3 days in Northern AZ!

[MBonadio]

A friend and I had an amazing 3 days on the bike. My favorite parts - 89a coming into Jermome, 89a up to Flagstaff out of Sedona, and Lake Mary Road to 87!!

Fortunately for us we had a great ride. Weather was awesome and Bambi lived (story for later). We got a bit cold in the evening riding out of the Canyon, but fortunately for us the hotel was 60 miles away and down 2k ft in elevation.

The Speedy travelled well - even with about 50lbs of my crap on the back.. and it still stuck great on the twisties. So who says it can't tour! haha. Ok. I could've used a windshield..

Here are some pictures. Mike captured about 40 hours of video and some stills too, so hopefully he'll be posting up soon. We switched off the camera on each bike at various angles. Should be good stuff.

Leaving Phoenix on Sunday ..




Prescott AZ on sunday afternoon after playing on Yarnell Hill.





89A To Jerome on Monday morning..








Sedona Red Rock Country up to Flagstaff via AZ89A








Grand Canyon on Tuesday afternoon.







The Cameron Trading Post area





Back to Flagstaff on Tuesday for some breakfast










Lake Mary Rd out of Flagstaff for some great scenery. There wasn't a car on the road for 50 miles!




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[Trouble]

Awesome stuff man! I'm gonna have to get out and do something like this soon.

[hellion68]

very cool pics, I wish I could sneek away for a 2 or 3 day trip. But I really dont think Ive seen that much crap strapped to a motorcycle before lol, The windshiled off of my old hog would fit well with all the bags!

[LuvMan5]

Awesome trip and write-up Martin! Thanks for sharing.

So what was the deal with Bambi?

[MBonadio]

Yeah. Carrying 3 days worth of clothing and being preapred for both 90 degree days and 30 degree nights meant for packing a lot. Plus I wanted a pair of jeans and tennis shoes for walking around comfortably... The Nelson Riggs did a great job though!

We had a pucker moment with a hughe mule deer just outside of Flagstaff on the way to the Grand Canyon. Deer just jumps out in front of us at highway speed. Brakes went on hard, tires started locking, and my friend Mike was within a foot of it before it ran off the other side of the road. Whole incident lasted maybe 2 seconds. One second to react, one second to drop to about 50 mph, and then it was over! All I could think was, Mike would hit it and it would be ugly, and if he hit and went down, body parts were going to be everywhere, and I'd probably go down too... Whew! We both stopped and let the adrenaline soak in before continuing. that night we ate fry bread and contemplated "being alive"!! ;-)

[LuvMan5]

Wow! Scary moment indeed..

I'm glad you are both ok. Way to be alert and react quickly. Sometimes it's moments like that that really put things in perspective and make you appreciate life. Once again.. great write-up and pics. Thanks for sharing.

[MBonadio]

I gotta say that the best part of that trip was riding along Lake Mary Road. The cool air, the lakes, and the trees just made it amazing. But the fact that we didn't see a single car on that whoel 60 mile stretch was even better. It was like being all alone in the world for that 45 minutes.... Second favorite part - my new favorite road - the climb up Mingus Mountain to Jerome. All those twisties and all that great scenery. We did it early Monday so there wasn't any traffic there either. the climb up out of Oak Creek would have been ok but for some reason all the "silver-hair" snowbirds were lurking about on that road. It was odd seeing a lot of snow along the side of the road and on the hills and in the woods for the 3 days... the spring time blooming has just started but it felt like winter though. Honestly, I finally got out to do VMR and Yarnell on the way to Prescott, but compared to everything else it just didn't stack up! ;-) However, compared to some of my normal stretches, it sure did... esp. my commute to work which starts back up next week! AKK!

[James K]

Great video on the front page!