11-7-06 Arizona Strip

This is an interesting area to camp in for sure. Tom’s neighbor on one side has a new racecar that he bought. It is a Chevy II with a few modifications. I noticed it when he had the door open and had started it up for some admirers. WOW!! The sound of horsepower. I didn’t feel right about just barging in on the party but the next day he was in the shop with the door open and I asked if I might come in and look which was ok with him. I ran and got the little camera and when I got back he asked if I would like to hear it!!! Oh yeah, you bet-cha Charlie!!!!

It is a drag car and I didn’t get a photo of the slicks on the backend but they must be about two feet wide each. The engine was a little hard to start and ran pretty rough for a minute or so, but then it just hummed in a very loud volume. I put my hand on the motor and it was just as smooth as could be. It wasn’t smooth enough to balance quarter on edge but darn near. I don’t think I have ever put my hand on a balanced motor before.

I don’t remember exactly but I think he said it was 387 or something like that. You can see the electric water pump in this shot. I had never seen one of these before. The guy had just bought the car from the guy that had built it. He said he paid $22K for it but knew that he had over $32K in just special parts in it.

The car must have had two thousand in just paint on it. The guy that built it was a body and fender man and the whole car was really a show car in its detail. This is the shot of the gas tank and battery box. You can see the little bullet holes which are decals that cover the little dents that happened when he ran the car on the drag strip. Those slicks must grab up little stones and fling them in the wheel wells. I bet those stones are traveling fast. Lets see, I think he said it ran in the 12 seconds and 140+, I may be all wrong about those times and speed but it was fast.

This neighbor has several other cars in the shop. One of them is a model A roadster that belongs to his partner. The partner was offered $100,000 for it, but he declined, because it was the last car that his father and he had built together.

This is another car that he owned. It was also a show car.

Nice neighbor eh?

One of the guys that comes to work out is named Mark and he is a professional fisherman. It is a very demanding sport and he needs to be in top physical condition. Tom doesn’t give him much slack and has him on a very vigorous training schedule. When Mark works out, he really works out. I had no idea how demanding fishing is but when you realize that they have to buzz around the lakes and rivers at top speed in all kinds of conditions (Mark says that sometimes the waves can get four to five feet high on those lakes). He is a bass fisherman but I guess there are other types of fish that are fished too. This is his boat. It goes about 70 mph.

This is Mark and the power for the boat.

Mark says that there are boats out on these lakes that go over 100 mph and you gotta watch out for those guys as well as the little fishermen, ski boats, party boats, jet skis. I guess these lakes are sometimes just a zoo out there.

A very small selection of fishing gear…

There are lots of different lures and rubber bait that he uses.

Mark was telling me that there are some fishing tournaments back east that on of the western guys won that was worth $500,000. Yikes, that is some serious fishing. There are lots of fishing tournaments around here and he tries to do as many of them as he can. He is either out fishing, scouting fish, or working out at Tom’s. Some years he wins money and some years he breaks even. It sure is interesting to hear him talk fishing (I wish you were here Sam).

Here is another one of Tom’s clients. She is a really nice lady that got in a car crash and Tom is helping her gain back her strength.

I love this specialty that she does… Small Amimal Massage Provider….

I had no idea that  a person could get money for petting dogs, cats, hamsters….

She said that this is more than petting, she had to go to Florida to go to school to learn it. It has something to do with pressure points or something.

Bob got his BMW Dakar loaded up and I got the Bloodhound ready for a ride and we headed off on an adventure. We headed in the general direction of the Arizona Strip. One of the towns we went through was Mesquite, NV. Wow, has this little sleepy town changed. I have a friend from Miles City that is here now with a real estate appraisal business. I can see why she came here as the place it really booming.

We stopped for gas and a truck pulled in with these longhorns in the back. I talked with the cowboy and he said that they were on their way to a place where they would measure these. Evidently there is a serious competition in the length of the horns and some of these are the sons and daughters of the champion bull that won the competition last year at 72 inches for a three year old. The cowboy said that that record would be broken this year.

We made it out to the north rim of the Grand Canyon just at sundown.

Most of the roads were paved but the last 40 miles or so was gravel, some very fast, some were rough. When we got to the little campground it was almost empty and we found a nice spot. When I got off my bike I noticed that I only had one saddle bag and it was hanging by one little strap and the bag was pretty well thrashed. Fortunately most of the stuff inside was still there and the only thing I lost was my toothbrush. I hopped back on the bike and charged off back down the road to look for the other bag while Bob set up his tent. I made it back about five miles when a guy parked not far from the road came down and stopped me. He asked if I was looking for something, oh yeah, I sure was. He had found it and hung it on the sign at the rangers cabin. Wow, was that nice of him. It turned out that he was a guide and he was in the area glassing the country for large deer. This area is noted for huge deer. I think he said that there was a 42” rack that came out of here. He had a nice Golden Lab with him but I didn’t pet it as hunters usually don’t like you to pet their dogs. He sure was a nice guy and he has a Chevron welcome station on the way to Kingman so I may see him again when I head down that way.

We got up fairly early.

We went out to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This camera guy was camped near us and he made it out early for the best camera time.

It turns out he is a professional photographer and likes to come down every year for a week. He said he crawled out on his belly to look over the edge and felt the rock sort of move out like it was going to fall down. I crept out on my belly and looked over the edge on what I figured was a solid rock cliff and it sure is a weird feeling to look straight down what seems like a mile or more. We are supposed to exchange photos so this is the one I will send him. He said that he didn’t want his wife to know that he got close to the edge. He actually said that he started earlier about four feet further in from the rim.

This north rim country is really beautiful and it sure was nice and warm for being November. This country gets a lot of snow and they usually close the rim in the winter. Since the road is somewhat rough and there are no tourist facilities, this area doesn’t get much attention. That is much nicer than the sheep chutes that you have to go through on the south rim with all those people. 

We headed back out the same road we came in and I got this shot of the fast part of the road. I had a good time practicing riding technique on these curves.

Bob’s Dakar.

We headed on into Zion National Park where the fall colors were prime.

There sure were a lot of people there too as the weather was just so nice.

Zion is truly an amazing place and my little camera couldn’t take anything even remotely of the grandeur of the place.

We rode some really nice back roads to get to the cabin that Bob’s mom has in Pine Valley, UT. The whole family comes up here in the summer as it is much cooler than down in the beastly hot Boulder City area. We had the cabin to ourselves and  it was nice to have a bed to put my sleeping bag on. When we got there it was getting cold and a warm place was good.

We took an interesting road from Enterprise, UT to Panaca, NV. The road sign said that the road was closed but we decided to try it anyway. It turned out that the road was washed out in spots where there must have been a lot of water coming down this wash. There was a railroad down this wash too. The colors were even better here as I think it is somewhat lower in elevation.

I had to stop for a herd of turkey that needed to cross the road. You can see that they have put up a cow crossing sign but it looks like they need a turkey crossing sign too. There were about fifty turkeys in this batch.

When we finally got off the pavement and out of that canyon, the road really opened up and we just flew down the road.

We had a nice ride back down along Lake Mead. It is a recreational area and the road was mostly newly redone. There was a couple of stretches that were being repaired and some of the road needed repair but on the whole, it was a nice ride. The only problem is that it is park and they only want you to go 50 mph, which is hard to do. We may have broken the law a time or two.