Day 2 - Pagosa Springs to Montrose

We began our day with some bike trouble. Dad's bike wouldn't start when we were leaving the hotel so Steve gave him a push start down the hill. We got it rumbling and we were off to Durango. Once in town, we headed to the local Harley dealer where they took his bike in to the service department to put in a new battery and take a look at things. We had an hour to kill while they worked on his bike, so we all headed in to the historic downtown of Durango to check out the shops and have some lunch. We got the call that the bike was done and back to the dealer we went. We wound up spending 2-1/2 hours in Durango when we really hadn't planned on stopping there at all. Once we got his bike back, we headed out to Mesa Verde to check out the cliff dwellings.

What a beautiful drive in to the park! The road was a little bumpy and grooved for several miles due to construction, but the view more than made up for it. There were hairpin turns and sweeping turns as we headed up the side of the mesa. When we made it to the visitors center, 15 miles in, we discovered that Dad's bike had been cutting out on him the whole drive in. Our resident bike mechanic, Steve, took a peek and had the bike back up and running in no time. We took in one of the cliff dwellings and walked the 1/2 mile trail down to see it up close. By the time we were done there it was 4pm and we still had 140 miles to drive to Montrose. Off we went, back down the 20 miles to the exit of the park and then began heading North from Cortez.

That drive took us up through the San Juan mountains where, along with amazing mountain vistas, the weather also dropped about 30 degrees so we pulled over in a little town called Rico to put our leather jackets, gloves, etc. on to keep warm. Quite a quaint little town, with two old men sitting on the front stoop watching our activities, and another man walking down the street with nothing but a towel on. Interesting. Once we were all geared up, we continued on up to Telluride where we stopped for a quick break. What a beautiful place. If I ever win the lottery I'm buying myself a piece of property up there with all the rich folk. As we were leaving and waiting to pull out on the main road, we had a little visitor along side of us. A coyote decided he was going to cross the road and we were waving down the cars to let them know he was there. He made it without getting hit, and so did the three deer who decided to cross there too.

At this point the sun is beginning to go down and we still have another 60 or so miles to go. We got stuck at some road construction for a bit and then it was a race to get through the mountains before dark. We didn't quite make it but Mike, who has been leading for the last two days, did a great job of pushing us through and leading us through the dark roads that had deer crossing signs everywhere. We didn't have any deer mishaps but Dad almost hit a dog that ran across the road in front of him. Yikes! We all made it to the hotel in one piece, rolling in around 9:45pm. What a long day. You can click here to see pictures from our second day of riding.