near the entrance to slide rock state park , about five miles into the canyon , two things happened almost simultaneously : first i got a whiff , then a visual , in the middle of the road , of the first dead skunk on our journey ; and a millisecond i noticed that we were being followed by two bike riders on foreign-looking machines ; behind the mysterious pair was a huge black mercedes , the car that s.s. officers drove back in the 20th century .