3 Flags - Day 14

Start Location: Kanab, UT
Ending Location: Wells, NV
Miles Today: 428
Trip Miles: 4111
States Visited: 9
National Parks/Monuments: 9
Low Temp: 52 degrees
High Temp: 85 degrees
Min Elevation: 4687'
Max Elevation: 9910'

Route Map:

Today was sort of divided into two distinct rides -- the Utah ride and the Nevada ride. We liked the Utah ride but the Nevada ride left a little to be desired. It's interesting, when you look at a map, for the most part they are two dimensional so you don't always know what to expect. Today was a good example. We left Kanab on route 89, which we had been riding yesterday, and headed north to route 14 where we turned west. Route 14 looked pretty unspectacular on the map but were we wrong. The road climbed through the Dixie National Forest for miles and miles finally peaking at 9910' where we were greeted with a beautiful view of Navajo Lake. We also saw large forests of trees that looked almost grey in color. We didn't know if they were supposed to look like this or if they are dying. From there we descended to Cedar City. On the way down we passed at least 100 motorcycles going the other way -- of course we didn't have the camera ready. It must have been an organized ride or rally of some kind but it was surprising to see a ride like that on a Monday instead of a weekend. All in all it was one of the nicest rides of the trip yet. We also had to get a few final pictures of Utah because we would be leaving soon.

Cedar City seems to be a very nice city and really impressed us. One of the things we have noticed is that most of the cities of Utah look to be well cared for and well kept up. This is distinctly different from what we found in many of the other smaller cities we passed through the past few weeks.

Shortly after Cedar City we passed into Nevada and the change was like night and day. We stopped for lunch along the road in Nevada and shot this picture of the road we were driving on. I think in the 20 or 30 minutes we were eating lunch there weren't more than a half dozen cars that passed us, and it was like this most of the day. The scenery along the road looked like this when we stopped for lunch and like this later in the day -- not much different. The good thing was that it was in the low 80s, it could have looked like this and been in the 90s. We've done that before and it's no fun.

We are also experiencing technical difficulties. The first problem is the XM Radio. It seems to work great for hours at a time and then it begins to cut out on us and the display flashes either 'ANTENNA' or 'NO SIGNAL'. The ineteresting thing is that I can touch the antenna with my fingers and within a second or two, the signal locks back in again. The problem didn't start to occur until we got into the southwest. It may have something to do with the atmosphere or the geography or something like that. We'll see if it continues as we move north. The second problem is computer or network related. The last two nights we have had only average connections and we have had a great deal of trouble uploading to our web site. Tonight I finally got everything uploaded but I couldn't view the site with our computer. The motel had a computer in the lobby and I could get to the site from there with no rpoblems - but it was wired directly to the router. We'll have to wait until we get a better conncetions and see what happens.

Tomorrow we head for Idaho and should get considerably better scenery.