Blanding, Utah to Chino, Arizona

Our plans changed for this day's ride after we determined that Brendan's rear tire was so badly worn that we had to look at a replacement. After looking at various options, we determined that the best solution was to ride to Jim's house in Chino Valley, AZ where we had tires waiting and a shop that could install the tires on the rims.

We headed south west from Blanding into Monument Valley where we visited the classic Forrest Gump viewpoint. From there we continued south to Flagstaff and then west on I-40 before going south to Chino Valley.

We arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon at Jim's house in Chino Valley. We rolled both Damian and Brendan’s bikes intothe garage and made quick work of removing front and rear wheels from their bikes. We threw them into Jim’s pick up and off we went to drop them off at the tire shop.

While that work was being performed, Jim took them to downtown Prescott. Prescott has quite an old west history to it and Damian wanted to see an authentic swinging door saloon. The Palace bar is famous for hosting Doc Holiday and the Earps back in the 1800s and it still has its swinging doors.

After a round of beers, Damian made use of the swinging doors by staging an impromptu gag of throwing Brendan out of the saloon through them.

While Jim, Damian and Brendan were doing those “chores” Andy stayed at the house and worked on rerouting the next couple days back up into Utah to finish up that part of this journey.