Boys will be boys.
It didn't take long to figure out that our Donovan family get-aways invariably involve motorcycles. The drill is always the same: we land at the airport, check into our rental house, and then the boys make a bee line for the closest Harley-Davidson shop to rent bikes and commence the pillaging and plundering.
Our all-time best bike event was the 2006 Grand Canyon trip. Four days of grit-in-your-teeth, saddle sore riding from Vegas to the south rim of the Canyon and back. We flew into Las Vegas from our respective corners of the country on October 5th of 2006 and met up at the Tropicana Hotel. The next morning we picked up two Ultra Classics, a Softail and a Low Rider at Las Vegas Harley-Davidson and headed south to the Colorado River at Laughlin to old Route 66 for the first leg of the ride into the Arizona mountains.
We stopped at Oatman, AZ for lunch. Oatman is an old gold-mining town in the foothills west of Sitgreaves Pass. It has two claims to fame. Clark Gable and Carol Lombard honeymooned at the Oatman Hotel in March of 1939. Because that's not enough fame for one town, they decided to add to the attraction by turning the mining burros loose when they closed the mines. Burros freely roam the streets to this day creating excitement for the tourists and moving hazards for bikers.
After leaving Oatman, we navigated the narrow switchbacks to the peak at Sitgreaves Pass with its breathtaking views of the valley extending east toward the Grand Canyon. We hopped off the bikes to take in the view and then threaded our way down more switchbacks to the valley below, stopping at an old Route 66 filling station to take a break.
We headed east across the valley with the sun setting at our backs and battled strong crosswinds on the final leg of our first day's ride into Williams, AZ. Who knew a Motel 6 could be so inviting?! We slept like rocks and woke up refreshed (and a tad sore), ready to begin the short 60 mile run to the south rim of the Canyon.
John Wesley Powell said it best. "The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself." The place is utterly breathtaking.
We departed the Canyon late afternoon and rode through Kaibab national forest into Flagstaff where we stopped for the night. It took us a bit longer than planned because the boys could not resist the temptation to stop along the way at a place that advertised real live white buffalo - $5 a look. After pondering the situation for what seemed like hours, they decided that the value proposition was not enough to justify parting with five dollars apiece. We would pay dearly the next morning and the remainder of the ride for our failure to pay homage to the mystical white buffalo.
Daybreak in Flagstaff. We looked out our hotel windows to see the bikes covered with glistening frost. It was about 30 degrees and we had a long ride ahead of us into Oak Creek Canyon. Damn those white buffalo!
We considered the possibility of backtracking to the white bullalo tourist trap to make a peace offering. Discretion is the better part of valor, so we decided to "man up", don our leathers and endure the cold. We weren't disappointed. The ride down Oak Creek Canyon toward Red Rock Park into the Sedona Valley was spectacular. By the time we got to Red Rock, the leathers were off and we were riding in shirt sleeves.
From Sedona, the highway snaked its way up another mountain to a small town called Jerome. We stopped briefly to take in the view and then headed down the west side of the mountain toward the Prescott Valley. After a hot ride through the valley with a stop at an Indian outpost named Wikiup, we ended our third day at Kingman, AZ.
Day four got off to a bad start. Damn those white buffalo! The Hampton Inn apparently doesn't cater to many bikers. To show their appreciation, they accused us of taking a bed quilt. How, where or why we would stash an over-stuffed quilt on a Harley is a mystery to us, but that didn't disavow the Hampton Inn folks of their notion that bikers are surly thieves intent on wrapping themselves in flowered quilts instead of leather jackets!
We addressed the issue in a collegial, civil manner by riding off in a roar of thunder. In all the excitement, we decided there was no need to top off our gas tanks before leaving town. That proved to be a mistake. Damn those white buffalo!
The highway from Kingman to the Hoover Dam is a long, desolate stretch of road speckled with the occasional shack guarded by packs of howling dogs. There were no gas stations anywhere. Mid-way between Kingman and the Dam, we fell under the curse of the white buffalo once again. Our gas guage was hovering on "E". We pressed on at reduced speed to save fuel, and turned off the main highway at a sign for the Lake Mead Recreation Area. The winding road took us down to a small marina on the Colorado River, a few miles below the Hoover Dam. As good fortune would have it, the marina had a lone gas pump and we were good to go again.
Hoover Dam was the final stop on our journey before returning to Las Vagas. We stopped for several hours to marvel at the enormity of the Dam and take in the spectacular views of Lake Mead above the Dam and the Colorado River below. Finally, we were back on the bikes and exiting the parking lot on the Arizona side to start the ride over the top of the dam. Mid-way across the Dam, Mike stopped the bike so I could dismount and latch the lid on the luggage trunk. Before my feet hit the pavement, the Homeland Security Police were fast upon us, barking orders through a bull horn to get back on the bike and move off the Dam. Speaking of Dam, damn those white buffalo! I suppose the Police thought we were carrying explosives in our trunk. Little did they know, it was just bad buffalo karma!
Epilogue:
At the conclusion of the Grand Canyon ride, I did some buffalo research to satisfy my curiosity. The extremely rare white buffalo are considered to be sacred signs in several native American religions and have great spiritual importance in these cultures. Damn those Donovan boys! They should have paid the five bucks to keep the white buffalo happy!
