We posed the motorcycles on the a flat rock just a few feet from the precipice and shot photos.
I scrambled out onto a rocky point and set up my iPhone to take a 30 minute time lapse movie of the canyon's shifting shadows. Back at the bikes we saw a half dozen people stroll by, a few asked if they could take pictures before we moved them to legitimate parking spots. A bit later an Australian man came running back to us with eyes as big as saucers and holding my iPhone. He sincerely believed the owner of the phone had fallen into the canyon! We shared a laugh and he apologized for ruining my little movie. But the story is far better than the video ever would have been.
Back at the lodge, we loaded up and checked out. We hit the road bound for Las Vegas.
By now we've become completely charmed by back roads. Interstate highways are truly a marvelous system for trucks, RVs and air conditioned cars, but not for motorcycles. Heavy trucks move a lot of air, so there is a buffeting behind them and a blast as you pass though the "bow shock" of high pressure piled up at their nose. On a bike, you feel curves and hills. On the interstate, the curves have been smoothed and the hills have been chiseled to gently sloping grades. Interstate highways also have a wide buffer strip of land between the shoulder and the fence line. on a bike, you smell the scents - good and bad - of the places you traverse. The buffer strip of land robs you of the perfume of spring blossoms and the stench of cattle feed lots. My favorite smell of this day was the pine scent of a forest of scrubby pinions as we cruised southward to the freeway.
At Seligman AZ we left the interstate and followed a 90 mile stretch of famed route 66 to Kingman. The town of Seligman has completely embraced its iconic thoroughfare with classic cars, diners, motels and tourist traps.
Along the road to Kingman there are several Burma Shave sequences of five sign poems.
At Kingman we shopped for the polarizing filter and good riding boots for Marty. The tall box shouldered store clerk at the Boot Barn could have played the wise older sheriff in any Western movie.
The ride northwest from Kingman was blazingly hot. Temperatures were over 100 degrees F and the thermometer on Marty's bike read 115.
We took the deluxe tour of the Hoover Dam. If nothing else, it offered immedite relief from the heat. We stood on top of a "pipe" big enough for two double deck buses to drive through. 56,000 gallons flowed under our feet each second at the pressure of the 400 foot deep lake. The flow caused the platform to hum under our feet. Next stop was the cavernous room where the big dynos generate electricity. Acres of terrazzo floor inlaid with native inspired art nuveau motifs ... and that looked as good as new. From there we went deep inside inspection tunnels inside the dam. The dams seeps ("You don't say the L word around her") a few hundred gallons a minute, this was anticipated and there are channels for collecting and harmlessly diverting it. The full two mile network of inspection tunnels is put to use annually and after earthquakes for comprehensive crack tests.
Hoover Dam from Nevada side
Vent from above
Same vent from inside
Inspection tunnel to vent
Camera outside vent, pointed up
New bridge viewed from vent
Descending to dam from Arizona side
We returned to the bikes and took the Canyon Road route to Las Vegas. If you haven't driven around it, Las Vegas has sprawled into a quite large city. I-215 is six lanes wide and buried in a trench. I worried about passing out from the heat and exhaust fumes and found I could not ride with my feet on the engine guard (a roll bar of sorts) because they let the heat of the engine rise straight upward to scorch my legs. Then things got worse. Traffic slowed to a crawl and we endured four miles of stop-and-go traffic. If you put me on a spit with an apple in my mouth, I could have been the guest of honor at a hog roast.
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