Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Day 12 - Get out of the road!

More about the title later, first I have to start with breakfast.

We walked across the street just after 7am to the Red Rock Restaurant. This was the same place we ate last night. Well I should have known something was up when the owner asked what we were doing up so early. Well their waitress hadn't come in yet and the owner's wife claimed not to be a waitress. That was a pretty good claim, but she did manage to bang her way through and got out everyone's order. This was the first breakfast where they flat out messed up my eggs. I asked for over-hard. They came out over-medium. I sent them back and they still weren't right when they came back.

With breakfast done we hit the road around 8am local time. We headed south on 95 down to 191. This part of the ride was beautiful and had some wonderful curves. Along this stretch of road I came up with the title for today. Doug was in the lead and I was following when a deer decided to run across the road between us. That doe seemed larger than life as she ran across the road in front of me. I had just enough time to reach for the front brake lever and start to squeeze. Luckily she kept running and cleared my path before I reached her. So get out of the road deer!

When we got to 191 we continued south looking for 262 east. After a fuel stop to check the map we headed down 191 and found 262. This was a reservation road and believe me, speeding wasn't a problem as the road is in poor shape. We rolled into Montezuma Creek and promptly lost 262 as the sign said it ended. We continued forward on the road until it turned to gravel, then turned around to go back into the little time. We decided to take 162 east which my map shows as 262.  This continued over to Colorado where the road became Colorado 41. Co-41 took us to 160 where we turned right and headed west to get over to Four Corners. Luckily Doug saw Four Corners before I did or we might have just ridden by it completely.

We stopped at Four Corners and Doug snapped a photo of me in all 4 states. We saw a sign for Fried Bread so we thought we might have found scones again. Close but not quite, it was more like funnel cake with honey on it. With the snack complete we geared up and headed out.

We resumed our trip west on 160 over to Mexican Water. We turned south onto 191. When 191 met up with 264 we headed east for a short distance and then continued south on 191. 191 met up with I-40 and we headed east for a few miles until 191 branched off and continued south. All of this was on reservation land until we got south of I-40. Once we got to Springerville we stopped for gas. There was even a quilt shop across the street but they were closed already so we couldn't get Laurie's fat-quarter that Doug has been looking for.

With full tanks, we continued the last 26 miles down to Alpine. When we'd go into a shady stretch you could feel the drop in temperature, when we'd reach a section with sunshine the temperature would rise again. We rolled into Alpine just before 4pm local time. We were greeted by a friendly innkeeper at the Sportman's Lodge. Turns out he's a BMW rider himself with an R1100RT and K75S. He gave us room 1 as it was on pavement and made parking easy.

Dinner was great at the Bear Wallow Cafe. It was just a short walk down the block and around the corner. It'll definitely be my choice for a meal when I stay here again. Breakfast in the morning will be there as well.

Today we travelled 481 miles. Travel time was just under 10 hours in total. We got to see varied landscapes from flat desert plains to small valleys. It was another great day, even with that pesky doe running across the road and the various farm animals the seemed to be on the roads as we road into little towns on the reservations. Tomorrow we should reach Van Horn, which will make getting home on Friday a reality.

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