After leaving Big Bend and Texas we headed up into New Mexico where we went from the hot weather of Big Bend, to rain, wind and temperatures down to around 7° on occasions and the nights were colder! We went through some lovely mountain ranges, but on the whole we weren't that taken by New Mexico. Arizona has been something else though. On entering Arizona the first place we came to was Clifton and we arrived at knock off time, so the small town was bedlam and the campground was full, so we had to push on. At the time we didn't know Clifton was a mining town, but we sure did as we left. US191 (Coronado Trail) went through the mine past the processing plant. Clifton it turns out has the biggest copper mine in the US and is amongst the biggest in the world, it employs around 4000 people, it is huge! We camped just out of Clifton on 191 and the next day rode the remaining 90 miles of tight twisting road and passed over a mountain at 9000ft, it was an awesome road with amazing views and quite a bit of wildlife along it. We were following scenic routes that were on our map, so after staying in a lovely camp on a lake in Show Low we headed down US60 to Phoenix. This highway took us through Salt Water Canyon, our first canyon and it was magnificent. We also passed through Superior on our way out of the mountains and onto the planes. The transformation in the vegetation as we entered the planes was very noticeable and striking. For the first time we saw the Stove Pipe Cactus, those typical cactus they always show to represent the western frontier, they were everywhere and some were huge. The temperature was also going up, by the time we were in Phoenix it hit 41°. We were only headed to Phoenix to get some work done on the bike and to see where Jesse Luggage was made, but as it turned out we quite liked Phoenix, well what we saw of it. We stayed in Glendale not far from Jesse. We had arrived on Saturday so I did some maintenance to the bike on Sunday. Monday we headed over to Jesse and met Al Jesse, the man that started it all, he and his staff were very helpful. We had to do some maintenance on our panniers and also replace a bot that had broken on the mount for our TopBox. We didn't expect it, but from the moment we arrived they set work on our bike while Al provided us with pointers on what to see in the states. Then it was across town to Scottsdale where we went to Go AZ Motorcycles to get a new front tyre. This place was huge, they are agents for BMW, KTM, Ducati, Kawasaki, Vespa, Honda and Ural. The service here was great, they even gave the bike a Birthday and washed it! The first time since Hungary. It had been hot the whole time we were in Phoenix but once we started heading Northwest it started to cool off. We stopped in at Wickenburg to look at a museum Al had told us about, it was a museum showing how the west grew, very interesting indeed. We continued north into the mountains and the temperature kept dropping as we went higher until we had to stop and put on some warmer gear. We stopped at Jerome, another old mining town which is perched on the side of a very steep hill, the road to it was a great biking road. Jerome is no longer a mining town and has been taken over by artists that show the wears in the old surviving buildings. We stopped that night just short of Flagstaff, it was a bitterly cold night, but we were sheltered from the wind that had battered us all day. The next morning we were shivering as we went into the tourist information in Flagstaff to see what the camping situation was at the Grand Canyon, we had been told that we would be lucky to get in when we asked at another tourist information centre. Here we were able to call the campgrounds and found there would be no problems getting in with a tent. While at the info centre we asked about the weather, we thought we might stay at Flagstaff, but both Flagstaff and Grand Canyon Village were forecasting possible snow and a low of -3°C! So we headed to the Grand Canyon, it snowed on the way!
When we arrived at the Grand Canyon it was under heavy cloud and some light rain, it was still stunning, the Grand Canyon is truly one of the worlds amazing sights! It was bloody cold that night, but the sun was shinning when we got up and we spent the day in aw as we walked along the canyon rim and took photos. The Grand Canyon is the most visited site in the US and receives 4.5 million visitors a year and the Americans have done a great job of catering for the massive numbers. From the Grand Canyon we went east into Navajo Nation and spent a few days wondering around looking at amazing landscapes that left us breathless, we also learnt a lot about the Navajo history as we visited museums and spoke to some of the locals selling their incredible hand made works of art at the numerous viewing points at the various canyons. We found Canyon De Shelly (pronounced De Shay) absolutely stunning and in some ways better than the Grand Canyon. Then it was up to Monument Valley where we couldn't justify the fee asked to do the tour around the park. We felt we didn't need to do the tour, all the scenery leading up to the main area and away from it was all equally stunning. The rock formations and colours just can't be described and photos can't do it justice either, we took quite a bit of video at the Grand Canyon and a lot of helmet camera footage in Navajo Nation in the hope of capturing the immensity of the landscape. Next is Utah where we plan on visiting a lot of national parks, but the weather is threatening to hold us up, we were told that Bryce Canyon was closed because of the snow, we also spoke to a man from Utah that said his home had received 40cm of snow. Fingers crossed the weather starts to improve for us.