I had tools in my tailbag, brought specifically for trailside repairs and maintenance.  I got out the allen wrenches.  "Looks like a 6 mil," says Rich, and I passed him the appropriate wrench.  "Too big."  Must be a five then.  I hand it to him.  "Too small," says Rich.  What the hell?  Leave it to Triumph to use some totally off-the-freaking-wall size.  I've had the handlebars off before, but must have used an SAE size that just happened to be close to the real deal.  Believe it or not, I actually have a 5.5 mm allen wrench in the new Craftsman set that I had bought just for this trip.  I hand it to Rich and his verdict is "Just right."  Good grief.  Between the Torx bits and the umpteen different size nuts, allens, and other fasteners, the Tiger can be a real pain in the ass to work on.

Since I'd made a mark to show where my bars lined up whenever I'd removed them to work on the forks, rotating them back into proper position is a snap.  We tighten everything up and the Tiger's ready to rock-n-roll again.  About this time, Chris returns. "Where you guys been?" he asks.  The story is retold and I'm chastised for not taking a picture of the bike in repose.  Oh well.  At least I had protected the Ritz crackers -- none of them were broken!

Rich making repairs to his fender, basically removing the lower portion.

I thought this pock-marked boulder was pretty cool looking.
It's about the size of your sofa.

Look close and you'll spot one of the guys and his motorcycle across the way.

Rich and Chris with storm clouds looming ominously behind them.

Lovely shot of the storms rolling around in the canyons.  (Photo by Chris.)

Tiger after going down in the sand.  Damage report: one broken turn
signal and some scratches to the fairing and tank.  Nothing I couldn't live with;
this is, after all, what I bought the bike for.

Despite the fact that it was raining, we pressed on a bit and then stopped for lunch overlooking the Green River.  There were canoeists below, their canoes loaded with camping gear.  Chris shouted down to ask them how long they were to be out on the river.  Ten days.  Awesome!

Chris's sausage was yummy.  I also had some Nutter Butter cookies.  Remember those?  ("May I have another Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie, please?")  I recently rediscovered them.  Great way to relive your childhood. Your tastebuds remember all kinds of things that you've forgotten.

While we were gearing back up after lunch, a conga-line of mountain bikers came down the trail from the opposite direction.  They just kept coming and coming.  There were a number of cute females, rumps working overtime in their spandex drawers, but I couldn't bring myself to work that hard no matter how many sweetly curved female bottoms I'd get to ride behind.  We smiled and waved as these fitness junkies peddled past, sitting there with our engines running, thinking there would surely come an end to them and we should let them get by first.  But there seemed to be no end in sight.  Finally, we motored out on the trail anyway.

Rich overlooking the Green River.

Tiger and the Green River.

The next serious part of the White Rim Trail -- and probably the most technical and dangerous section -- is the Murphy Hogback.  This is a very nasty series of switchbacks with, heck, I dunno, a 25-35% grade in places?  To make matters worse, the trail up is littered with rocks of every shape and size, generally clustered between the two wheel tracks.  Once you've chosen a track, you're more or less committed to staying there -- at least the switchbacks on the Shafer Trail were clear.  And the Hogback puts you truly right on the edge.  There aren't six inches between you and a sheer drop off in many places.  Chose the outside track and you don't dare look anywhere other than the road in front of you.  Chose the inside track and you've got to be careful you don't smack against the canyon wall, as it is also just that close.

Rich went up first and I followed pretty close.  Chris brought up the rear.  Their plan was to sandwich me in between, so that one of them might be in a position to help me if I had trouble -- or, at the very least, know where I went off at.  There was one place where I lost control for a second, jumped tracks, and got all out of whack as the bike hopped the rocks.  I got it back under control, then saw Rich -- just ahead of me -- disappear over a rise.  Just before he vanished completely from view, I saw his helmet turn to the right. This was the only clue I had that just over that rise, the trail hooked a sharp right turn.  I was in the outside track and as I made the turn, I was right there on the edge, tires not more than a foot from several hundred feet of open air and a very unhappy landing.  Don't look down!  I did and still managed to skate through the turn.  Any faster and it would have been a very difficult turn to make.  I was glad I wasn't leading.  At least I could hope to hear Rich's "Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttt!" as he plunged to his death and thereby avoid his fate.

Coming out on top of the Murphy Canyon rim, Tiger howling at about 6,000 rpm in 1st gear, I found about 30 mountain bikers sitting on boulders.  They'd watched our ascent.  "Nothing like having an audience!" I shouted to them as I motored past.  While Rich and I waited on Chris, several of the bicyclists came over to check out the Tiger.  "What kinda bike is that?" they asked.  "Are Triumphs still plagued with electrical problems?"  (I should have told them they have a tendency to blow out the front right turn signal.  LOL.)

Sorry, no pictures from the Hogback.  Like I said before, when the riding got serious, we were too busy to take out our cameras.  As we motored out of that area, I wondered about what would have happened if we'd met someone coming down as we were going up.  Even the mountain bikers could have presented a problem, but we'd have really been in trouble if we'd come around a corner to find an SUV in our path.  There's absolutely no room in which to pass another vehicle on the Hogback.

Looking back to see if Chris is coming.  (Photo by Rich.)

Rich coming down the trail.  (Gotta look close.)

There he is.

Here the trail led away from the river through the Soda Springs Basin (I'm looking at my map again as I write this) to the north, then turned west again to follow the rim overlooking the river and into the Holeman Springs Basin.  Hours ticked by.  Rain fell.  At some point, probably in that area known as Potato Bottom, we encountered trees and other foliage and the trail deteriorated to mud.  It would only be later that I'd remember someone saying, "You shouldn't have too much trouble getting your Tiger over the White Rim Trail ... as long as it doesn't rain and turn to mud."  Don't know why I had totally forgotten that.  Can't remember now who said it, probably one of the guys we rode with in Arkansas.

Anyway, I wasn't afraid of the mud.  I thought Arkansas had trained me pretty well.

Unfortunately, they grow a different kind of mud in Utah.

Rich was leading.  I was following close behind.  He hit a section where there were two wheel tracks holding water.  Rich shot his little 250 down the middle, avoiding the water.  I saw his track and considered it, but feared that the heavy Tiger would never slip through those two tracks.  I'd slide down into one or the other and wind up sideways on the trail.  "There should be solid ground under the water," I thought, and steered for one of the puddles, maintaining my speed ("Momentum will see you through!").

The rear end of the Tiger kicked right.  I levered the bars in an attempt to straighten it out.  The rear end retaliated by kicking left.  The back tire decided it wanted to lead the way.  "No you don't!" I growled and in my attempt to swing the bike back straight, the front end washed out and -- Plop! -- down I went in the mud, sliding a good 15 to 20 feet through stuff that had the consistency of camel snot or the vaginal discharge from Jabba the Hut's mother-in-law.  I came down pretty hard on my left side, giving my shoulder and hip a good whammy.  "I'm getting too old for this shit" was my first thought.  "Get the bike up" was my second. Chris, who'd been behind me, sees me heaving on the bike and yells at me to wait and he'll help.  Naturally, he took a picture first.

Rich, having witnessed the catastrophe in his mirrors, stopped and walked back ... making sure to get a picture from that viewpoint.

This is what true adventure riders do for friends, you see ... take pictures of your embarrassing moments.

Tiger Down!  Tiger Down!  (Photo by Chris.)

And naturally Rich had to double back and get a pic of his own.  Why is
it that the mud never looks as bad as it really is?  I know every time I'm
reading someone else's ride report and I see a bike on the ground, I always
scratch my head and wonder, "What exactly made that hooplehead lose it there?
Doesn't look bad at all."  Trust me, the mud here was as slippery as a
snail's rectum.  (Photo by Rich.)

Chris and I got the bike vertical -- not an easy task in the mud.  Not only were we slipping and sliding, but the bike was trying to slide away from us rather than stand up.  We walked it through the next nasty patch of mud, just to be safe and to find some solid ground that would support the kickstand.

Damage assessment: more scratches on the crash guard on that side and one bent shift lever.  The Tiger's shift lever is aluminum, which has a tendency to break when bent back and forth.  I carefully bent it back far enough to at least get it to shift gears.  It wasn't good enough that I could get my foot under it and kick it up properly, but I could shift with my heel for a while.  We then went through a major hassle trying to get the bike to start.  For reasons that'll become obvious later, I'll not go into those procedures now.  Suffice to say that the bike definitely did not want to start -- a repeat of what had happened when it was dropped in Arkansas.  It took an hour or so to get it running, after which it smoked like the mosquito fogger truck that used to drive through our neighborhood in Mississippi when I was a kid.

Both the bike and I were plastered in red slime.

I was whupped.

From here there were two more difficult stretches (after getting through that muddy section).  I may have the actual sequence here mixed up.  I was tired and ready to be sitting in my hot tub at home.  There was one section of really deep sand.  I stayed on the gas and went through this area much faster than I was really comfortable with, hot on Rich's heels.  At one point, the trail dipped down into a hollow with steep banks on either side -- the trail was cut down maybe 6 or 8 feet -- and dropped through a bisecting wash that was nothing but deep white sand.  Flying through this area, heavy on the gas because I knew the Tiger was gonna bog down and go down if I didn't maintain my speed, I saw a flash of color out of the corner of my eye.  There was someone sitting there against the bank, just off the main trail, in the perpendicular wash.  Buddy, I am glad you didn't step out to see what monster was coming down the trail behind the little green KLR250, 'cause me and the Tiger would have damn sure run your ass into the ground.  No way I could have missed him or stopped in time.  Chris, who got a better look at the guy, said it was an old guy who appeared to have been on the trail for a month or more, loaded down with all his gear in a backpack.

After that came one last set of switchbacks climbing up out of the canyons.  These were steep and tight -- though not quite so bad as the Hogback -- and floored with the same red mud as that Tiger-crunching section which had recently become my least favorite part of the ride.  Someone had come through here earlier in a four-wheeled vehicle when the trail had been wet, and we could see where he'd done a fair amount of slipping and sliding.  The vehicle's tire tracks were embossed in the still damp mud, 3 to 6 inches deep.  It looked slippery and I thought at first that I was about to be in some serious doggy-do, but fortunately these switchbacks had a southern exposure and had been simmering in the sun long enough to mostly dry out.  If that stretch had been wet, if it had still been raining, the Tiger and I would have had some serious problems.  Even the smaller bikes would have hard a very difficult time of it.

Final steep switchbacks leading up out of the canyons.  Had these been wet,
I think we would have had a difficult time of it, especially me on the Tiger.
(Photo by Rich.)

Soon we were out of the park boundaries and I thought, "Great!  Pavement can't be too far ahead."  Like I said, I was beat.  Unfortunately, I was wrong, wrong, wrong, with a capital fucking W.

Mineral Bottom Road, also known as Horsethief Trail, on some maps marked as just Mineral Road, in my DeLorme Gazetteer marked as both Rim Rock Lane and Mineral Canyon Road ... whatever the hell you want to call it ... I hope to NEVER see that 13 miles of Purgatory again in my friggin' lifetime.  It was wet.  Whatever its surface is composed of, it makes Vaseline Petroleum Jelly look wimpy on the slippery scale.  I saw Chris go through one section.  His DRZ did the jig, rear tire slipping back and forth.  Oh crap, I thought, here we go again.  If Chris's bike is slipping ...

I slowed way the hell down.  First gear.  Just the slightest bit of throttle, enough so that the bike wouldn't stall.  I fucking EASED into that mud.  And the Tiger went all sideways on me.  Where'd my knobbies go?  I must be on racing slicks.  Who swapped my friggin' tires when I wasn't looking?  I had no traction.  The bike slewed right.  The bike slewed left.  I was suddenly staring at the ditch and had no choice but to apply the brakes.  As soon as I touched them, the front end washed out and I plowed into the mud.

Rich stopped behind me, short of the nastiness.  Chris got off and came back to help.  The fact that this "bike down business" just wasn't fun any more was obvious by the way nobody bothered to snap a picture (plus we wanted to get the bike up as soon as possible so that it wouldn't take another hour to get it restarted).

All three of us heaved on the bike in an effort to get it out of the mud.  The damn thing just slid away from us.  We couldn't get our footing.  We heaved.  We cussed.  The bike slipped away in the mud.  I cussed some more.  I just wanted to sit by the side of the road and cry because I was so damned frustrated at having gone down again after trying my absolute level best to stay vertical.  There was absolutely nothing else I could have done in that mess short of getting off the bike and trying to walk it through the mire.  And now we couldn't even get the damn thing picked up ... with THREE of us heaving on it!

"It's heading for the ditch.  We gotta move it away, maybe where the ground's a bit more solid," Chris said, so we grabbed the bike and DRAGGED the damn thing on its side through the mud.  No motorcycle should be subjected to such indignity and abuse!

Finally, we heaved and the Tiger stood up.  I punched the starter button and, miracle of miracles, it fired right up.  Rich snapped a photo while I gave him the "You're Number One" sign.

"Please get me the hell out of here," I told the guys.  "I miss the pavement."

By this time I was no longer laughing.  This was after it took all
three of us to get the bike back on its feet.  (Photo by Rich.)

The pavement, of course, was still something like 10 miles away.  10 miles of slippery mud.  10 miles in first gear, crawling along, nerves shot, white-knuckle on the handlebars, completely worn out from 10 hours of trail riding.  Eventually, we made it, though ... without another incident, thank the motorcycle gods.  At the junction of Mineral Bottom Road and Highway 313, Chris asked if I wanted to get off and kiss the pavement.  Yeah, I did feel that way.

We blazed on back to Moab, me shifting gears with the heel of my boot since my shift lever was twisted up in a bizarre position.

End of the day, back at Slickrock Campground.  A very dirty Tiger.
There's very little of the bike not covered in mud.  (Photo by Rich.)

At the campground, I used a water hose behind the office to spray myself off.  Some dweeb with his mountain bike comes up and wants to wash his bike off.  The bike looked perfectly clean to me.  He stands there impatiently, tapping his foot, looking exasperated that I'm monopolizing the hose.  His damn bicycle isn't even dirty.  "You want to see dirty," I tell him, "go check out my motorcycle parked in front of cabin 14."  He frowns and goes into the office, either to complain about me or buy some wax so his bicycle will shine nice and purty.  Fuckwad.

Eventually, most of the mud is running in the gutter instead of clinging to my clothes.  When I get back to the cabin, however, the guys laugh and point out that I didn't get my rump.  It looks like I sat on a cow patty.

Chris and Rich decide they're heading into town for dinner and the internet.  I'm so beat after more than ten hours offroad that I can care less about dinner and the last thing I feel like doing is watching Rich check his email, so I tell them to go ahead without me.  While they're gone, I take a shower and a nap and eat some of the snacks I'd brought for dinner.  I feel totally defeated.  Fuck this dualsport riding!  Give me back my ZZR and some twisties!  It's mean to say, but I'd feel better if at least one of the other guys had gone down at least once.  To the contrary, when I said something to Chris about "I saw you having a scary moment and slowed way the hell down..." (referring to his sliding around on Mineral Bottom Road just before I crashed), his immediate response was "I didn't have a scary moment!"  Bastard.  (Later, in the office back in OKC, I'll tell him that the least he could have done was ride over a hill out of sight and gently lay his bike on its side, then when I arrived pretend that he had crashed in order to make me feel better.  Ha!)

Worst of all, all those people who'd said, "That bike's too big to take over the White Rim Trail," had been proven right.

That night the campground filled up with huge 4x4 vehicles.  Four wheel independent steering.  Tires nearly as tall as I am.  Not just roll bars, but roll cages.  Rock climbers.  As they passed our cabin, they stared at my bike, encased in red mud, and scratched their heads.

As I fell asleep that night, the ghost movement of the bike beneath me taunted me by slipping and sliding away, and my muscles spasmed and twitched with the memory of falling.

Tuesday, 3 May, Moab to Cortez, CO.
    Mileage: 280 miles
    Rainfall: In freakin' buckets!
    Unexpected Encounters with Terra Firma: Thankfully, none.

The next morning, I rode the Tiger into town and found a carwash.  It took more than $4.00 worth of quarters to blast away all the mud, which had hardened to the consistency of concrete.  It looked like it was going to rain all day, plus I think Chris and Rich were pretty beat (same as me), so riding offroad wasn't even really discussed that morning.  Our original plans were to ride more trails that morning -- Gemini Bridges, maybe the La Sal Mountain Loop -- then head for home late in the afternoon.  Without a whole lot of discussion, however, we all started packing our gear.  Chris and Rich decided they would take the van and do some sightseeing before heading home.  They called and made hotel reservations in Gallup for that night.  After removing and rotating my twisted shift lever down so that it would be easier to shift gears, I decided to hit the road on the Tiger.  After doing the White Rim Trail, riding around to the overlooks in the van, like mere mortals do, just didn't appeal to me.

I separated my gear into what I needed for the ride home and what I was sending home with the guys in the van.  If I was smart, I'd have been loading my bike on the damn trailer beside theirs, but I was determined to put yesterday behind me and make the most of the trip.  Rain or not, I was going to have a nice leisurely ride home and see some sights on the way.  I cleaned and lubed the Tiger's chain, loaded up my gear, said goodbye to Chris and Rich, and hit the road.  I no sooner got heading south on 191, though, before the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down in buckets.  Oh well.  The bike was running just fine.  I was warm and dry in my gear.  This is adventure riding, and it's all good.

I took 191 south through Blanding and turned right on 95.  At some point I encountered some road construction.  About six 18-wheelers and a whole host of smaller vehicles were lined up waiting for the flag worker to wave them through.  I couldn't see anything coming from the other direction. Since it was absolutely pouring down rain, I decided I did not want to start out behind all those trucks, so I zipped around them and shot to the front of the line.  Some highway worker in a pickup truck got all upset and chased me down, pulling up beside me when I stopped at the front of the line.  He rolled down his window and proceeded to give me an ass-chewing, which I could only just barely hear through my helmet and the pouring rain.  "Stay right there!" he screamed.  "Don't go any further!"  As if he thought I was going to just cruise on past the flagperson and go merrily down the road.  Couldn't he figure out that I just didn't want to sit at the back of the line?  I told him to lighten up and not have a friggin' heart attack, that all I was doing was filtering to the front of the line so I wouldn't be stuck behind all those trucks.  I doubt he could hear me any better than I could hear him, though.  He shouted some more, his eyes all buggin' out of his skull, then squealed out of there in his truck.  The flag lady walked over and said something about waiting until she told me it was safe to continue, and I reassured her that I wasn't some loony who was about to fly off down the road.  I tried to explain to her about filtering to the front to avoid starting out behind that long line of slow traffic and trucks that would raise such a spray in the rain that I could hardly see and ... blah blah blah.  She didn't care.  Walked back to the side of the road and stood there with her flag.  Realizing maybe I'd made a mistake and people in Utah were an unforgiving lot, I avoided looking in my mirrors at the drivers behind me.  Some people really need to lighten up, though, ya know?

Five seconds later, the flag lady lowered her flag and said "Go ahead."  I shot off at a pretty good clip, but there was a red pickup truck behind me that obviously wanted to prove a point.  He tailgated me for several miles.  On the ZZR, on dry pavement, I'd have twisted the throttle and left him way behind.  The Tiger just ain't that fast ... and I was riding on knobby tires ... and the rain was still pouring down, with my visor foggin' up and everything else.  There was plenty of room to pass me, but this dick was riding my ass on purpose.  I pulled to the side and waved him by.  You made your point, asshole.  Then I stayed just far enough behind him to stay out of trouble and keep the semi behind me from riding up my ass.  Some days you just can't win, ya know?

Humming through the twisties on 95, I was kinda missing my sportbike, but the Tiger does just fine, even on the knobbies.  Each time I'd stop for gas or whatever, I'd check the Metzler Karoos, concerned about them lasting all the way back to OKC.  They were wearing just great.  I didn't anticipate any problems.  In fact, it looked like they might even have some wear left on them when I got home, rather than being bald as I'd originally predicted.  I'd been through this part of Utah before, but had never stopped at Natural Bridges National Monument, so that was my first planned destination of the morning.  Just as I was arriving, the clouds parted, the rain stopped, and the sun came out nice and bright.  Yeah!  Things are finally looking up for the bahmeister.

At the Ranger's Station, I flashed my park pass and got a map.  Then I cruised around and did all the overlooks and a wee bit of hiking.  Gorgeous place.  Amazing what a few million years and some running water can do.

Sipapu Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Kachina Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Owachomo Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Yours truly (self portrait).  Owachomo Bridge in the background.

From Natural Bridges, I grabbed 261 and headed south.  My next stop would be Valley of the Gods.  En route, it rained some more.  I also had to avoid a few road hazards.  Just over one hill I came across about a dozen cows meandering about the roadside.  "Moo," I said, and they just stared.  Around the next curve, I found snow on the road.  The Tiger took it all in stride.

"Hey, dude, why is your shift lever all bent out of shape?"  Smartass cow!

Mother Nature, I really don't know what it was that pissed you off, but please
lighten up already, okay?

Coming down Highway 261, I encountered something I'd heard of but hadn't yet seen for myself.  The Mokee Dugway.  Holy crap, was it always dirt or have they recently torn up the pavement so it could be redone?  This is a steep series of switchbacks, slippery mud with a wee bit of gravel, and naturally it was well-soaked that morning.  I tiptoed down with the bike in first gear, weaving back and forth across the road in search of the areas that sported some sparse gravel.  Any other day, I might have been pretty confident about this stretch of road, but after three get-offs the previous day, I wasn't taking any chances.  I finally reached the bottom, though, none the worse for the wear.

Just south of the Mokee Dugway is the turn for Valley of the Gods.  I paused and looked at the dirt road as it started raining on me again.  Don't they pave anything out here?  I was really low on gas anyway, so I decided to blast on down to the town of Mexican Hat and fill up before I did anything else.

Not a good time to fall asleep at the wheel...

The view coming down the Mokee Dugway.

Colorful mountains north of the town of Mexican Hat.  Reminds me of sand art.

The rock formation for which the town of Mexican Hat is
named.  Wonder if they have a plan in place to change the
name if that rock ever falls?  Maybe they've already gone up
and reinforced it with Crazy Glue or something?

At the gas station in Mexican Hat, I asked the Native American cashier about the road through Valley of the Gods.  She confirmed that it was dirt all the way.  "A good, solid dirt road," I asked, "or slippery, slimy mud?"  "It can get pretty bad when it's wet," she replied, adding that it had been raining there for a couple days.  I might be fine on it, but then again I might not.  If I went down, without Chris and Rich to help me, would I ever get the bike back up -- especially seeing as how it was loaded down with all my camping gear and stuff?  Valley of the Gods could wait for another trip.

I grabbed Highway 163 and turned the Tiger's nose east.  It rained some more, but I was enjoying the ride.  Through Bluff, then Montezuma Creek, then turning north at Aneth on a road that parallels McElmo Creek.  I'd picked this road off the map as an interesting route to Cortez, CO.  For once, my instincts were good.  This is a great road.  Lots of nice sweepers.  Very little traffic.  In my DeLorme Gazetteer, it's labeled as Ismay Trading Post Road coming out of Aneth, but I never saw a street sign to confirm this.  The only sign I saw indicated it as a road to Hovenweep National Monument, which is part of the reason I was heading that way -- until I discovered the road into Hovenweep was also mud and scratched it off my sightseeing list as well.  When this road crosses over into Colorado, it becomes simply "G Road."  Regardless, it's a nice road, twisting and twining along McElmo Creek with the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument to the north and Ute Mountain Indian Reservation to the south.  The banks of McElmo Creek are lined with farmland and ranchers' fields.  Quite scenic and just exactly what I needed after a frazzled day of trail riding.

Old ruins along McElmo Creek.

Old homestead on the banks of McElmo Creek.

Eventually, I hit Highway 666 (I refuse to use it's recent, more politically correct designation -- it will always be 666 to me) just south of Cortez.  A short jaunt north and then Highway 160 took me through Cortez.  Next stop: Mesa Verde National Park, where I planned to camp for the night.  The rain started again, though.  Worst rain I'd yet encountered.  It was only 4 in the afternoon, but it was black as night.  Cold, cold rain was just pouring out of the sky.

I turned into Mesa Verde and stopped at the Ranger's kiosk, digging for my parks pass yet again.  I didn't even get to hand the pass to the Ranger before he informed me -- having spotted my camping gear on the back of the bike -- that the campgrounds weren't open yet.  "You're kidding," I said, "I was planning to stay here for the night."  "It's too cold to camp," he informed me.  "Only if you're a wimp," I replied.  "Hell, it snowed here just the other day," he said, "the campgrounds aren't open for the season and I can't let you stay."  I debated making a run through the park anyway to see the sights, but I'd already been told by more than one person that you can't really see much at Mesa Verde without hiking around.  My plan had been to set up camp, then do some hiking if the weather improved.  The Ranger confirmed that I wouldn't see much if I didn't get off the bike.  "Still want to go in?" he asked.  I looked at the rain coming down in waves and put away my park pass.  "Guess I'll save it for the next time I'm out this way," I told him and asked where the nearest hotel was at.  He told me unless I wanted to ride all the way to Durango, the nearest hotels were back the way I'd come in Cortez, about 10 moles.

I wound up staying at a Day's Inn.  Fifty bucks for the room.  Grrrrrr.  Once I was settled in, the rain clouds moved on and the sun came out and it turned into a really nice evening.  I sat there on the step in the doorway of my hotel room, wishing I had gone ahead and done a bit more traveling for the day.