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.

Day One Video

We started out with very lofty ideas on how we were going to present our videos. Background music, Narration, Titles and Credits.....it all sounds soooo good! Welcome to reality, here I am trying to finish editing together some excerpts from todays ride.....a fantastic day of riding I might add......and it is now after 2:00 in the morning! Lofty just flew out the window, meet my new best friend...Good enough. I hope you all enjoy what I did manage to put together. I know it isn't the best quality video, but the scenery more than makes up for that. I can't wait for tomorrows ride! On that note, I am off to bed!!!

Day 1 - Colorado Springs to Pagosa Springs

Day 1 is complete! We began the day at the Pikes Peak Harley dealer so Jim and I could pick up our rental bikes. After trying to convince them to give Jim a pink bike and getting nowhere, we hopped on our normal colored bikes and headed out of town. We had a gorgeous day of riding, though the temperature could have been turned down a couple notches. It was 90 to 100 degrees for the majority of our day and it only cooled off when we rode through shady sections of the National Forests. We traveled through several different terrains, beginning with very rocky, desert type mountains, then we hit some flat, very straight stretches of road through the valley and then back in to mountains where we started to see lots more trees. About half way between Salida, where we stopped for lunch, and Pagosa Springs, we stopped at this great little rest area for a break from the bikes and and a wonderful rest in the shade of some trees. The grass was so lush we all layed down and thought perhaps this would be as good as any hotel we could find. Well, everyone except for Dad who needs a bed for his ol' back. After our restful stop, we headed on through the Rio Grande National Forest as well as the San Juan National Forest on our way in to Pagosa Springs. After we checked in to our hotel, we caught up with Jim's daughter Amanda and her husband Justin and got to see his brand new granddaughter, Cadence. She was darling and I got to pinch her little baby toes :) That was the end to our day.....well, except for coming back to the room to type this up and upload all of our images to the internet for you all to enjoy. We saw some truly amazing scenery today and you can see all of our pictures by clicking here.

Until tomorrow.....

Assembling the team

We've all arrived in Colorado, with Dad, Steve and Sandy pulling in with their trailered bikes around 2pm this afternoon. Today was an especially exciting day as we attended Mike's graduation from the University of Phoenix in downtown Denver. It was a great ceremony and watching him recieve his Bachelors degree in Business Management was truly emotional. We of course hooted and hollered as loudly as we could to show our support. Way to go Mike!

The afternoon was spent with everyone gathered at Mike and Dee Dee's house in Colorado Springs for a fabulous bbq, motorcycle rides for the kids, and s'mores over the campfire in the evening. It was a great start to the trip and a great celebration in Mike's honor. Click here to see pictures from the day.

Sunday will find us all sleeping in, enjoying the luxury of no morning commitments. We can finally all catch up on our sleep and prepare for our Monday morning departure.

Pre-ride preparations

Before I get in to our preparations for this trip, I'd just like to mention that this whole blog idea was inspired by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who are in the midst of their second amazing motorcycle trip called The Long Way Down. 15,000 miles across two continents. Actually, I guess you could count a weekend of watching their first adventure, The Long Way Round, on DVD in Steve's movie room as pre-ride prep work. It's a great thing to watch and I highly recommend it to all. Now on to our trip....

After Steve and I took our motorcycle trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway last year, I started complaining that I wanted some kind of helmet cam that would allow me to snap pictures without having to pull over, park and dig my camera out of my saddlebag. Life would be so grand if I could simply look at something and press a button on my helmet to capture the scene. So, when we started making plans for this year's trip we began researching our options.

There are actually many brands and types of helmet cams out there believe it or not, but they are all pretty expensive. As an alternative, Steve decided to try making a handlebar mount for his handheld camera, positioning it behind his windshield for protection. His first attempt was impressive and worked really well. I think he only made one adjustment for vibration purposes and then added a swivel mount and voila! He bought a 2gb memory stick for his camera and now he can take still pics and video of our travels! We plan on uploading some of this footage to the blog for your viewing pleasure.

Once Steve was able to shut me up about a helmet cam, he got to work on figuring out our route through the Rockies. He set out a nice pace of around 250 miles per day and the route is going to take us past some amazing scenery. After he determined our stopping points for each day, I kicked in to high gear and started researching places to stay. Because we're usually in the middle of nowhere on these rides, it's some times a challenge to hunt down and find out about all of the little mom & pop motels, etc. for our options. I research them, look for reviews, choose the best places and book all of our rooms in advance.

With the camera in place, the route set and the lodging booked, you would think we'd be all set. But Steve decided there was one more thing we needed so he went out and bought a GPS unit to mount on his handlebars. He can map out our whole route on this thing, complete with all of the gas stations along the way and more importantly, all of the Dairy Queens! Thanks Steve :)

Well, that's about all the pre-ride prep work we've done. We'll have to wing anything else that we've forgotten. As far as packing for the trip, everyone in my family takes care of that either the night before or the day of the trip. Speaking of which, I better go get packing myself since I fly out tomorrow.