After the stunning views of Monument Valley, and the rocky heat of Utah, we decided to stop in the small city of Flagstaff, for a few days of motel civilisation over Clare’s birthday. It might also offer some wifi and shops, for practical things. Ok, it was the cheapest motel in Flagstaff, but it was comfy enough, especially after a small tent.

A relaxing few days, that was what it was supposed to be. I’d discovered the Petrified Forest National Park when idly looking through some advertising info.  We’d planned our next day – setting off from Flagstaff and doing a relaxing loop along scenic roads.  The Petrified National Park was only an hour and a half away.  Of course we could do that in a day.

In a day maybe but we set off at 1.30.  Gid was totally occupied with trying to pull together the resources for our next bike service, at 12,000 miles.  The bike specific service parts, and a location where we’d be permitted to do our oil change (think about it!), the latter needing to have a cover as now we seemed to be subjected to extreme sun and monsoon weather with massive amounts of rain most afternoons.  And tyres this time too.  Both front tyres are wearing smooth in places and Gid’s rear tyre has worn rather quicker than one would expect, and we had been very lucky in Whitehorse, where we’d previously got tyres, to find shops actually holding stock – normally an order has to be arranged. On top of that our chains were now showing considerable signs of wear.  After thousands of miles where they appeared not to wear at all, suddenly Gid was tightening them every 500 miles.  End of life was near. Whilst the chains themselves are sort of standard, the sprockets are not – again an order has to be placed… somewhere. Where? When?

Gid’s been quite concerned about his bike pulling slightly to one side, which may explain the fast rear tyre wear.  On a number of occasions he has been doing the ‘no hands’ bit to check how true the bike would run.  Initially his conclusion was that it was pulling to the right   ‘How does yours track?’ he’d ask me.  So once again I’d be going down the road with my hands in the air.  Mine seemed to run quite true but I wasn’t that keen on going hands free with a fully loaded bike.  We’d done this sort of thing on the i2i course back in our early days of learning to motorbike. It was about improving our balance and skills but I will never forget when I very nearly ran into the back of a car when going hands free and reading my comic returning from my newspaper round early in the morning, many decades ago!  Gid had tried to correct the error by relieving the fork clamps and next, tweaking the rear wheel alignment to pull the wheel slightly to the left but that had made it worse.  A couple of tweaks to the right had improved it but he wanted it professionally checked. The Royal Enfield dealer in Reno, our place of choice, was fully booked for the next two weeks and we’d be there in a few days.  Our preferred Reno accommodation, Air B&B host Tyler, with a car port, couldn’t extend our stay to take account of the delays with some of our service parts arriving later than hoped and we definitely needed the shelter to work on the bikes in this weather.

Before leaving America we are going to do one final loop back up and round to take in the coastal road – HWY1  as it’s supposed to be another of the  ‘can’t miss’ roads.  Another two thousand miles perhaps but that will be our final lap in the US.  From there we’ll be down in Mexico.  How easy will the servicing be down there?  It might be affordable not to do it ourselves (a DIY oil change and check over costs $200 for both bikes, a DIY valve check is $0, USA dealer shop prices are about $1400, this for a 6,000 mile service about every 7 weeks). But everything might well have to be arranged in Spanish.

From Flagstaff, starting after lunch, it took us a couple of hours to reach the Petrified Forest National Park. We went into the museum and Visitor centre.  Gid had read that in minutes it seemed – I took more than an hour.  I knew how petrification took place – vaguely, but found the information fascinating.  200,000,000 years ago back with the early dinosaurs all this had taken place.  It explained on a time-line that if a year was the wakening of the journey of life on earth the early life was about the summer, dinosaurs the autumn and man was the last 15mins – 11:45 on the 31st December!  Back with the dinosaurs these trees had fallen down into the river/stream been covered in silt and gradually turned to crystal, absorbing colour from the minerals around them.

We wandered off through the exhibits .  But again Gid hadn’t been totally ‘in the moment’ as the pressure of the servicing was all consuming.  I’d offered on a number of occasions to pull my weight with the mechanics but my approach is far more laid back.  ‘I wasn’t even doing my POWDDERSS checks every day,’ he’d chastised me.  No, barely once a week to be truthful (Gid says: Not even sure that’s true!).  I’d need a lot of support the do my own servicing and clearly it was far easier for Gid to do the lot.  Then he’d know it was done properly, was clearly in his mind!

As we wondered round the exhibits I read some of the information but Gid was pressing forwards.  I think he did relax into the event but only briefly as ominous clouds were brewing with lightning flashes signalling the storm to come.  Once back at our bikes, whilst looking at the weather Gid asked what route were we talking home?  ‘Through the park and the Painted Desert‘, I’d replied.  He queried if I knew how long it was and suggested that I came back to the Visitor Centre to look at the map.  Yep, I knew how long it was and that it would probable take us another hour or so.  This was my trip – through the park we went but I had agreed that we wouldn’t stop at any of the other sites along the way. It was rather a dramatic ride, with lightning flashes on both sides of the road and strong winds.

Arriving ‘home’ at eight o’clock Gid was straight into service mode urging me to focus on our campsites for the next week leading up the our arrival in Reno.  I’m not sure he’d thought of anything else all day. We’d booked the Air B&B for Sunday night but of course that meant we couldn’t pick up the service parts during the day.  I was still in Petrified Park mode.  I sat and read the booklet I’d picked up and was rather sad about the things we’d missed – petroglyphs, we’ve seen some before and very much enjoyed their creative form and direct link to so much history, and we’d missed the longest petrified log in the site together with some wonderful views and walks around the Painted Desert – an area of layered rock showing different periods in history as different sediments had left their colours of rock behind – one building on top of the other.

It seems there are more opportunities to see petroglyphs and many areas we have ridden through have got vivid rock colours displaying the high mineral content in this area.