gamble a bit – I will think of the budget to release for that ;-)

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The Beartooth Highway was a really great ride and it goes up to 10036 feet (3345 meter). Yellowstone is impressive no question about that. The scenery, the geysers and the wildlife; but suddenly there were everywhere so many people, partially you had to cue up. We were not use to it. Nevertheless we enjoyed the parts we saw but we decided to shorten it a little bit. A funny thing was we met Bill and Josh at the camp site and they gave us one of these hiking dried food bags for the way, “Pad Thai”. Everybody who knows us knows we do love Southeast Asian food especially Pad Thai – but like that??? So we are curious to find out one of these days how the taste is – but for now we will keep it as an emergency reserve. Thank you Bill and Josh! It was a pleasure meeting you and have save travels!

It was not only because of the crowded places we hurried up. In Salt Lake City, were we are just know, we are hosted by Patty and Kevin – thank both of you for your great hospitality and your help!!! They offered us to stay with them and using their workshop. Do you remember the broken gas pipe? Since then we do smell a little bit too much gas all the time, and sometimes the Transalp seems not to take the throttle – it feels like little holes/hick-ups. Sascha is just working on that… I hope we will find out the reason and we are able to fix it. As we were rushing we just went through Grand Teton National Park but really enjoyed the ride – it is certainly worth to spend more time there. Going to Jackson (hey you know the song!?) we were hungry, tired and running late. Just before the sunset we found a place for our tent when we drove 6km into a gravel road a little bit south of Jackson. Surrounded by cows, mosquito’s and birds we felt soon asleep. We woke up early to arrive in time in Salt Lake City. We built down the soaking wet tent (we slept next to a river) with frozen fingers and we hopped onto the bikes. Somehow it felt very strange to me (I did not have a coffee yet!) and I said so to Sascha. He just yawned, yeah me as well… BUT ohhhhh nooooo!!! You have a flat tire!!! Here we go… we used the “fix A flat” as we wanted to get a new tire anyhow. And with some stops at gas stations filling up air we finally made it to Patty and Kevin in Salt Lake City. We started with maybe 2-3°C in the morning and arrived completely sweated and overheated with 36°C. Puhhh we need to get used to the new climate from now on and rearrange our clothing packs.

Oh I nearly forgot to mention our new companions. The 18^th June we had our 8^th Wedding Anniversary (and 18 years together). Sascha got a little black bear from me to take care of him. Two days later on a very remote recreation camp we found `Pepe´ alone on a bench looking really sad. For sure there is a kid somewhere very sad as well. We decided to take Pepe with us – either we will find his owner somewhere on the way or we will find a new kid taking care of him on our way to Tierra del Fuego. So from now on Kerstin is driving `two-up´ ;)

Cheers and see you soon!