Heading home from weekend Colorado trip

 After rain and dark, cloudy skies the past two days, today is clear and sunny with bright blue skies as we ride about 3 hours home from Salida.

Much of our ride is through the San Luis Valley, the largest alpine valley in the world at about 150 miles long and 75 miles wide. Usually we can see mountains all around us, but today the skies are hazy due to many wildfires in the West.

This is a big agricultural area known for hay, potatoes, carrots, lettuce and also ranching. Without irrigation, the area is arid with not much growing naturally.

Still in the San Luis Valley, we turned west onto US 160 from US 285 in Del Norte. We wound up Wolf Creek Pass, at 10,856' along the Continental Divide. Road construction crews have been paving the Pass all summer, and today we enjoyed riding on new asphalt without the usual bumps and cracks.

We've ridden this Pass numerous times yet have never stopped at the scenic overlook on the west side of the Pass that overlooks the San Juan River flowing into Pagosa Springs - today we stopped, looking down about 3000' to the valley below.

Before we left Salida we talked with a group of four motorcycle riders from Minnesota on their first time riding in the Rocky Mountains. We live in the Rockies and every time we jump on the BMW, we're thankful to ride in this gorgeous part of the country.  A weekend trip reminds us why we choose to live here.