Geography Lesson

I left Lost Hills, CA and was greeted with sunny skies and the open road. Heading on I40 East I saw a road sign that said Wilmington, NC: 2,559 miles. What a great way to get motivated for the day!


I was messin with the shutter speeds on my Canon Powershot SX130 last night. Kinda some neat effects.

A few shots riding along 58 East from Bakersfield, CA. 

Welcome to the dessert. Mojave one way and Barstow the other. 

Sure is a lot of space out there. Next time I run through here it will have to be a more dusty trail and some knobby tires. Well at least that's what I'd like to think would have been more interesting. 

After blasting along 40 East for awhile I arrived in Flagstaff, AZ. About 50 miles from Flagstaff my geology lesson started. First it was a mountain range that went to 5,000 or so feet and then it was up onto the next mountain that took me to over 7,000 feet about 15 miles before I arrived in Flagstaff. Why I assumed Flagstaff was anywhere but at the top of the Arizona Divide was beyond me. Words like "idiot, moron, fool, and stupid" kept coming into my head as threw my flashers on and backed my speed way down to about 40 mph. The road was dry but I wasn't taken any chances. I also some elk along side of the road so they were another reason I slowed down. I didn't want to plow into Rudolph then Santa might not bring me anything. Although he might have more fun delivering presents if was on an R1200 GS Adventure :-) 

Thankfully traffic was very light. In fact I was starting to wonder if I had missed some sort of warning that there was a snowstorm or something. I though for sure that the coldest temperatures I would have faced would have been on Pikes Peak at around 35 degrees. Then came Siskiyou Pass which registered at 33 degrees. Now the Arizona Divide at 22 degrees. Nope, that's not a typo. It was 22 degrees at the top and stayed at 26 degrees for about an hour as I made slow progress to Flagstaff. I still can't believe I had no idea that Flagstaff was going to be at 6,800 or feet in elevation. I mean its a dessert that doesn't make any sense! Looking at topography maps now I see that is a high dessert. I probably sound pretty stupid but I guess just looking at map doesn't really show you what is going on with the mountains. Could have been a lot more serious if the roads were damp or if weather had moved in. Checking the weather and some topo maps it looks like I'll be out of the elevation on my way to Texas tomorrow. Hopefully no more geology lessons on the way.