Grand Canyon South rim Loop

[Jason R]

Living in Yuma Arizona is great for riding for about 9 and half months a year.  The 2.5 of summer heat is the time I park the bike or ride very short distances.  So my goal this summer was to get a way with the wife to cooler temps and ride the Grand Canyon.  My wife learned to ride last October by taking a class.  She has been doing well and getting better all the time.  I finally don't worry about losing her behind me (unless we are off the pavement). 

My daily driver car is a VW Jetta TDI.  It came with a trailer hitch and I have been wanting to tow my motorcycle for a few years.  My dad just purchased a light weight aluminum trailer for his Polaris.  With some modifications, I got the trailer setup to load both my BMW's on it.  

 

 

Now my Jetta is my new turbo diesel toyhauler!  

 

July 24th we took off for Flagstaff AZ to enjoy mountain weather. We stayed at my good friends house took off for the longest ride my wife has ever done on July 25th.  I have my phone mounted on a universal Ram mount and was going to use it to Snapshat story the ride.  Well I found out that the vibration has messed up the main camera on my HTC one M8.  Here is an example of the pictures it was taking: 

 

 

Luckily it fixed its self so I could take a few other pictures.  I found out later that other people that mount the phone on their handle bars have the same issue.  HTC replaced my phone free of charge.  Thank you HTC!

 

The wife and I took off up highway 89 north towards the Grand Canyon.  We stopped at the intersection of AZ60 to fill up the old F650 Funduro to make sure she can make it through the park.  The ride to the gate was cool and uneventful.  When we got to the entrance of the Grand Canyon I was hit with sticker shock.  Its $25 per bike to enter.  Damn!  $50 bucks to ride through and use the rest rooms.  That's the cost to see the 8th wonder of the world!

 

The great thing about riding through the south rim on an adventure bike is the ability to stand up and see without stopping.  The other great thing is you can stop in the remote places an get away from the tourists.  About halfway through, i found a little unmarked spot to pull the bikes off the road under the trees and admire the canyon without all the selfie tourists.  

 

 

We were able to have real alone time at the canyon and have lunch.   A small hike up and we had our own vista point with no one else in sight.  

 

 

After enjoying lunch we hiked up a little farther in to get to the edge.  Thats where our phones got signal and the frantic txt messages came in from our 19 year old.  The day before he had cut his arm after losing his grip on a rope swing over the Colorado river.  We sent him to urgent care, they cleaned and stitched him up.  He woke up late Saturday morning with his arm hurting, headache and dehydrated.  Called a nurse friend to go check on him and he had an infection.  She took him to the ER, and we loaded up and headed back to Flagstaff.  

 

We made one more stop before leaving the canyon and I took this picture:

 

 

To add to the adventure, trying to leave the canyon out the west gate, traffic was backed up for several miles.  We considered passing everyone on the right side, but was unsure how people or park rangers would react.  Turns out after 20 minutes of slow moving that a motorhome hit a tourbus.  Looked like there was some intense conversations happening when we went by.  

 

My wife snapped this picture somewhere along AZ180 while we where hauling butt back to Flagstaff.  

 

 

To her credit, she did very well and had no problem doing "excessive speed" back to Flagstaff.  The 1998 F650 still runs strong.  

 

We arrived back to Flagstaff at about 6 pm and after several phone calls decided to stay the night and head out early in the morning.  Our son had to spend a week in the hospital on IV antibiotics. He is fully healed now.     

 

The Grand Canyon by motorcycle is so much better than a car.  This was my first time through on my motorcycle and it was great experience.   There was no gnarly off road obstacles to overcome, but the urban pavement obstacles were plenty for my new rider wife to overcome.   

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Eric Hall]

Sorry to hear about your son!  Glad that he's okay now.

 

Yeah that $25 really bugs me.  But see, it's YOUR national parks, right?  Right...  They soaked us for $12 to see Glacier National Park in and out.

 

There's a fun ride Oct 1 in Southern Utah you should consider called the Flying Monkey Adventure Rally.  I've done it twice and it's a lot of fun.  REALLY good big bike trails.