Mongrels at large complete their trip

Well its been 5300 miles or 8500 Kilometers of riding and driving over about 33 or 34 days. So many experiences and challenges. Low petrol, late finish, heavy traffic, cold and rain and GPS with a mind of their own and late turn notices.

Six Mongrels and not a stern word between them.

A big thank you to Ken for his navigation and his stories, great company and top bloke.

Rory for his planning of the days ride and his booking of accommodation. Hugh for his tail end Charley roll he shared with Gerald.

Gerald for his tail end Charley roll, his navigation assistance and of course his running the idea for about 10 years to do this trip. Great job Gerald in getting it up and making it all happen, with a bunch of well chosen Mongrels. Thank you forthe invitation and making it happen.

Signing off and regards all,
Paul.

Paul's top five

Best Restaurant: Spokan, the setting was magnificent and the food great.

Best Town: Again Spokan. There is nothing like a personal touch to help appreciate a town. If we had ridden in on the highway stayed overnight and rode out on the highway would we have really appreciated what Spokan had to offer? Thanks to Hugh for the contacts and Annne and Michael for the personal touch.

Best Ride: Tough one there were so many. The Big Sur is the obvious top ride. But coming out of Sequoia National Park and dropping about 8000 feet in an hour in second gear. But I could have mentioned 20 rides.

Most Memorable Occasion: Riding a cruis er bike in LA on a 6-8 lane freeway in the first few minutes of picking up the bikes. For a relatively new black top rider it was mind bogling.

Most Lasting Memory: The frequent riding through mountains with snow on the ground and a post card view at every turn. Also the ride into Peachtown in neutral and running low on fuel. 25 miles down hill!

Hugh's top five

Best Restaurant: Spokan with Anne & Michael.

Best Town: The tour on foot of Spokan with Anne & visit to their home & coffee with Michael before departing.

Best Ride: Through Lake Isabella, Ponderossa and on to Fresno.

Most Memorable Moment: Was the bike riding along freeways into and around LA, walking around hotel/casino & shops in Las Vegas and the thousands of people spending time gambling no matter what the time of day.

Best Bike: Bikes were very ordinary machines, and only hire a bike I am familiar with like a BMW 1200, so as to increase my enjoyment. Car/motor vehicle was very satisfactory with plenty of space, very comfortable to ride in and expert driving by Ken.

Graham's top five

Best Restaurant: Spokan

Best Town: Vegas

Best ride: Zion

Best Occasion: First day on a bike after 5 days of not being well (thought of going home).

Best bike: Would like to ride a bike the same as you rode at home.

top group of guys. "No Hassles". Looked after me when not good.

Rory's top five

Rory's top five.
Best restaurant: Too many good restaurants to name but Spokan, Seattle and chowder on the wharf at Seattle wharf merchants.

Best town: Sanoma and Lake Isabella - Pondarossa.

Best Ride: Fresno and Zion, but riding Tory Canyon to Bryce Canyon twice was fantastic as well.

lasting memory: Snow on the bikes at Jacob lake.

Best Bike: At last I rode a decent bike after two weeks on a ....Shadow.

Last comments/memories: A fantastic group of Aussies and sleeping with Ken!

Gerald's top 5

Best restaurant: McCormick & Schmidts LA last night.

Town: Spokane - Vegas

Ride: Big Sur & Zion.

Occasion: The view into the Grand Canyon

Bike: Hire a better bike, later model.

Lasting memory: Scenes of the snow covered mountains for over two weeks including from Las Vegas. Big Redwoods plus coastal rides nth & sth of San Francisco.

Individual Summaries - Ken

Our esteemed driver. What a top job of navigating Ken did! some times battling with two GPS's as well as four riders telling him what to do. He even had three GPS's on the last day. Ken did some of the best U turns I have seen. Where would we have been without him. Late and without a bed.!

Kens top four.
Best Restaurant. Tony Romas in Anaheim LA

Best Town, Las Vegas

Best drive Brice Canyon and Sequoia.

Best Occasion When it started raining heavily. (thats just cruel Ken)

The Last Supper

Here we are at the last dinner at our favourite fish restaurant in LA.

A happy bunch just done 5300 miles together and still smiling. No truth in the rumour we ate our way around nine states and one province.

The restaurant was so good we even went back again after Rory flew home. He would have wanted us to.

Last Day Riding

Sunday
Left San Simeon and rode back a short distance to the Hearst Castle, now run by the Californian Parks. Had a tour through the Castle, amazing rooms full of ancient expensive artifacts eg 1000 year old Persian rugs on wall, statues from middle east etc. Just an amazing dream brought to life by W Hearst.

Rode onto sthrn Calif coast. Often saw heavy traffic and miles of beaches with RVs and Vans toe to toe just off the sand. People having a long weekend.

Traffic got more busy as we hit the edge of LA some 90 miles from the city centre.

Found our hotel again the Hocienda just sth of the LAX air port.

Rory flew home on Monday, Hugh to England Tuesday afternoon and Graham to Aus on Air New Zealand just after Hugh. Ken, Paul and Gerald will fly out Wed evening.

More blogs to continue with individual photos and summaries to follow.

Thanks for all those who posted comments.

Regards, Paul and the team.

San Simeon

Saturday Cont.

We start riding the Big Sur below Carmel. It is a coastal road written up in every bikers magazine about this part of the US of A. Even a Californian Highway Patrol man we have coffee with yesterday says we must ride the Big Sur. The name comes from the National park it passes through. It is made of steep coastal mountains with a very winding road (what else) with sharp bends lots of steep drop offs and a packet of challenges for any rider. phots just dont do it justice anbd the best bits are impossible to stop and photograph. We ride as it gets cold and late. The road is about 50 miles long and has many road repair sites with traffic lights. It even had a truck accident and boy was that driver lucky he wasn't at the bottom of the cliff.

Eventually we make San Simeon at 8.45 pm, a bit cold and tired but we did the "Big Sur".

Ken says we only have single beds and all other accom is full. We eventually get portable beds as well. We are a close team but not that close!

Big Sur

Saturday
After Gerald gets two new tyres we head across California to the coast at Monterey.

California is just a busy place with highways full of very fast traffic and lots of fields of trees and vegetables. The view from the bike of the fields brings a lot of comments over the radios from the riders. So much, so busy, so green and lush. Plenty of cheap labor, good soil and fresh water and a ready market. We can only dream.

We get to Monterey and being the Memorial long weekend it is busy. People everywhere so we move onto Carmel. Still lots of people and cars. We find a park and walk for coffee. The place is interesting, full of antiques and art galleries, but must keep moving. Our accomodation is in San Simeon and we have to tackle the Big Sur.

Sequia National Park

Friday Cont
We found the "walk amongst the giants", and spent some time amongst them. Even though we had ridden amongst coastal Redwoods in the first week we experience their true size by walking amongst the mountain Redwoods. The snow lays on the ground and we talk to some young people having a day off. They work taking tourist by horse back into the mountains. Interesting young people in a very interesting place.

We then get lunch at the Ponderossa coffee stop and ride down steep winding hills in second gear and occasionally first dropping around 8000 feet while we go. It takes some time and Gerald nurses his bald front tyre and Paul his front brake only as the back brake has broken.

We eventually get to Fresno late and look for bike help.

Sequia National Park

Friday.
After a nice breakfast and a chat with the locals we ride along the Kern River valley and see countless RV's and tents on the banks of the river getting in early for memorial day long weekend.

We stop to see two kyakers prepare and leave into the fast flowing river near this bridge.

We then climb into the sthn Sierra mountains and it gets cold again. Around 2 degrees for a short ride.

Vegas to Death Valley and beyond

Thursday we leave Les Vegas and ride to Death Valley stopping for b/f at Indian Springs. The wind is strong and makes riding more of a challenge. Late morning we start to descend into Death Valley. What we thought was water or salt turns out to be white sand in all of the tree or so valleys we cross. The wind is getting stronger and raising dust as we pass through Stove Pipes a small village near see level. the temps drop from a cool 12 to a high of 37 in the valley.

We then come to the last valley and see the big back drop of the east side of the Sierra Mountain range, with of course snow on the top of the 9-10,000 feet mountains.

It is colder again as we ride south to get around the bottom of the ranges and rise up to find a small town of Kernville. So small we have to split into two motels to get the rooms we require. In the morning we see fishermen trying to catch trout in the fast flowing Kern River.

Las Vegas

Tuesday 25th and Wed 26th

Tuesday we bought tickets for a tourist shuttle buse and travelled down the strip. Big WOW factor at every turn in Las Vegas. From the hotels and the architectrue to the people on the street and the small vendors it is all entertaining.

Had a visit to Frement Street to see the overhead light show running two blocks. Big technical upgrade since my lastvisit 11 years ago. Featured a tribute to Queen and others. Great color light and sound. Draws a large crowd several times an evening.

Last night a show at The Mirage with master magitian Lance Burton. Beyond magic it was full on with great sets, costumes and magic.

Today a free day. Three of us went to the outlets shops on the edge of the city. More Wow factor.No tool shops for the men but did manage to get some cloths and luggage to carry it all home with.

Tonight a show featuring Cher followed by supper. In all a fair test for the body. Back to the bikes and Death Valley tommorrow.

Lake Powell Utah

Lake Powell Utah.
The photo shows a back section of lake Powell. The sand stone curves are quite interesting. Other parts of the lake are wider and more conventional. The lake is about 200 miles long and is so winding in the sand stone canyons that it has approximately 1200 miles of shorline. Flows are used to generate hydro power half of which is sold to southern California.

The lake is used for recreation and we could see a mariner at Frog Hole with houseboats dotting parts of the lake. The white line above the water represents the drop of level over the last ten odd years due to drought. That line as seen from 9000 feet above see level is 100 feet high!

Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

Sunday 23rd
Paul, Gerald and Hugh take an early morning, 2.5hr flight from Brice over the rugged canyons and stepped lands to Monument Valley. Good to get a perspective on the area, the Monument Valley was a little dissapointing and the flight a little too bumpy.

"split in the camp".
SUV loaded and everyone rugged up on bikes. Paul and Ken set the heater to a steady 23 and headed for Las Vegas while the remainder (who had not seen the Grand Canyon before) headed off in a strong cold wind to the Grand Canyon. They experienced some tough winds and overnight snow, (see photo) some what of a record snow for this time of year. Like Brice the wall of the canyon is at 8000 feet plus, so cold and snow is always possible in the non summer period. After having a good look at the canyon on Sunday evening they chipped the snow off the bikes in the morning, and headed off to LV on Monday in great weather and passed through Zion National Park, from all reports a great ride and good scenery again.

Meanwhile Ken and I battled LV traffic and navigated to the MGM hotel where we found about 6 lanes of cars and taxis at the entrance out front of the lobby and at least 20 staff serving at the check in counter with visiters 5 deep. We managed to negotiate all this and took in some of the miles of poker machines in this hotel which has 5,005 guest rooms. The MGM is seriously large I think the largest hotel in the world. This morning just getting from breakfast back to our room on the 16th floor and back to the lobby took 17 minutes without any hold ups. Apparently ther are 4 Star bucks here, I have only seen two so far.

Monday evening the bikers turn up in time for dinner.

All back together and the split in the camp is history.

More canyon stories

^{Saturday Ken, Gerald & Graham took a day off for house hold duties & Paul, Rory & Hugh couldn’t help themselves and did a all day 250 mls round trip in a blustery wind – but found some more great roads- including a little gravel to keep Hugh in familiar territory –}

The all time classic trip story especially for the Mt Gambier Ulysses news letter. Unfortunately we don’t have a picture but imagine this; a well known local member part of our team needs more tooth paste, but forgot to take his glasses as usual. First attempt to clean his teeth completely broke the party up, Ken fell about laughing at Rory’ mouth full of denture glue. We are still trying to prize open his jaw. Actually we think we might leave it stuck as the silence is golden.

We have just today received blog comments from the first few blogs. Not sure why it took so long but we appreciate all the comments and have shared them with the team.

Mongrels enter Bad Lands

Thur– Sat 20^th – 22^{nd May}

^{Thursday has us riding into more great scenery along high plateau with distant snow capped mountains AGAIN. Took a side road for a better pic opportunity – but even then the photos do not}

^{Show how great it looks in real life, sorry.}

^{Friday we arrived at Bryce Canyon for a 3 day camp. Saturday Rory, Gerald, Hugh and Paul took the Canyon Shuttle bus into the canyon area for a walk down into the canyon floor. Boy was it a steep walk down into the canyon a real goat track, but we even saw recent Bobcat tracks – that driver must have some serious skills and big b…s! The walk was fantastic the views simply unique. We were lucky enough to catch a talk by a Ranger who helped us understand the geology of the whole Colorado Plateau.}

Heading for the bad lands

Wednesday the 19th.

The ride today was from Diamondsville Utah
again through mountain passes and wide valleys, avoiding as much as possible the interstate freeways. The photo opposite is on a plateau on the way with a large canyon below and snow on the mountains opposite. It was windy and very cold, down to 7 degrees at times. We rugged up well. Ken kept the vehicle warm and we were worried about his responsibility in keeping the heat right as well as navigating and the ocassional country hit played over the two way for us, and all we had to do was ride and figure a way to keep out hands warm.umping out. I did have a white tail deer run along side me for several hundred meters today.

After Green River and lunch the ride warmed up and took us through a long canyon with steep hills on either side and some cattle ranching alongside the road. Very isolated and not exactly profitable ranches. Most riders said it was the best afternoons riding so far with the right mix of bends, hills, scenery, weather and light traffic and not too many deer jumping out in front of us. We are definately in low rainfall range land, which is a big change after the dense forrests and grassy valleys, but still often quite high in elevation. Today we passed through 9000 feet.

We finished in Price still in Utah. Tomorrow we should visit Brice Canyon and Arizona.

The escape

We have often mentioned how good the weather has been. Well our luck ran out yesterday. We started in Victor Idaho and ended in Diamondsville Utah. First thing the sun was out and we rode a short 20 miles to Wilson for breakfast. The ride took us through a mountain pass and in some light rain at snow level. Hugh said it wasnt much rain but that is compared to Lucindale. I thought it enough for a Mallee cocky to start seeding. After a delightfull breakfast we rode through some valleys and mountains with a post card view at every turn and riding on magnificant roads. Are you getting sick of us talking about views, well we are not sick of seeing them.

We did have two other rain events and managed to find a coffee shop, or as the picture shows a petrol station which happened to have coffee and a warm lounge to wait out the hail.

We ended in a wind swept Utah town of Diamondsville with not much to recomend it. On riding out today the mining and gas industries were very evidnet. 50 to maybe 100 well heads each extracting gas and sveral large factories either burning coal or manufacturing products from local mines.

Old Geisers visit Old Faithfull

On our visit to Yellowstone we were fortunate in seeing Old Faithfull give its display. There would have been 1000 people there to witness the spectacular geiser. The car park was almost full and this is the sholder season. It must be very busy mid summer.