Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#61 Unread post by lightcycle »

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/45.html on October 28, 2012

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The Pony Express only ran for one year from 1860-1861. But during that time, riders delivered mail from the west coast all the way to Missouri, facing dangers like weather, buffalo stampedes and bandits. The advent of the railroad put an end to the Pony Express and US 50 now follows the rough route that the riders took across Nevada. Today, most of the cross-Nevada traffic takes Interstate 80, rendering US 50 obsolete, much like the Pony Express. Life Magazine called US 50 the Loneliest Road in America in the 80s, stating: "It's totally empty. There are no points of interest. We don't recommend it. We warn all motorists not to drive there unless they're confident of their survival skills."

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Nevada desert is anything but flat

The handful of towns on US 50 turned this negative proclamation into a major marketing campaign, boasting ghost towns, mountain passes, motorsports, camping and wildlife watching along this forgotten highway. So we're riding the Loneliest Road in America to see if it's all that it's cracked up to be!

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We stop in the town of Austin for lunch

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Pizza at the International Cafe

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Bar in Austin is closed

I love riding in the desert, especially when there's nobody else around for miles and miles. Just you and your thoughts swirling around in your helmet. We ride like this for over 400 miles across Nevada to the end of US 50, passing by the towns of Fallon, Austin and Eureka, not seeing a lot of ghost towns until we close in on Ely at the end of US 50.

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We stop in at the ghost town of Cherry Creek

Cherry Creek used to be a bustling mining town of 6,000 people before the turn of the last century. Now, only a few people live here amongst the ruins of abandoned buildings that draw tourists looking to see a piece of history. It was very neat to walk around the old buildings. Not as spooky as the name "Ghost Town" seems to imply!
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#62 Unread post by lightcycle »

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The old school building has been turned into a museum detailing life before the town was abandoned

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No tumbleweeds though!

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Ghost towns of Nevada - a photographer's feast!

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The few residents that live here still need to get their mail. Not delivered by Pony, though...

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Peering through the boarded-up window of an abandoned house. There was a make-shift tent inside!

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Riding away from Nevada in the light of the setting sun
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#63 Unread post by lightcycle »

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/46.html on October 29, 2012

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We are moving very slowly, spending at least a couple of days at each stop to recharge. The nomadic task of setting up and tearing down camp is less tedious when we can stay awhile and enjoy a day's rest, especially since we've seemed to stay ahead of the impending North American snowfall. By contrast to our sedate pace, the land speed record set by a vehicle with wheels is 1,228 km/h (faster than the speed of sound). This record was set just around the corner at the Bonneville Salt Flats (how's that for a segue?), just across the Nevada/Utah border.

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Testing the surface of the Bonneville Salt Flats

As we approached the salt flats, we were amazed at how expansive the surrounding area is, all covered in greyish/white layer, most of it is a thin crust above thick mud. We saw the tracks of off-road vehicles that have done donuts, ripping up the surface and leaving mud trail scars. The actual Bonneville Salt Flats has a much thicker crust of salt and is more suitable for attempting landspeed records.

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Neda pulls a Charley Boorman on the Salt Flats

The Bonneville Salt Flats look like a sheet of ice at certain angles. We tentatively walked out onto the surface before taking the motorcycles out, as there were still some wet patches from a prior rainfall. We were surprised at how much grip there was, the salt wasn't loose at all. The surface of the flats felt like sandpaper.
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#64 Unread post by lightcycle »

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Remarkably good grip on the salt flats

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Long shadows cast on the salts

The Bonneville Salt Flats are a remnant of a huge prehistoric salt lake that dried up 150,000 years ago. It's one of several dried salt lakes in the area, but it's the largest, measuring over 100 square kilometers, giving landspeed racers enough running room to get up to maximum velocity.

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Watching the sun set on the Salt Flats

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Posing with the bikes

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Backlit sunset shot

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Midgets in the mirror

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Watching the moon rise over the Salt Flats

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Tooling around on the Salt Flats

Although it would have been fun to visit during a race to see all the exotic vehicles, we did have the Bonneville Salt Flats all to ourselves, and we felt like kids walking and riding around, and taking photos all around the area.

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Relaxing at a fast food restaurant at the end of the day. We brought our own salt for the fries...
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#65 Unread post by lightcycle »

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/47.html on November 4, 2012

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We have unfinished business in Utah. As mentioned before, one of our earliest motorcycle trips was a whirlwind 18-day from Toronto to San Franciso and back. During that trip, we visiting most of the National Parks in the SW US, but only having a limited amount of time, we spent most of it on the back of the motorcycle, not seeing anything but the park from the side of the road. Arches National Park was a bookmark that we just had to revisit, and this time around, we promised that we wouldn't leave until we'd seen everything.

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Arches National Park, Three Sisters rock formation up ahead

We made good on that promise, lazing around the park for four days, spending the days hiking the trails around the area, and the nights freezing our butts off inside the tent. The landscape is straight out of a Road Runner cartoon! Other-worldly-shaped orange rocks thrust up out of the ground, some of them precariously balancing larger rocks on small skinny stems - the result of erosion eating away at the softer layers of the sand and rock that history has laid down.

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Weather was beautiful during the day, freezing at night, but the night sky was so clear!

One of the things that was very important to us was hiking up to the Delicate Arch, as we didn't have the opportunity the last time we were here. It's about an hour uphill hike to a remote spot where the arch can be viewed. There are over 2,000 arches in the park, spanning from a few feet to over a hundred feet in height! The views are breathtaking!

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Hiking the Delicate Arch Trail

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Window to the Delicate Arch
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#66 Unread post by lightcycle »

We arrived in the early afternoon and settled down to wait for the best time to view the Arch - sunset. We were told that that was the magical time that elves and unicorns would emerge from the portal created by the sun's rays hitting the Delicate Arch.

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We take our seats like everyone else and wait for the show to begin

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This guy must have shelled out primo for balcony seats

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Things to do when you're waiting for the elves and unicorns

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This lady brought her Staff of Infinite Mysteries to help open the portal

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"... and then the Earth cooled..."

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No elves. No unicorns. But pretty, anyway...

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Neda takes her photography very seriously, risking life and limb for that perfect shot

Ok, enough hiking and picture-taking, time to do some riding!
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#67 Unread post by lightcycle »

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/48.html on November 6, 2012

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We descended from Arches National Park and landed in the McDonald's at Moab. We were regular fixtures for a few days there, the TV ceaselessly covering the US election, with us catching up on e-mail, and me stretching that $1 bottomless soda. We saw regulars come and go, and greeted the familiar faces as if we lived there. One morning, after Neda's Skype session with her niece in Italy, we found ourselves chatting with a couple of other Canadians, Jacques from St-Jovite (outside of Montreal) who was in the area on a photo-vacation for a couple of months, and Mark from Winnipeg, who towed his KLR to ride the roads around the area with his dirtbike buddies. This was the perfect company to share a McMorning with, as we got great tips on riding roads *and* photo-spots. We really have no plan whatsoever, so it's chance encounters like these that dictate which way we go and what we do and see!

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Potash Road is like riding on the surface of Mars!

Both of them suggested we ride the Shafer Trail, which starts out as Potash Road just north of Moab and ends up meeting the famous White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park. We were told to be prepared for great roads and amazing scenery!

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Trail turns gravelly and runs through some great canyons

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Stream crossing! Ok, the stream was mostly dry. You could see salt or mineral stains left from the water

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Marvelous scenery unfolding before us. Shared with NOBODY!

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F650GS owners have always been trying to fit a 21" wheel up front. Neda gets a 25" front wheel courtesy of our wide angle lens

The trail is very wide and well maintained. We tried to take a detour off the Shafer Trail towards the Colorado River overlook, but encountered deep sand - our nemesis! So instead of paddling 3 miles through sand with our crappy, gripless Tourances, we decided to turn back to the main trail.

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Bye bye, sand. Back to the gravel. Hello, scenery!

As it turns out, we didn't really have to detour from the main trail for a look at the Colorado River, as the Shafer Trail runs alongside it for quite a while. It's at this very spot that they filmed Thelma and Louise driving their car off the cliff after being chased by cops. Hmmm... I hope I didn't ruin the movie for anyone. They also filmed Star Wars here as well, the part where Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker that he was his father...

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This entire trip I'm either on a bike or taking pictures. Sometimes both...

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Gingerly stepping out onto the edge, trying to get a shot of the Colorado River

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Colorado River

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I think this is where Thelma and Louise drove off the cliff

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Neda was having a great time!

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A bit of perspective - Neda is in the top-left hand corner taking a picture with our bikes next to her
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#68 Unread post by lightcycle »

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Trying not to look down

I am not scared of heights at all. But whenever I'm looking over a high cliff, or over the top-floor balcony of a high rise, I get this tingling sensation in my toes and I have this small urge to just jump. Not sure why...

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Getting ready for the leap... only 2,000 feet to the canyon floor

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This picture taken by Gary from Colorado. He pulled up on his R1200GS ADV and told us this was his favorite road!

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A friend calls this the National Geographic shot

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Trail gets quite close to the edge in some sections, giving us some great views. Hard to keep your eyes on the trail!

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Here you can see the rim of the cliff

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From the edge of the rim, you can see a 270 degree bend in the Colorado River, very cool!

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"Do you need a hand?"
"Naw, I'm Superman "dog"!"


The Shafer Trail is great for big bikes. A little bit of sand in some areas (as above), lots of gravel, some rocky areas, a couple of steep uphill climbs on loose surfaces,and a ton of fun! Neda and I agree this and the Dalton Highway were our top two favorite rides so far on this trip! What cemented this was the 1,000 foot climb up the Shafer Switchbacks on a section of the White Rim Trail:

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Here's Neda motoring up one of the switchbacks

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Half-way up we peer over the lip of the basin. Awesome! Toes tingling again, BTW...

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Looking back on the way we came

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Shafer Basin below us, a spectacular sight!

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As we reach the top, Neda hugs the cliff wall on the switchback trail. It's Shafer that way...

We've spent over a week in Utah now. Not sure if or when we're ever going to leave this state!
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#69 Unread post by lightcycle »

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/49.html on November 12, 2012

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A few days ago, while talking to our fellow Canadians at the McDonald's in Moab, Jacques mentioned The Wave, a very cool-looking geologic formation, which really intrigued us. However, we found out that to visit it, we needed to obtain a permit. Unfortunately, only 20 permits are given out per day - all chosen by a lottery system. Uh oh. Apparently 10 of the 20 permits are issued 4 months in advance over the Internet, so too late for half the permits. The other 10 are picked via a manual lottery at the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) office, so we decide to take our chances there.

We rode all the way to south Utah, past the phenomenally large and imposing red rock mountain/sculpures of Monument Valley, but didn't stop since we had already visited it on our last trip. Our home base was set up at the town of Kanab, where the BLM office was located and we showed up bright and early the next morning for the lottery. Apparently in the summer, the number of visitors swell to over 200 people, all crammed in the tiny lottery room every morning. The largest number was 260 one day in the summer, all vying for 10 permits! Today, the BLM officer told me we had a record low of applicants - 17! 10 permits. 17 people. Our chances look pretty good! We were assigned a number and one by one, balls were drawn out of an ancient hand-cranked bingo machine, the kind that spins the balls first and spits one out of a small hole in the bottom.

We didn't win. Such good odds and we were so unlucky! :( One of the permit winners, a European couple exclaimed in joy when their number was drawn. Apparently they had come every morning for the last 5 days, and finally today they won a permit! Good for them, I guess we'd come back tomorrow and try again. But we decided if we didn't win tomorrow, we'd move on.

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Beautifully coloured rocks line the Wire Pass as we hike towards the slot canyon

There were still a lot of other sights to see in the Grand Staircase-Escalante area. Coyote Buttes is home to a bunch of slot canyons - canyons that are far deeper than they are wide. So we rode down a 13 km dirt road to visit some of them.

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Slot canyons are formed by rushing water through very soft rock. The walls of this canyon are sandstone

Slot canyons are very dangerous to hike in if there is any precipitation in the forecast, since the walls are 30-50 feet high and some of the longer canyons have very little open space or footholds to climb up to escape flash floods. We are hiking part of Buckskin Gulch, which is 21 kms long. We can't hike the entire distance because previous rainfalls have left pools of water hip deep and it's too cold to wade through them. In warmer weather, hikers bring a tent and break up the Buckskin Gulch hike over a few days, wading through the much smaller pools in the heat of the Utah summer.

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Sunlight plays against the walls of the slot canyon

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Obstacle course

Falling rocks and logs from above sometimes block the slot canyon and it's necessary to climb over or under obstacles. The walls close in very tightly in some places - we had to take our backpacks off and slide sideways to get through. So glad we skipped the cheeseburgers the day before...

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Amazing formations on the slot canyon walls caused by different densities of rock carved away by the water

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No hip-waders so end of the line for us

We encounter our first pool of water at Buckskin Gulch. The BLM office warned us there would be much deeper ahead, so we decide to turn back here. In the summer, the reflections of the sun streaming down the top of the canyon and hitting the pools cause amazing reflections against the canyon walls, but this late in the year, the sun barely makes it overhead, leaving the canyon in shadows for most of the day. Would be fun to come back here and wade through some of the pools in July!
Gene

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Re: Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

#70 Unread post by lightcycle »

The next morning, we show up at the BLM office again but we're disheartened when we see many more lottery hopefuls also attending - 27 in total. Our odds are much slimmer today. Our lottery number is 13. I'm not superstitious, but Neda considers this a lucky sign. When she was born, the hospital gave her a bracelet with a number matching mother to baby - her number was 13.

Sure enough, the first ball that dropped out of the lotto machine - number 13! We felt 25 pairs of envious eyes stinging us from all sides. :) The permits were written up for the next day and we were given instructions on how to get to The Wave as well as what to bring. It's a 10 km round-trip (I HATE HIKING!) to The Wave and there isn't a marked trail, so the BLM handed us a Treasure Island-style map (""50 paces to the Orange Rock, turn left at the Sandy Hill...") and told us to bring lots of water, and a flashlight in case we stayed out past dark. They recommended not to hike in the darkness for fear of falling into a slot canyon. Great. Now I was starting to worry... Would we get lost? Fall into a slot canyon in the dark? I saw 127 Hours and I didn't want to have to cut my arm off with a Swiss Army Knife... :(

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No trail. We're just wandering around, kinda like our motorcycle trip

Early the next morning, we rode out to Wire Pass again where we hike much further past the slot canyons to get to The Wave. The mornings are getting very cold: -9C (-15F) and we were frozen like popsicles when we arrived. Thankfully, the temperatures would climb to a balmy 16C during the day.

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Along the way, we met up with a couple of other lottery winners - Sherry and Dugan from Alaksa! They seemed to know where they were going, so we just followed them...

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It took us a couple of hours, and as we got closer to The Wave, the rocks start exhibiting some psychedelic properties

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Dugan's a geologist, so this is a bit of professional curiousity

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This is it! The Wave! So surreal, the pictures don't do it justice!

The Wave was formed when 190-million year old sand dunes were packed down with other layers of rock and sandstone over time, then this whole mass was slowly carved away by wind and water, leaving behind one really cool acid-trip of a sculpture! We spent 3 hours walking around the area mesmerized by the undulating layers of red rock that to me, resembled the musculature of an anatomy doll with it's skin peeled back.

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If Salvador Dali ever made sculptures out of stained wood, it would look like The Wave

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Even with 20 people visiting The Wave, we couldn't help but get in the way of each other's pictures

The Wave does not cover a large area, so I could imagine if the BLM opened it up for public access you would not be able to enjoy the beauty of it without having other people crammed in that small space. The 20 permit holders had to take turns getting shots of The Wave, while we each hid behind the hills or hiked elsewhere. I think there are actually 5 people hidden in the picture above.

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Hardwood floors at The Wave. Helps to increase the property value...

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Surfs Up, Dude!

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We ? The Wave!

We've been in Utah for nearly two weeks, there's so much to see and do here, but I fear that if we don't leave soon, we'll have to convert to Mormonism and stay here permanently!
Gene

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