Riding through the Rockies

We're back on the BMW after spending two days in Boulder, Colorado with our son. Hiking, going to the movies (Operation Finale and Black Kkklansman), and enjoying busy Pearl Street was a lot of fun and a good break from the trip.

We've ridden the BMW in Colorado many times over the past 5 years and have learned to be prepared for abrupt weather changes as the elevation climbs to over 10,000' in the Rockies. The beginning of the trip we headed along the edge of the Front Range, passing by the area where we hiked the day before.

We weren't very far into the day when we reached 8000 miles for our trip. We left home 37 days ago anticipating that we would cover approximately 9000 miles on our cross-country adventure, and we should be close to that by the time we get home to Arizona. Mike says the BMW is made for this type of long-distance riding, hovering up the miles on a comfortable ride.

Boulder sits at 5200' elevation, and after leaving the Front Range we started to climb into the heart of the Rockies over the Kenosha Pass at 10,000'. I always hope to see mountain goats or bighorn sheep, but the only animal we saw today was an antelope.

Even with the heavy Labor Day traffic, we made great time through the mountains. Dropping down from the Kenosha Pass we entered South Park, a vast, high, flat mountain valley at about 9000'.

We could see 14,000' mountain peaks all around us until the clouds descended and it started to rain lightly. Time to put on the rain gear!

As we crossed Poncha Pass with high sheer cliffs that bordered both sides of the 2-lane highway into the San Luis Valley the rain stopped, the sun came out, and we enjoyed a beautiful summer day.

We stopped for lunch in Del Norte, once a bustling city of 10,000 people during the mining boom years, and now a small, quiet ranching town of about 1700.

We only had about 60 miles left on today's trip after lunch, and since the sun was shining in Del Norte I took off my rain jacket. We forgot we had one last mountain pass to cross today:  the Wolf Creek Pass over the Continental Divide, and at 10,387' our highest elevation of the day. We saw the rain clouds in the distance and once again stopped to put on raingear. The temperature dropped 20 degrees to 46 degrees at the top of the pass, and we shivered our way through the hairpin turns over the top of the pass until we dropped down to Pagosa Springs.

We're spending the night in Pagosa Springs, enjoying the views of the San Juan Mountains and walking through the town for dinner. The San Juan River runs right by our motel, and we ate dinner at the Riff Raff Brewing Company which is completely heated by geothermal heat from the world's deepest hot spring that gives the town it's name. Tomorrow we continue west through Colorado until we turn south toward Arizona, giving us one more day to enjoy Rocky Mountain motorcycling.

Here is today's route

Sunshine followed by rain from Durango to Boulder on the BMW

The battery on my camera quit about the same time the dark clouds that had been threatening for the past  hour decided to open up and pour rain on us.

Just another day on the BMW motorcycle traveling through Colorado.

We started this morning in Durango, at 6500' in the bottom of the Animas River Valley. When I went for a run along the river at 6:30 am the temperature was 44 degrees, and by the time we left at 8:15 it had warmed up to the low 50's. We headed east on Route 160 under clear, bright blue skies along the northern edge of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation and into the San Juan National Forest that covers over 1,800,00 acres.

We alternated between stick-straight roads with distant views of the Rockies to sweeping curves that wound through the forest. When we reached Pagosa Springs, a small town at 7,000' on the western edge of the Continental Divide, we came to the first of several areas of road construction. I didn't mind the slower speeds because the sun was bright and the scenery gorgeous.

Just past Pagosa Springs we started the curving trek up Wolf Creek Pass and the Continental Divide. When settlers first came through this area it would take 2-3 weeks to travel the 42 miles between Pagosa Springs and South Fork. Today we zoomed along the highway which narrows to 2 winding, twisting lanes on the eastern side of the Continental Divide.

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When we moved from Vermont to Arizona last July, we traveled the opposite direction on 160, and stopped at the Continental Divide to mark the journey. Today we kept going, sweeping down the eastern side of the pass into the Rio Grande National Forest.

At Del Norte we turned north onto Colorado Route 112, riding through the flat farmland in the San Luis Valley.

The distant mountains were only a dark smudge in the distance, but as we headed north on Route 285 we knew we would be riding through these mountains before the end our trip today. We stopped for lunch at the quirky Coyote Cantina just outside Buena Vista and sat outside in the courtyard to enjoy the sunshine and temperatures that had warmed into the 70's.

Our optimism about a sunny day came to a crashing halt less than 30 minutes after getting back on the BMW after lunch as the puffy white clouds turned dark gray, the wind picked up, the temperature dove toward 60 and we felt the first drops of rain. We stopped and put on our raingear and watched the clouds continue to build over the mountains as we rode through the Arkansas River Valley.

By the time we reached Kenosha Pass at 10,000', we were riding in and out of rain with little hope of seeing the sun again today. The traffic built the closer we came toward metropolitan Denver, not unexpected on Friday afternoon of the Labor Day weekend holiday. The combination of rain and traffic made this my least favorite section of today's 390 miles.

We ended the day walking down Pearl Street in Boulder with Duncan and Nate, making plans to spend the next two days with them. Monday we turn southwest toward Arizona and home, taking a different route and looking forward to new sights. Preferably, with sunshine.