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 :)