Southwest Ride - September 2019

As with most rides, the planning usually starts about a week after the last one. In this case, I had just returned from a long "Northwest" ride up to the Idaho - Canadian border with friends. I thoroughly enjoy planning these long distance rides, studying the history of the areas and looking for new roads. This ride's ultimate goal was to ride southern Utah. Millions of years exposed Geology, rock formations unlike any other and the history of the west combine to make it a destination I never grow tired of. It is spacial and visual overload...

From several previous southern Utah rides, I knew I had ridden on part of the old outlaw trail but was not familar with the history. Many outlaws traveled the undefined trail from hiding place to hiding place. However, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch began to stick out. Not only would their story take me where I wanted to go but it would also take me to a few new places like Brown's Park and some of the trails they used that now lie within Capitol Reef National Park.


(Front row left to right "Harry Longabaugh aka The Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick aka The Tall Texan and Robert Leroy Parker aka Butch Cassidy". Standing left to right "Will News Carver and Harvey Logan aka Kid Curry" in Fort Worth Texas, 1900.)

“As technology thrusts us relentlessly into the future, I find myself, perversely, more interested in the past. We seem to have lost something — something vital, something of individuality and passion. That may be why we tend to view the western outlaw, rightly or not, as a romantic figure.” -Robert Redford - The Outlaw Trail

On to Day 1