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!