Not everything goes smoothly

I've left Nevada not before visiting Hoover Dam my tour guy was an old funny guy; I've visited the power plant and watched the dam from a bridge up above.

We decided to skip the Grand-Canyon due to the massive desert heat we couldn't stand, so we headed towards Utah on the way suffering the desert sun hopefully for the last time.

[overview of the dam]

Utah is mostly canyons the view here reminds me of Warner brothers Roadrunner cartoon,

  

Bryce Canyon, we decided to spend the night here, reserved a spot, pitched the tent and sat down for a quick Texas-Holdem game just to pass the time, while we're playing a car pulls next to us and an old guy named Bruce presented himself, he asked us if it will be ok if he'll place his tent next to ours (the camp site is big enough) because all the other places are full, we didn't mind, Turns out Bruce is actually Mordechai a Jewish fellow from New-York, he was excited to meet up with us, we had an interesting conversation with him.

Once the night creeped in we had a clear night sky to finally watch the all of the stars you usually can't see because of city lights, I've been waiting for quite awhile to this moment.

The next morning we headed to Capitol Reef on our way out of Utah and into Colorado, we drove above and within canyons varying in colors: dark red, white, gray and even yellow.

From a far the skies were dark and lightning could be seen at the distance, we pulled over at some small community for lunch. Once we got ready to leave rain start purring down. We decided it will be a good time to test our rain suits, zipped up in my water proof suit we continued the rain wasn't that bad and it cleared up pretty quickly, it's wired how fast the temperature changes here, at some point it can be around 30 degrees and in a matter of minutes 20 degrees and right back to 30.

At this point we were far away from any major city, you can say we were in no man's land, absolutely deserted, nothing for miles in every direction you look.  Riding in this wilderness we've reached a spot where a yellow canyon stretched out what looks like many gray arms. It felt like I'm no longer on earth but on some other planet.

As we got closer to the Colorado River crossover it started raining again only this time a thick and heavy rain drops followed by strong winds hollowing through the canyon walls.

Riding slowly but surely we've reached a magnificent view of the Colorado river.

Couple of miles after the bridge Lior says to me that his tire pressure is getting low, we pulled over at the side to find out he has a flat rear tire.

In my opinion one of the most irritating break downs you can have on a motorcycle, As I'm low of fuel and none of us has any phone reception we were deserted.

we decided to leave Lior's bike on the side and ride together on my bike to the first pay phone we'll find, after a couple of miles we found an abounded lodge with the sign saying "private property no transpassing",

I decided to try my luck anyway, peeking inside the place looked deserted as we head back someone crawled out from one of the many rooms, after a quick chat with him we've learned that there's a pay phone in the next national park (natural bridges nother couple of miles down the road) he also added that we've found the worst place to get stuck at (thank you for the encouragement),

Reaching the park Lior placed a call to triple A, We've been told that a tow truck will pick us up at around 20:00 and that the sheriff is on his way to check up on us.

[Night sky at natural bridges]

The truck finally showed up at around 22:30, I've left my bike at the junction out of the park and joined Lior and Frank our truck driver, it felt wired seeing the road and not actually driving the close compartment we we're in felt warm which was nice at this time of the night, I kept falling asleep until we've reached Lior's bike which was still there! Another 30 minutes we had the bike anchored on the truck and headed back to my bike and to the closest town, on the way Lior asked Frank if his bike will hold? Frank replied "I've never lost one" (this guy was towing for the last 35 years) you know what? There's a first time to everything.

As we we're on our way to Blanding a 5,000 person city I saw lior's bike slips on its left side…
his left beg got some scratched on it and also his front end nothing serious, we pulled at a gas station to reanchor the bike and finally checked in to our motel at around 01:15.

Tomorrow morning we should get his tire fixed and reach Colorado, I've had enough of nothing but canyons for miles and miles.