Day 2 - Page, AZ to Globe, AZ

510 miles.  5 stamps.

I actually got on the road a bit early - 6:40 am.  This is a rarity, I am usually late in the morning.  The Weather Channel claimed it was 41 outside.  And it sure felt like 41.  I was fully bundled up.  I headed eastward out of Page on AZ-98.  I passed a huge coal-fired power plant that had an electric railway leading up to it.  I was under a huge black cloud, but I could see clear skies to the east.  After what seemed like forever, I finally did get out from under the cloud and into the sunshine.  Eventually I arrived at US-160 and turned east.  The other end of the electric railway is there.  The highway passed under a conveyor belt that came down from the hills, carrying coal that fed a coaling tower.  From there, the coal went by railway to the power plant.  I turned north to get to Navajo National Monument.  Navajo NM is at 7,000'.  It snowed a bit the night before, but the bright sunshine was melting it away rapidly.  The Indian here had built their homes in such a beautiful location.  You can't see much from the visitor center, though.  I got my stamp, stopped at an overlook for a picture, and then left.  Although the Navajo Nation observes daylight savings time, the rest of Arizona does not.  The National Parks and Monuments within the Navajo lands also are on daylight time.  I didn't bother changing the GPS time offset or my watch, since by the afternoon I would be back in Mountain Standard Time.

Continuing east, I saw a billboard claiming that Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de Shay) was 1 hour away via Indian-59.  Streets and Trips had originally suggested this highway, but I had changed the route to avoid it after looking at the AAA map that had part of the highway as gravel.  It turns out that it had been recently paved.  It was really smooth and a blast to ride.  Canyon de Chelly NM has a good number of Indian ruins, but you need to pay an Indian guide to really get close to any.  I stopped at the visitor center, checked out the exhibits, and continued south on US-191.

Soon I got to Hubbell Trading Post NHS.  This is the oldest operating trading post.  They still sell goods in the store.  I bought some Beef Jerky and had lunch there.

After the lunch break, I followed US-191 south to I-40.  The turned west and went to Petrified Forest National Park.  I had been here before and I had taken the road through the park.  I decided to skip traveling through the park, which can be slow, and just got my stamp at the VC which is just off of the freeway.  The stamper was broken, the '8' was missing.  So I did what the previous person to use the stamper did and stamped my booklet with April 19 instead.

I continued west to Holbrook and then got off the freeway to follow old US-66 for a brief bit.  I then headed south on AZ-77.  The road went through a high plateau and some forested areas.  Soon I got to Show Low.  Here I took US-60, which was Deuce of Clubs Bl, east toward Globe, where I had reservations at a Super 8.

Now for a brief bit about speed limits in AZ.  As I mentioned before, most of the 2 lane highways are 65mph.  55mph was the limit for a few areas.  Whenever you were in a town, it generally was 45 or 35.  Also at highway intersections, the limit would be 55 or 45.  It you were coming up to a stop sign, perhaps at a T inersection, the speed limits would drop in steps as you got closer.  Well here in the middle of nowhere, suddenly the speed limit dropped to 45.  Checking the GPS, I see that the road was a squiggly line.  Sure enough, the highway does a spectacular drop down about 1,000' to cross the Salt River and back up the other side.  A lot of the turns were marked as 40 or less.  On a bike, it is quite irritating to follow a car (aka a cage) through an area like this.  When you brake and accelerate and the speed that you can corner at is all different.  So I applied the typical Southern California sport bike mountain riding technique of passing when it was safe.  On the bike, I had no problem doing a bit faster than posted around those 40mph curves.  I usually try to stay within 5-10 mph over the limit max (unless I had a pace car in front of me willing to go faster, which was fairly often - many in AZ seem to go 80-85 all of the time on the open highways).  In CA, they would have just left the limit at 55 and heavily marked the suggested speed for the turns, instead of trying to slow everyone down between the turns.

I finally got to Globe, a good 3 hours ahead of schedule.  So I checked into the Super 8 (a real nice motel - the one in Page was minimal, not even any free shampoo - this one had a continental breakfast, coffee in the room, shampoo, skin lotion, an iron and and ironing board), and I took off my tailbag, removed a layer of clothing, and left for Tonto NM.  I got to Tonto NM at 4:00.  I had plenty of time, so I went up the 1/2 mile path to the lower ruins.  This path also had an elevation gain of 350', so it was fairly steep.  The view from the ruins towards the Salt River valley and Roosevelt Lake was great.  Unfortunately, I left the camera at the motel.

I made it back to Globe at 5:20.  I had spent 7 hours and 42 minutes on the Rex, and about 3 hours at 5 gas stops and 5 parks.  I got some water at a mini mart, and walked around town, eating at a Chinese buffet, which was excellent.  Sometime around 8:00, some rain clouds did come through, giving the bike a good washing.  They were gone by the morning.

On to Day 3