376 miles on two roads from Colorado to Arizona

 Our route today was simple:  US 160 West from Pagosa Springs, Colorado to US 89 South to Flagstaff, Arizona. We started out at 8am with temperatures in the mid-50's and ended the day pushing 90 degrees. 160 West took us past Chimney Rock National Monument between Pagosa Springs and Durango.

An archaeological site that preserves hundreds of ruins from the Ancestral Puebloans who lived here over 1000 years ago, Chimney Rock is in the San Juan National Forest. Not far down the road we passed Mesa Verde, another site where the Ancestral Puebloans lived for over 700 years, building cliff dwellings that exist today. We celebrated as our odometer rolled over to 32,000 miles. 

In Durango, US 160 becomes the San Juan Skyway, twisting 236 miles through the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. We were only on this route for a few miles, continuing on 160 West while the scenic skyway turns off onto CO 184.

We rode through Cortez, just outside the Ute Mountain Tribal Park. The park is currently closed due to COVID, but we rode past Sleeping Ute Mountain. According to legend, the mountain is the sleeping Great Warrior God who battled evil, was hurt, and lay down falling into a deep sleep.

Until Cortez the scenery was green - irrigated fields of grass and hay and dark green pine trees on the mountain sides. Continuing west past Cortez brown is the dominant color as the desert takes over.

US 160 goes past the Four Corners Monument, the only place where four states meet: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. This is another casualty of COVID, closed by the Navajo Nation to minimize the spread of the disease. We saw several groups of horses today as we rode through the vast  Navajo Nation, and I wondered how they manage to survive on the scarce brown grass. The 2-lane paved highway stretches straight through the desert, only occasionally sweeping in wide turns.

We stopped in Kayenta for lunch at Subway, repeating our lunch stop the first day of our trip almost 2 weeks ago when we rode east on US 160. There aren't many places to stop and eat on the Navajo Nation so we made sure to take advantage of places we know are open. After lunch we continued west on US 160, riding through flat areas that stretched out to hazy cliffs in the far distance that alternated with high rock cliffs and craggy canyons.

We turned south on US 89 with long-distance views of the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, AZ, in front of us.

The temperature climbed and hovered around 90 degrees even as we climbed in elevation to about 7000' in Flagstaff. After 7 hours of travel today, we were ready for an air conditioned hotel room and an early dinner followed by a walk around busy downtown Flagstaff. Tomorrow we head home, finishing our 2-week trip through the Southwest.

A perfect day on the BMW motorcycle in Arizona and Colorado

As we were riding along Arizona 89, heading north from Flagstaff to our destination in Durango, Colorado, we rode through a vast expanse of high desert, where sediments deposited 200 million years ago in the Jurassic period look like sand dunes.

We're on our way to Boulder, Colorado, to visit our kids over the Labor Day weekend. We've been on these roads several times in the past year, yet we continue to enjoy the changing landscape. We started the day riding through tall, dense pine forests that covered the mountains on our way north to Flagstaff, then dropped down into a sandy brown desert that stretched for miles in front of us.

We turned east onto 160 into the Hopi and then the Navajo reservations and the landscape changed again into rocky, different colored buttes and mesas.

It was a perfect day to be on the BMW:  bright sun, blue skies, and temperatures in the 70's. We alternated between stretches of flat, straight road and areas where the pavement swept in wide curves around the canyons and mesas.

When we crossed into Colorado near the Four Corners, where Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah meet - the only location in the United States where four states meet - the landscape changed once again, this time into irrigated green fields backed by forest-covered mountains.

We rode through the Mancos Valley, past Mesa Verde national park where the Ancient Puebloans settled over 1000 years ago in cliff dwellings carved out of the sandstone. We're staying in busy Durango in the Animas River Valley, surrounded by the San Juan Mountains, where we spent the last night of a trip to Colorado in July. It was hot and sticky here in July, and today we enjoyed the cooler temperatures as the season changes from Summer to Fall.

Tomorrow we continue northeast to Boulder, riding through the Rocky Mountains. We're looking forward to steep climbs and winding descents - and to seeing Duncan and Nate!