Las Vegas Hoover Dam and Zion National Park

9 a.m. start today, whilst kitting up we met a Canadian gentleman who was touring the western parks of the US and he had been to Zion the day before and told us that Zion was closed for road works every day until 4 p.m., plan B was then to add in a visit to the Hoover dam.

Leaving Vegas


So out of Vegas and 15 miles later we are sat in a line of cars waiting to get into the Dam area and as we weren’t sure how long the wait would be, we used our bikers prerogative which was that we were queuing in the ‘in” road to the Dam and as it was early and we hadn’t seen any traffic coming out then we designated the “out’ lane to be our “in” lane and as 11 bikes flew passed all the waiting cars, they don’t like filtering / queue jumping here, horns and abuse a plenty.

The white line around the dam above the water is where the water level used to be, there is apparently a great shortage of water here and it is getting worse every year.
The Dam sits in 2 states Arizona and Nevada and has the poshest toilet I have ever seen.










Out of the Dam and into Lake Mead, but the best was yet to come, suddenly the landscape started to get colour, not just the brown dusty scrubby colours that we had been seeing in California, now the colours were red and orange and light sandy brown and of course the obligatory description of big / vast. The other thing was the textures and shapes that erosion had made to the rocks here.

Did I mention that it was hot, only 40 degrees today, it dropped to 35 at about 5 o’clock and that was very nice.


Eddie the Eagle is holding on tight, he's enjoying the trip so far









Oh and the road works,



well let me just say that the fear that riding on gravel roads gives you, is by far, the best pelvic floor exercise any one could do, the clinch effect with the bottom cheeks when the bike wobbles at 30 mph is like a sea urch.... NOOOOOO too much detail Kev.

There is a technique for riding these kinds of roads and my mates have taught it me this week.
You stand up on the footpegs, this adds weight to the bike at a low level so lowering the bikes weighted centre of gravity which makes the bike more stable, then relax your arms and legs and then add throttle and speed up, speed is supposedly your friend.

So here’s the fault with the technique – you have to be happy doing the following
1. get off the safety of the seat
2. Stand up to a 9ft ish head height and look down at the gravel
3. Relax – whilst off the seat, 9 ft high at 30 mph on unstable ground
4. Speed up – even when terrified
It has worked so far to be fair though.

Anyway we had to tackle four of these stretches and guess what? The roads had another effect…….. I have an apology to make online to the lovely Mrs Sammons and that is that I lost her iPod on one of these stretches of road, it just fell off the bike whilst I was listening to music and here’s the rub, America supposedly does not do irony, the song that was playing when it suddenly all went dead was a 70’s/80’s soul classic “Turn the Music Up” by the Players Association, if only.











We arrive in Hatch to a lovely Motel, we are now in Utah, the clocks go forward 1hour and the world here goes back ten years!!!!



No alcohol can be served at the Motel restaurant, nor the hotel opposite, nor the garage or the store, they are all within ½ mile of a Mormon Church and it is forbidden, 1 mile down the road is Ok, but not here.
T-Bone steak and chips, water and a NO ALCOHOL Lager was consumed and now I’m writing this blog up.
Nite Nite