Conquering the Canyons

On the road in Red Rock Country with AMA Tours

Story & photos by Frank Covucci

I think it was Yogi Berra who once advised, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Good advice no matter where you are, but particularly here, 40 miles from nowhere on the edge of the Navajo Indian Reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

Sure, we could go straight on Utah Route 95 heading north out of the wide spot in the road called Blanding toward Hanksville. We'd probably save a few good hours, too.

But when you're traveling by motorcycle, saving a few hours is seldom the point. And for those of us on the AMA's Conquer the Canyons Tour through some of the most breathtaking scenery the country has to offer, schedules are exactly what we're trying to forget.

So with a nod to Yogi, I turn the Harley left onto Utah Route 276 and roll through fast sweepers between high canyon walls on the way to Halls Crossing on the south shore of Lake Powell. The route leads to a ferry that crosses one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. But first, we make a stop at a man-made relic from another era.

I spot the familiar landmarks, and we pull to the shoulder of the road and park the bikes. The only noise is the wind as we hike a short way through desert scrub to the base of a cliff. Then we see it: the unmarked ruin of an ancient Anasazi cliff dwelling.

It's eerie back here. Once the bikes disappear from view, there's not a single reminder that this is the 21st century. Looking closely at the remains of those ancient dwellings, we see individual finger marks made by hands that worked the adobe mortar. This place is 1,000 to 2,000 years old, but the marks still look fresh.

We spend a few moments pondering that enormous span of time, and the tiny portion of it we occupy. Finally, we trek back to the road. We'd gone from modern machines to an age before Columbus and back in a mere 15 minutes.

Just one small wonder amid hundreds we'll see in the 11-day tour.

We had gotten our start two days earlier in Phoenix, where we collected the tour's 28 riders, all AMA members and many of them veterans of previous AMA Tours. We hit the road in the morning, after a relaxing get-acquainted dinner at our resort.

Climbing out of the Valley of the Sun, we put the city in our rear view mirrors and push east and north into the Mescal and Sierra Ancha mountains.

A few hours later, we reach the little-known Salt River Canyon on the edge of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation along U.S. Route 60. This massive crack in the earth's crust drops 2,000 feet to the Salt River, and a nine-mile ride along a narrow, winding road takes you down one side and up the other. The views are magnificent, and it's easy to see how the Apaches used the canyon to hide from the U.S. Cavalry in the 1800s.

The canyons

Heading north, we enter the heart of the Four Corners region, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah come together at a single point. The roads pass through mile after mile of scenery right out of a John Ford western. It's hard not to feel insignificant in wide-open country like this. At one point, we pull to the side of the road and spend a quiet half-hour drinking in the scenery.

We again find civilization, such as it is out here, in Holbrook, a town once called "too rough for women and churches." This was a stopping point along both the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad line and historic Route 66. One of the town's claims to fame was a massive gunfight between cattle rustlers and lawmen in 1887.

Newer history can be found at the Wigwam Motel along Route 66, where giant stucco teepees serve as rooms. Not your speed? Then how about the Bucket of Blood Saloon, which was suitably rowdy back in the day and is now a bona fide tourist attraction?

Then there's the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert just out of town, where you can walk through a 225 million-year-old forest that has turned to stone.

Ride farther north into the Navajo and Hopi nations, as we did the next morning, and it's clear that the culture here has one foot in the present and one in the past.

On Navajo land near Ganado is the famous Hubbell Trading Post, established in 1878. Inside are hundreds of frontier artifacts, from rifles and saddles to jewelry that dates back to the 1700s. In one room, perched quietly at a weaving loom, a gray-haired Navajo woman works steadily on a classic Navajo rug, almost as if in a trance, while hypnotic flute music flows from a stereo.

From there, it's a beautiful ride to and through the majesty of Monument Valley, where you can easily imagine wagon-train crossings, thanks to millions of movie images in our collective memories. The view is so wide that no matter how fast you travel, the scenery changes only at its own pace. By the time we pull into our hotel in Bluff, Utah, we're in a contemplative mood.

The landscape just seems to do that to you.

Time may wait for no man, but luckily the ferry is waiting for us when we get to Halls Crossing on Lake Powell the next day.

Even with the stop at the Anasazi ruins, we reach the boat in time to roll aboard, park the bikes and marvel at how much water you can put in one place by flooding the 500-foot-deep Glen Canyon (As it turns out, enough to water about half of the Southwest, with a little left to fight about).

Then we're back on the road at Bullfrog Point, heading for Hanksville and points west. We're trying to make up time in the late afternoon, but when we get to Capitol Reef National Park, we realize there's no need to rush. As it turns out, late afternoon is the perfect time to roll through. Sunset turns the red-rock desert absolutely crimson. Welcome to Mars.

You'd think that after a few days, such otherworldly terrain would seem commonplace, but somehow, it keeps getting better.

Pulling out of our lodge the next day, our ride takes us to more of the same: the aptly named Kodachrome Basin State Park, followed by a high climb among the unearthly pink and white "hoodoo" spires of Bryce Canyon National Park, and finally a journey through the heart of indescribable Zion National Park.

It also includes one of the tastiest roads anywhere, Utah Route 12. This undulating piece of asphalt nirvana makes quite a few top-10 motorcycle-road lists, and it's easy to see why. Climbing through winding curves and dropping through fast valleys, the fun peaks when you get to the well-known "hogsback" section. You ride down the spine of a mountain ridge, with steep drop-offs on either side. Afraid of heights? Just focus on the pavement.

"Sometimes, I have to remind myself to look up once in a while," says the friendly clerk at our lodge in Zion.

She's right. The town is wedged among some of the most formidable canyon ramparts we've ever seen. If you don't make a conscious effort to look up, you could go all day and never glimpse the sky.

But we want a better view of the Zion area, which is, after all, named after the biblical promised land. So we head to Kolob Road, a little-traveled piece of pavement that climbs quickly out of the narrow valley and deposits us atop the canyon walls.

To say that the view is gorgeous from on high simply doesn't do it justice. We kill the motors and just sit, drinking it all in. We appreciate the view all the more because we know that the scenery will change drastically later.

How drastically? We go from ultimate isolation and natural beauty across the narrow end of Nevada and straight into the neon lights of Las Vegas, the perfect place for a two-night layover and some day-rides.

It's quite a place. While the well-known shows, casinos and even the famous "Hard Hat Tour" of nearby Hoover Dam offer a varied slate of diversions for an extra day we've planned in Vegas, we're glad once again to hit the road. Back in familiar surroundings aboard the Electra Glide, I aim the big twin toward a great original section of Route 66, straight south in Arizona.

This famous Chicago-to-Los Angeles route predates what we now know as Las Vegas by a couple of decades, but it seems almost purposely built to bypass the piece of desert wasteland that eventually became Sin City. We blast down U.S. Route 95, turn east on Interstate 40 in Needles, California, then go to the first exit in Arizona at Topock.

In no time, we're getting our kicks on Route 66, heading northeast toward Kingman, Arizona, over Sitgreaves Pass.

It's an amazing old section of pavement. Steep and full of tight curves, it was the most treacherous section of the Mother Road, often leaving drivers of heavily loaded trucks and even cars with a serious case of white-knuckle fever.

Us, too. It's a balancing act threading the big Harley between the rock wall on one side and the drop-off on the other. At least the views, when you have the time to look up from the road, are tremendous.

By the time we reach Seligman, I have a definite respect for the drivers who negotiated this same road, in much harsher conditions, with more primitive vehicles all those years ago.

At Williams, we turn north to head to the Grand Canyon. Over two days here, I realize the real problem with touring the American Southwest. The attractions are so jaw-dropping that it's hard to keep this one from pushing the last one out of your mind. After more than a week on the road, I've seen so much that I've run out of memory to store any more.

I come to this conclusion as I kick back on the deck of our hotel with the other riders on the tour, looking out over the rim of the canyon, soaking in yet another amazing sunset after yet another perfect day of riding in the coolest place on Earth.

If only it didn't have to end.