The Death Valley Trail maps were now useless too. They were stashed in the box with the Lake Powell maps. Salt Lake City was out, Barstow was out, the new destination was in western Texas. Was I unknowingly involved in a geographic lottery?
I was already on phase #3 of plan C. At first, I decided to take the time to drive to Utah and play in terrain I already knew. Then I decided it wasn’t a great season for my old stomping grounds near Moab so I’d been researching somewhere lower elevation and further south. Meanwhile, my dog had died, my heart had broken, and an ATV had turned into a motorcycle. Phase #3 was a stack of blogs and reports from the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR). I was just about to buy an overpriced UTBDR map.
The phone rang…
Oh, dear God, not again! I picked up the phone.
“How’s $4500 out the door sound?”
“I’m in!”
I’d just agreed to buy a motorcycle I’d never seen, of a type I’d never ridden, without a test drive. It was a long drive to pick it up. I was delighted. The loss of my dog had been a big blow and I needed a little “pick me up”. If I could play in the canyonlands, adequately supported with the cheapest thing legally allowed to have a plate… I sighed contentedly
Maybe things were going my way!