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Here's a link to our new blog, following our adventures down the Great River Road and up the Natchez Trace Parkway. http://riverroadnatcheztrace.blogspot.com/

Post-ride reflections

It's now Sunday and everyone has made it home safe and sound. Dad and Sandy were the last to roll in to Ohio today after dropping Steve off in Illinois yesterday. In saying our goodbyes to each other it was pretty evident that we all had a great time on this trip and look forward to more in the near future.

Looking back at our four days on the road there isn't anything I would have changed. Even though we had 100 degree heat, mechanical problems, night time driving through the mountains, rain and quarter-size hail, we all had good spirits all the way through. The beauty of the Rockies made for an outstanding trip and traveling with my family was the icing on the cake. We're all spread out across the country and being able to get together and see everyone for a week and share something we all love is definitely something to be cherished.

I guess that brings this blog to a close. We enjoyed putting this together and we hope you enjoyed following us through our travels. We'll keep you all posted on our next adventure.

Day Four Videos

I finally found some time on the trip home to make a couple of final day videos. We found out, at the end of our day, that I had left a metal clip hanging on the camera and all of our videos had an annoying clicking sound in them. So I went deeper into Windows Movie Maker software and added a soundtrack. It's harder than you think it is to find good motorcycle movie music!

Here is the first half....


And here is the second!

Day 4 - Winter Park to Colorado Springs

Day 4, our last day of the trip. We woke up in sunny Winter Park and headed over to McDonalds to use their wi-fi connection and upload our info from the day before. Afterwards, we packed up and headed down the road toward Rocky Mountain National Park. On the way we drove by Lake Granby through the Arapaho National Forest. It was absolutely lovely.

We made it to the Rocky Mountain National Park, which was Steve's main interest on this trip. I think it may have been the most beautiful spot in our four day ride as we drove through the forests up to the highest point at 12,183 feet. We made a stop at the Continental Divide, which was the one thing I wanted to do, and talked with a nice volunteer ranger. He told us that with every 1000ft you climb in elevation, the terrain changes as if you were going 600 miles north. We certainly saw that as we made our way to the top and found ourselves in the tundra. I can't say enough about how amazing the views were up there and I'm sure the pictures won't do it justice. The roads up at the top had no guard rails at times so it was sheer drop offs down the side of the mountain. We saw Moose off in the snow and a deer sitting right by the side of the road watching us go by. It was a wonderful ride!

Once we headed down out of the mountains and out of the park, we stopped in Estes Park for a bite to eat and a visit to the Stanley Hotel. Many movies have been filmed here, including The Shining mini-series, Dumb and Dumber, etc. so we walked around and checked it out. There were some rain clouds and thunder but we only had a few sprinkles while we were in town. However, the clouds all around made us change our plans of riding back to Colorado Springs via the mountains and we thought we'd take a quicker route back by shooting down the highway from Denver. Boy were we wrong.....

The drive east from Estes Park was really nice and twisty, but we hit rush hour traffic as we got in to Boulder and Denver and spent what seemed like eternity sitting in traffic and waiting at stop lights. That's not fun in a car and it's really not fun on a motorcycle. Mike and Jim checked the maps and re-routed us so that from Castle Rock we were on a two lane highway in to Colorado Springs. We drove through some really lovely rolling country side which was a nice way to end our ride afer all of the headache and hassle of the city traffic.

That's it! We all made it home safe and sound, went out for a nice dinner and then headed to our homes/motels and crashed. It was a great trip and so much fun to have all of us together riding. Now, where will we go next year? Hmmmmmmm, I wonder....

Click here for pictures from Day 4. Enjoy!

Day Three Videos

I have a couple of videos of our foray into Black Canyon. What a fantastic place for a motorcycle ride! As always, more videos to come when we actually find time to edit them.

The first video is of our trip down into Black Canyon.


The Second is of our trip back up!

Day 3 - Montrose to Winter Park

Boy, where do I begin. The first half of our day was fantastic. It was warm, sunny and we had beautiful blue skies. 20 miles up the road from our hotel we pulled in to the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park. At the entrance gate we split off from Sandy (the jeep driver) and we headed down the VERY twisty road to the bottom of the canyon. Sandy headed off to the visitors center to wait for our return. The road down to the bottom of the canyon was a 16% grade descent with hairpin turns and it was so much fun! We've got some great video of the ride down and up which will be uploaded later. Once we were back up to the rim of the canyon, we hooked back up with Sandy and checked out some more overlooks. After a couple of hours in the park it was time to head on to the rest of our day trip.

We headed East and drove through the beautiful Blue Mesa Reservoir area on our way to Gunnison for lunch. During lunch and while we were re-fueling in Gunnison, we noticed there were some storm clouds south of us. Thankfully, we said, we are heading East. Whew! So, East we go. We wound in and out of mountains, twisting and curving back and forth and changing directions frequently. Now we're heading toward the storm clouds. Now we're heading away from those dark clouds. Towards them, away from them, towards them, away from them...you get the picture. We had to stop for road construction on Monarch Pass at which point we all put on warmer clothes. Shortly after traffic started to move again, Mike lost his first item of the day. I was third in line and had to dodge his cup holder and soda that were bouncing down the road. Oh well, not too big of a loss, we stop to regroup and head back out. Almost to our turn off, we begin to see that the entire sky to our left is really, really dark. I mean super dark...like midnight. I'm not kidding they were some nasty looking storm clouds. Thankfully we're still heading East. That is until Mike turns on his left turn signal and we make our turn to head North. Oh crap... We drive for a bit and then pull over to put our rain gear on. As we're getting that all sorted it begins to rain. We hop on our bikes and pull out to see if we can get past the storm. Not long after we start driving we begin getting pelted with hail. Ouch! Ding dang it, my leg! Ow, that one hit my finger! The hail was the size of a quarter and it really stinkin' hurt when it hit, and it was hitting us everywhere! We pulled over again to wait it out. Sandy popped the hatch for the Jeep and we all went around the back and huddled underneath the hatch to protect us somewhat from the crazy hail. After about 10 minutes of standing under the jeep hatch, somebody realizes that about 200 ft back on the other side of the road are picnic shelters. We walk across the street and wait under those. The hail actually didn't stop but it eventually did slow down and get smaller. We made a break for it and headed North to get out of the storm clouds. We made it about 20 miles later and finally dried off. What an adventure!

So then, we head on up to Leadville, the highest city in Colorado at 10,000 some odd feet, and get fuel, warm up a little, change our wet socks, etc. We continue wearing our rain gear the rest of the day because rain clouds are everywhere around us. We keep on going North until we pick up Interstate 70. This is where Mike loses his second item of the day, his license plate. He lost it right on the on ramp and about 4 miles down the road Jim pulled in front and pulled us off at the next exit. Steve and Jim headed back to see if they could find his license plate and arrived back about 10 minutes later with it in hand. Good find and good eye Jim for spotting the loss! We zip tied his plate back on to the bike and continued down the interstate. We went through the Eisenhower Tunnel which is 2 miles long. Lots of honking horns in that one, let me tell you :) Then we turned North again on Hwy 40 for the last 30 miles in to Winter Park.

At this point we're hitting dusk again and we have a mountain pass to drive through before we get to our motel. Sandy isn't a big fan of driving the passes and with it being dark it was even worse. We very slowly made our way through the mountains and over the pass so everyone could stay together. Hairpin turns both up and down the pass, in the dark, with poor road striping so nothing glowed in our headlights. Slow was good. We finally pulled in to town and Steve led us right past our hotel and pulled in to another one down the street. Oops, he had the wrong info. We turned around and pulled in to the correct motel, checked in and all went inside to warm up. Dry socks, dry pants (my rain pants had a hole in them and I had a wet crotch) and time to rest. Aaaahhh.

Now, finishing up our report for the day and then off to bed. You can click here to see pictures from Day 3.

Tomorrow is our last day of the trip and we head back to Colorado Springs. We'll update again tomorrow night. Good night to all :)

Day Two Videos

Okay, you're all right. That first day video was way too long. Today I'm trying something a little different. I'm going to start posting a few smaller videos of the days ride

Here is one where I tried to show the whole team


Here is another one showing a couple scenes from our day