I had to see my uncle in Baja in late May. I could’ve just flown out to San Diego and taken care of it that way, but I figured I had three weeks to play with…I may as well make it a road trip. So once again, I hopped on my big old pig of a bike, my BMW R1200 GSA, and pointed it west.
I had loose plans to see several friends and family members along the way. So I put a route together that would touch on Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, and a couple cities in Arizona. Because I had a limited time schedule, I couldn’t fit Lake Havasu and a couple other places into the route.
I left on the 9th of May with Little Rock, Arkansas as the day’s destination. It was 500 miles so in retrospect, I should’ve just ridden all the way to Oklahoma City. The second day was a quick 350-mile hop to my brother’s place in OKC where I spent a couple days enjoying the town.
From there, I rode another 500 miles over to Albuquerque and spent the evening with family members. The next day I pushed on to my friend Jon’s place near Prescott, Arizona... an easy but windy 400-mile ride. The next day I rode just a couple hours south to my friend Rudy’s house near Phoenix. The last two stops consisted of considerable amounts of alcohol. As a matter of fact, Rudy sent me off to San Diego with the breakfast of toast and three shots of tequila.
I spent four days in the San Diego area visiting with family and friends —and doing a little bit of business down in Ensenada.
For my return trip, I had planned to ride directly east along interstates 8 and 10 until I reached Van Horn, Texas, where I was going to ride northeast through Wichita Falls to interstate 40. However, while discussing my route plans, my buddy Doug in Phoenix asked if I wanted some company and said he would ride with me as far as Albuquerque. He took a couple days off of work and I planned a route through Indian country.
Fortuitously, the Apache Trail had just been reopened after wildfires and mudslides had closed it four years ago. The Apache Trail is a cool little road —22 miles of which is unpaved —that stretches from Apache Junction, east of Phoenix, over to Roosevelt Dam near Globe, Arizona.
We left Doug’s house on May 22nd and headed into Indian country, comprised of several Native American reservations. We stopped for a cold one and a bite to eat at Tortilla Flat—a cool little ghost town—along the way. We passed through several small towns, like Concho and Show Low, along the way. That night we stayed at a little place on the Zuni reservation just across the border in New Mexico. That was an easy and very enjoyable 400 miles.
The next day we headed north to the little town of Mexican Water on the Utah border. If you haven’t seen that part of the country, it’s extremely scenic… just spectacular mesas and rock formations that appear to have been built and painted by the gods. It was a long hot day and it took us about nine hours to reach our hotel just north of Albuquerque. We put on a lot of miles through some beautiful country and were beat.
The next morning Doug and I parted ways… me going east and he heading back west.
I reached my brother’s place in OKC by early afternoon. Though I wanted to celebrate a bit, I had an early morning the next day.
On the morning of the 25th, I saddled up and headed home. I was receiving tornado warnings and thunderstorm watches throughout the day. However, the weather could not have been better with blue skies and white clouds. The freeways were wide open due to the Memorial Day holiday so I never even touched the brakes.
I reached home 30 minutes before dark after riding 830 miles in almost exactly 12 hours.
It was a perfect ending to a really, really nice ride.
And the memories of spending time with my friends and family along the way…priceless.
