Saturday October 12 - Casa Grande AZ to Needles CA

Double events today. I made it to Nevada so I can now say this bike has been to all of the lower 48 states in the US. And the Odometer rolled over 40,000 miles today. Kinda early start since Arizona is an extra hour late (3 hrs from home). After seeing the Phoenix Bypass sign yesterday and talking to the waitress last night about Phoenix traffic (even on Saturday), I headed the few miles back south and took 8 west 60 miles to the Rt 85 bypass. It seemed way out of the way so I might have been ok riding through Phoenix, but it turned out to be a good road with lots of cactus and

rock formation to look at. The east on Rt10 and then what turned out to be a real nice road north (Rt93) to Rt10. I love the Arizona rock formations and cactus. I smelled sage and or mesquite all day. The roads were a little busy which puts my mind at ease when riding solo. I do need to start packing water. The bike ran flawlessly again and I did the math in my head and I could buy 4 or 5 of these X300's for what I would have to pay to replace my BMW R100RT. And this bike is far easier to maneuver and I can go up goat paths and I can pick this bike up and it fist my "go slow" philosophy that drives other riders nuts. Looks like solo trips for me from here on out.
I rode through Kingman AZ which my daughter Hannah and I had stopped in some years back. We ended up in the historic part of town and never realized there was a bigger more modern part of town. This part of Arizona is more developed than I had thought, which gave me a nice feeling (I am sure there are Kawasaki shops around).
Then Rt 68 over a beautiful mountain range and a long decent down the other side to the Colorado River and into Nevada. Laughlin, NV is a casino / gambling town, very flashy like a small Las Vegas (yuck). Bullhead City is on the east shore ov the river and has no casinos but appears to take some overflow people (shops, restaurants, hotels). There are also a lot of fancy housing developments here and the views are tremendous. I wandered around some hillside building lots and took in some nice views. The Colorado River is not that big here and I saw irrigation going on (green fields of frsh mowed and baled hay). Never did figure out how they divvy the water up..
Due south to Needles and called it quits. The good Mexican restaurant was slowed (TripAdvisor#1) and the #2 place was a Jack-In-The-Box, which tells you something, so I found a small Mexican place (not on TripAdvisor) which was pretty good. Good day. Not sure where to go tomorrow since my mission is done.
Odometer beginning of trip = 35820
Odometer beginning of day = 39725
Odometer end of day = 40073
Miles today = 348
Miles on trip to date = 4253
Travel days = 12
Zero days = 2
Average miles per traveling day = 354