Monday, June 23, 2014
Well, the festival was over and it was time to head north. But first we had to head south. You see, my brother Dave and friend Tim Pontius had left three days earlier to join us on our Colorado riding. They had their own great ride, enjoying the Bonneville Salt Flats and Arches National Park on their way south. They had spent the night in Moab, Utah and were riding south to meet us in Cortez. Now, my brother has a (mostly deserved) reputation for being late. But this time he had a good reason - he and Tim wanted to ride through Arches National Park, and you can't do that quickly. On the other hand, Bill, Dan, and I were late too. Finally though we got together for lunch around 1pm.
The plan was to ride US550,
The Million Dollar Highway and then get as far as we could and camp. A few years ago I bought a set of Butler maps which show you what are the best motorcycle roads to take. 550 is one of them and rightly so. Climbing to nearly 12000 feet over about 62 miles, it's a feat of engineering carved out of rock with no guardrails in places. But what a great set of curves! What scenery!
Of course ever since we entered Colorado I've been impressed with the state's beauty. Because of our late meeting, we only got as far as Montrose, which as far as Bill and I were concerned, we'd seen way too much of! But from this point of the trip on, we were not going to be on any time schedule. We'd ride where we wanted and stop when we needed to. So this day's mileage was only 212 miles. Being in town we decided pizza was in order, so in a first for me on a motorcycle trip, we ordered to have pizza delivered. Pretty fun! Before we called it a night we gathered round the maps and decided where to go.
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.
