Marisa and I successfully survived the trials from the what seemed to be never ending list of problems from the moment I was no longer employed. We continued to cross the states camping as much as possible. A great tool that we found for the states was FreeCampsites.net. I had no idea that there was such a plethora of places to pull off the road and set up camp (sometimes on the side of a football field of a local high school) I am not one to bash an entire region of a country, but I will say things got very interesting and more intense one we reached New Mexico.

The amount of backroads that twisted through gorges and valleys was simply overwhelming to us. I must say at this particular time that I personally enjoy every bump and smack that occurs while riding off road than Marisa does. But, we were finally able to sink the tires into some loose gravel and dirt, and get to some pretty amazingly remote sections of New Mexico. We also realized fairly early on that the Garmin GPS is not the most reliable piece of technology that man has created. But we did not mind getting lost while riding through some of the most amazing scenery we had come across up to that point.

We camped by the side of the Rio Grande for a week while we explored every off road section we could find, and they weren't hard to find at all.
Excited to continue on, we made our way north to Colorado, a state we had ridden through before and had admired greatly.
As our budget was tight, we utilized free camping as much as we could, sometimes pulling in and setting up camp, only to realize that our neighbors a couple spots down seemed a little off, and only utilizing the empty public spaces to get high on the not so socially acceptable drugs.. But, sometimes we lucked out with great success in seclusion and natural beauty, even if they came with warnings of bears.
"Make yourself look bigger" they would say... Marisa is 5'3" with no possibility of looking threatening or "BIG"..
Rattled one night while camping in the backwoods of Colorado, we were woken by the stirring of one, if not more, large creatures in the foliage surrounding our tent. I crawled out, grabbed our cooking gear, and banged our pots together as loud as I could, not really knowing what the effect would be, but was scared out of my mind.
I heard a loud "Moooooo" and shuffling as cattle passed by not twenty feet from our tent.
We "moooo"ved on the next day.

We visited Mesa Verde and cruised down the million dollar highway and made our way into Utah. I have to say that out of the 30 states I have ridden through, Utah may take the grand prize for the best riding. We had previously explored Utah as well, and I was excited to get back to its natural wonders. Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands will always be deeply rooted in my memory as a motorcycle paradise. But we had only previously scratched the surface, and had not visited the southern most section of the state. Monument Valley was our scenic path into the unknown sections of this amazing state.

It was amazing to realize, that everything we had planned over the last 5 years, prepping, saving, and dreaming of, was now a reality. The problems seemed to be in the past, and we had yet to be eaten by bears, drop the bike while going down tough roads, or deciding spending 24 hours a day less than an inch apart was too much for us to handle. We were truly living the dream.