Colorado

Day 11 – Awestruck

America 2014

From New Castle, Colorado to Cortez, Colorado.  Route 70 West to Route 141 South. A totally amazing road with over a hundred miles of two-lane open-road between shear mountain walls, river beds, cliffs that overhang the road, and virtually nobody else there.

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You could stop in the middle of the road and sit down on the road with no worries.  Amazing.

Winding curves at 50 mph.  This is motorcycle bliss.

Then, there was a section where you come around a corner and you are looking down a hill at a straight-ahead road that must be 20 miles long and nobody on that, either.7-12_mirror-a

We check the weather every morning, so we saw that there was a chance of thunderstorm in Cortez for mid-afternoon.  We were about 30 miles out when, in the distance, over the mountains, we saw dark clouds and lightning.  We looked at each other – and punched it.

We pulled into the motel parking lot just in time.

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Another 281 miles today.  A beautiful ride!

harley road trip colorado

Tomorrow – Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.

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Day 10 – Colorado

America 2014

Today started out very nice.  Woke up in Pueblo, Colorado – breakfast at IHop. Yum!

We started the day on Route 25 to head to Denver, Colorado.  We picked up Route 470 around Denver, to Route 70 West and then through the Rocky Mountains.

Wow!  Unbelievable!

Until….the thunderstorms.

Rainstorm

double Rainbow

We had to stop several times due to poor visibility.  We did, however, carry on on our way to New Castle, Colorado.

It is difficult to describe in words what riding through these mountains is like.  It makes you feel very small in the universe. It also makes you realize the acheivments of man, being able to build roads through somehing created by something so much bigger.

We also went on a section of Interstate 70 called the Glenwood Canyon.

Glenwood Canyon

Again – Unbelievable!

Surrounded by stone.  Yet, “a river runs through it”.  The Colorado River runs along I70 for portions of the road.  Not other words to describe.  Just Unbelievable!

sunset in colorado on a harley motorcycle

Mileage-wise, not a long day – 282 miles, but time-wise a really long day with all of the stops.

road trip harley colorado

Tomorrow we head to Cortez, Colorado.

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Day 9 – First Mechanical Hiccup

America 2014

The day didn’t start out very well.  We were about 2 hours north on Route 385 towards our destination, Pueblo, Colorado.  Colton’s bike snapped a pinch bolt on one of the front forks.  Most of the oil that fills the forks ended up all over Colton and the motorcycle.  We had to backtrack about 50 miles to Tripp Harley Davidson in Amarillo, Texas. (It was like we were never, ever going to get out of Texas!) We got to Tripp around 1pm and didn’t end up leaving until 5 o’clock.  At least we got to have a rest and grab some lunch at Hooters.

We were still determined to get to Pueblo today!

From Amarillo, we were able to find a backroad (Route 1061).  That cut out some of Route 40 which we had taken earlier that day.  What is amazing is that the roads that we consider to be backroads have speed limits of 70 mph. Those roads have nothing on them.

Anyway, we made it back to Route 385 and connected to Route 87 to Route 25 North to Pueblo.

We enjoyed rding through the northeast corner of New Mexico where there was seriously beautiful scenery.Mountains

Finally got to Colorado.

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Still, a 500 mile day.

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Tomorrow, we look forward to seeing the Rockies.

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