Cornering Consciousness

Friday, July 17 Tough to name this trip as I'm trying to get away from geographical titles like “Huntington Canyon.” Places might not mean as much to the discriminating reader as say, “Neckskin flappin” or “Chip Seal & Tar Snakes” or “The GSH” for Grand Staircase Highway. All of which will play out in the prose to follow as I log our fourth road trip of the Summer, the same being the second trip with one of our five children. It's been our goal to take each on their own moto-camping trip. Here it is late July and we have three kids to go. Each child has their choice of destinations, within reason, and Addie our youngest at ten years decided to go to Huntington Canyon, the Summer retreat of her grandfather. We got away midmorning Friday, we being Mindy, Addie and I, taking Highway 9 through Zion Canyon to 89 North. Addie had one “break-in” ride before this under 100 miles, and was still a bit unsure about this trip for a number of reasons; around 800 miles in three da...

PCH Documentary - Matt Butler & Kristin Nielsen, Producers

See map. There is no such thing as all-weather gear . This is a muse to sell you something, more deluded, in fact, than one-size-fits-all . Nothing tests this fallacy better than a motorcycle trip in the high desert of the Southwest. Any trip east for us begins through the portal of Zion National Park, setting a high mark for the rest of the journey. We got a later-than-usual start on Friday (June 26) putting us on the switch-backs of the Zion tunnel after high noon. Summer traffic lumbers up and down this spectacular road, usually with oversized RV's and unfamiliar drivers of American rental cars. On this day, though, the arteries were clogged by a sweeter fare, a gathering of Model T Fords. Hundreds of them from fully restored to rolling originals making their way up the red switches to the cooler of the tunnel bored into the side of the mountain. The sound they make alone is enough to make anyone fascinated with internal combustion smile, a traffic plaque we were pleased to endu...