Where to go?

The heat is really getting to us, plus we stink, or at least I do 😉 .

Let me explain. Given the heat and the protective riding gear we wear we sweat a lot, I mean A LOT.  We wear a washable underlayer in our riding gear that get’s either hand washed or goes through regular laundry frequently.  Unfortunately, the ‘odor resistant’ material has long since lost its ability to resist. So, after only one use it already smells bad. On top of that, the outer protective riding gear is lined with synthetics that absorb the sweat, over and over again. Without being too graphic, we reek of that sour gym smell. You know it’s bad when you get too stinky for yourself. When we go into stores it’s like Moses parting the Red Sea – people make an aisle for us and flies go ga-ga. Not really but we are a bit self-conscious about it.

By going to Las Vegas we navigated ourselves into a corner. Heading south lies more desert in Arizona which is reporting record high temps, the western route leads through Death Valley National Park (120ºF) that we both want to see but again, not in those temps. Going north into Nevada is a big wasteland so after getting to Tonopah, NV we would need to go West into the California valley around Bishop, CA with temperatures also in the 100º’sF. We don’t really want to go to Yosemite because we think it’s too crowded. Further north lies eastern Oregon or Idaho a little further east – places we have been to already and had lots of ‘green radar’ (i.e. rain) forecast when we looked earlier.  None of the choices are very appealing. Yes, this trip was to visit places we’d been before to explore further (which we did) but it turns out it also gives us an ‘easy out’ for passing when conditions are not favorable. Overall, this is just the wrong time of the year to be in this part of the country.

We decided that what’s missing is the draw of something completely new to explore, places with reasonable temperatures that make camping and riding enjoyable. The heat forces us inside, into hotels, which is the last place we want to be. I have stayed too many nights in hotels for work to want to do so while on vacation.  Also, perhaps I wasn’t ambitious enough in terms of how far north we should go to explore. By staying in the UT, CO, NM, AZ area we have limited choices of things to explore that we haven’t seen before. We have worked off the list of  ‘to see places’ and ‘things to do’ and we are out of steam and debating what to do.

For now, we are heading back towards Utah’s higher elevations, namely Kanab.