375 miles, 12 hours.

I didn't sleep well last night because I was WAY too cold again. It was difficult to toss and turn and try to sleep while I was that cold. Ugh. So I finally got up and on the road by 6:10am. I immediately stopped for gas so I wouldn't have to worry about finding a station later- that turned out to be a good choice, because there weren't many stations later on. Unfortunately, during the stop I lost my SPOT messenger. I've been holding it on with Dual Lock, as well as a lanyard through a d-ring on the bottom side of it. So for it to fall off, that means it has to come loose of the Dual Lock, AND the d-ring must fail.

So I rode a one-mile stretch for several laps looking for it. I finally found it on the side of the road, and it looks like it glanced off somebody's tire, which would explain how it ended off the road. It seems to work- the lights come on, though they look different than I remember, so I'm not 100% sure it is working. I'll know once I have internet access again and can see if it is leaving tracks.

It was a long ride from Ridgway to Moab. I had to traverse a 9000ft pass and an 8000ft pass, as well as riding through the high altitude basin between them. None of this is normally a problem, but I was riding through here right at sunrise, so it was very cold. Some of the parts of the ride were pretty, others were just ultra-high plateaus- straight and boring.

I got to Moab around 8:30. I've always wanted to ride in Moab, and my friend HMarc has said before that renting a bike is definitely the thing to do (rather than trying to take a heavy trailie bike onto that terrain). Tamara had a dirt bike rental lined up for me, so I checked in with them, and then got breakfast at a great little place. By the time I was done with breakfast, the rental shop was ready to go- I followed the rental truck (with my bike in the trailer) to the trailhead.

I spent 5 hours on the dirt bike, which was the very capable and hardcore Yamaha WR250F. It's sort of the cream of the crop of 250cc motocross bikes- it has beefy USD forks, plenty of travel, and plenty of power. Really, it's a fairly perfect bike for the terrain, as long as you aren't going on the roads. I never ran out of power or RPMs. When I first got on the WR250, I thought the steering was very twitchy. After the first hour I got used to it, but the short wheelbase and steep rake (steering angle) certainly mean it was twitchier than I'm used to on bigger bikes.

The terrain was varied. It ranged from slickrock (sandstone with perfect traction) to dirt, sand, very fluffy sand, washes, and everything in between. It wasn't unusual to go on 20 feet of slickrock, then 20 feet of fluffy sand, and then immediately be back on slickrock. The sand is never fun, but it was fairly easy on the WR250 because it is so light. I only fell once in the sand- in fact, I only fell once until the final hour of riding.

In the section I was riding, there's a large butte with a long section of sandstone-only trail. I was traversing the slickrock through there and suddenly came upon a newer Jeep that had rolled. There was a cooler sitting on the trail, so I figured things were fine, but I still hiked down to it and made sure nobody was trapped inside or under it. Nobody was there, so I took a break to take some pictures.

After a couple of minutes I saw the driver up on the butte- he hiked down and we chatted. He had some decent off-road experience but just traversed the slickrock wrong and rolled it. His phone didn't have coverage until the top of the butte- from there, he was able to get in touch with the Jeep rental company. They said they would send someone after him and the Jeep. So, we chatted for a while, then he told me there was no reason to wait for him there- so I went ahead and kept riding. I did come back to check on him later. By then other riders on quads had found him, though nobody with a large enough vehicle and a winch had come along yet.

Near the end of the day, I got in over my head by trying to follow a wash. There were parts of a trail, but not much. That's one of the problems with slickrock- you can't see where other riders have been unless someone spray-paints the trail line onto the rock. I followed the wash as it went downhill, including going down some 4 foot ledges. Finally I turned a corner and came across a 15 foot cataract drop.

There was no way I could surmount that much of a drop. It wasn't a 75 degree angle- it was actually a plunge that was over 90 degrees. No go. So, I turned the bike around and started climbing UP the ledges. That was beyond what I was capable of doing, but I didn't have a choice.

One of the ledges was particularly difficult- it was 5-6 feet at perhaps a 75 degree angle. I didn't trust myself to ride up it, since I knew I'd wheelie the bike and probably land on my head. So I stood next to the bike and tried to power it up the hill. That is incredibly difficult to do- you have to balance the bike, manipulate the clutch and throttle, and try to run up the slickrock at the same time as the bike. Eventually I could tell it wasn't going to work, so I decided to accelerate the bike up the ledge on its own, then go up and catch it.

That actually worked okay. The bike crashed fairly hard, but it made it about 90% of the way up the hill. I went up after it and then carefully pulled it up the rest of the way.

While I thought this was the last difficult place, I had forgotten that I detoured around a steep drop on my way in. I had to employ the same tactic to go up the detour, except this time there was some dirt to impede my traction, and I was incredibly hot and tired. Eventually I made it up the detour.

Even though I was exhausted and overheated, I decided to continue riding since there there wasn't any shade from the afternoon sun. I figured riding across the relatively flat slickrock would let me get some airflow without having to exert myself too much. I was so overheated that I almost threw up into my helmet, though.

While I didn't know how to get out from where I was, I knew I could follow the slickrock in the correct direction and eventually find one of the roads. That worked- I followed the roads out to the parking lot, then called the rental company and told them I was done for the day.

The process of "launching" the bike caused damage, which doesn't surprise me. I bent the bars, ripped a handguard, and bent the brake lever. The rental company charged me $80 for this damage- perfectly reasonable in my opinion, and I figure that is a cost of doing business. I mean, it is something that I factor into the cost of renting the bike, just as I wouldn't worry if I had damaged my own bike. Overall, I had a fantastic time on the bike. I really renting a bike like that was the right way to go.

After renting the bike and going back to Moab to pay for the damage, I rode north again to Arches National Park. It's certainly pretty, though it was full of tour buses, RVs, and retirees from Arizona and Florida.

I enjoyed riding through the park, but didn't want to deal with the traffic again by taking the main exit to the south. So I took the 18+ mile route out on the Salt Valley gravel road- certainly something the V-Strom is capable of handling.

The next section of the trip was transit on the highway, freeway, and highway to go to Capitol Reef National Park. I didn't stop in the park except for photos- I had seen plenty of red sandstone by this point, and I was tired.

I camped for the night in Torrey. It's a cute little campground to the west end of town with some nice showers and a decent price.