Thursday, September 23, 2021
The next morning it would be awhile before we could leave, so Dave did some chain maintenance on his and my bike. While I took care of a work problem using the hotel lobby computer. It was annoying having to do it, but it was a problem of my own making so I'm glad I had the opportunity to fix it. We finally had to leave the hotel as checkout was 11am. We ferried Tim and his gear back to the shop and waited. We walked down to Sprockets Burgers for lunch, which was good but a bit overpriced. Walked back to the shop and waited some more.
The problem turned out to be the PCM controller which got wet during the first water crossing back at Rock Creek (we guess). The shop rigged up a toggle switch that Tim could turn on when riding slow which worked fine and got him back on the road safely. But it took a lot longer than any of us thought and it was 3:30pm before we actually left town. We rode back to Buena Vista and stocked up on dinner food for the evening. Because it was so late, we decided to camp at Cottonwood Hot Springs
which we arrived at a little before 5pm. We got our tents set up at an RV site and got dinner going. We weren't too hungry so it was a snack dinner of fried bread and blueberry pound cake.
The camping fee included access to the hot springs which we took advantage of next. Man, was that awesome! The hottest pool was really hot. I don't know how much but we tried them all and that top one was melting us down. One thing we also dodged here was rain in Buena Vista. We missed it by about 20 minutes and it poured in town. Only a few sprinkles at the Hot Springs. This was a nice reward after losing a whole day in Salida.
Friday, September 24, 2021
We're back on the route this morning, but we didn't exactly get off early. The road over Cottonwood Pass is paved, so not really a big deal. We stopped at the pass for a picture around 10:15am. We passed the turnoff to the Taylor Park Trading Post since we didn't need fuel and were anxious to make up for yesterday. We had three significant water crossings this morning, but all were easy. We definitely have more confidence now that we've done a few of these.
A little after 11am we rolled into Tincup which is an interesting little town at around 10,000 feet. No paved roads here. We figured they must get a ton of snow every year. The houses were very nicely kept up. Makes me wonder how much people come through here. If you wanted away from it all and
didn't mind getting snowed in, this would be a good place. Leaving there we headed up the road to Cumberland Pass. The road is easy riding and the scenery is pretty nice. We stopped for the inevitable pictures. Down the other side we rode through Pitkin which is even nicer than Tincup. Both of these towns impressed me with the care they take to keep their town nice looking.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
