Today started out quite well. We got out of the hotel at a reasonable hour and hit the road headed for the Grand Canyon. Not too far into our journey we happened upon a sign for the Tonto Natural Bridge. We decided to stop and what a great idea that was. The road we took to get to it was just fabulous. The road had a 14% grade and just wound on down. When we got to the bottom we discovered that you could literally walk under this magnificent bridge but you had to hike a mile to do it so we settled for the pictures. Are they awesome or what?
We continued through the forest on the road less traveled. The scenery was just beautiful all day. We went through a few areas where we had heard there were wildfires burning. We did see a lot of smoke and a few firefighters � that was kind of weird. We stopped for a quick lunch and then hit the highway. All was well until Justin�s bike started sputtering as we were coming out of the mountains. It began to backfire � shooting puffs of fire out of the pipes and would you believe that we just happened to be across the highway from the Harley Davidson Route 66 Roadhouse and dealership. Good thing too. We managed to get the bike over there although it was sputtering the whole way. The guys in the Service Dept. were just great and took the bike in right away. Lucky for us there was this lovely Roadhouse to hang out in while we waited for the bike to get checked out. We made a new friend, Stephanie the bartender, and hung out with her for about 3 hours. The Service Dept. could not find anything wrong with the bike after giving it a thorough check � they changed the spark plugs and we were on our way again to the Grand Canyon. Looked like we would make it before sundown. Well � maybe not. We had gone about 50 miles without incident and Justin�s bike started to sputter and backfire again and then it just quit. I mean really quit. It would not start again. Here we were in the middle of nowhere on a 2-lane highway with narrow shoulders and nothing around as far as we could see. It was 6:00 pm. We called the dealership and surprisingly they answered. They said they would send a tow truck and someone would wait for us at the dealership. We found some shade to hide in and waited. About 45 minutes later we got a call from the dealership letting us know that they could not find a tow truck driver. Justin tried to fire the bike up again while he was on the phone with the guy and it started. We turned around and decided to head back to the dealership. Surprise! We got one whole mile and it quit again. We then called the Harley Owners Group. They assured us they would send a tow truck to get us. They asked if we were in a safe place to which Justin responded �No � we�re in the middle of nowhere on a highway with no lights.� They called a police officer and had him come out to us. We then called about our hotel reservation which we booked through Travelocity. They were unhelpful to say the least. Check in started at 4:00 and it was 6:30 when we called them. Basically they told us that we should have called 2 hours ago if we needed to cancel our reservation. We explained that we had broken down and they basically said sorry about your luck. We decided to call the hotel directly. Good move. The very kind woman with whom Justin spoke cancelled our room for the night without charge and made a new reservation for us tomorrow night. Don�t use Travelocity!
Meanwhile - the police officer showed up but no tow truck. By now it was 8:00 pm. We got a call from the tow truck service Harley had called informing us that they could not find a driver either. Luckily, the police officer knew a company to call and finally at 9:30 a truck showed up. The officer stayed with us the entire time which I thought was really cool. He was a very friendly and personable kind of guy and he made sure no �critters� got us. We got back to the dealership at 10:00 pm. I honestly could not believe that the mechanic we had spoken to was still there waiting for us � but he was. We put the bike in shop, rode the pink one across the street to the hotel and crashed. What a day. We were 30 miles from the Grand Canyon � 30 stinkin� miles. We�ll try it again tomorrow. I did mention that this was day 13 right?
