It had been a wonderful visit; too short, but it was good to see my friends! I bade Terry and Claudia farewell and headed north. One thing I have learned about Colorado in the few visits I have made here is that this is the land of the amazingly fit. Less than a mile north of Boulder I came upon the first couple of cyclist .... headed BACK into town and it was shortly after 7:00 am!! A little further on there was a double pace line with about a dozen in each line, moving along at a good clip of what looked to be about in the mid-twenties. I wondered how far they were going and envied them for the good fortune of a wonderful morning!
They truly are serious about cycling here. This main road has shoulders almost as wide as the driving lane for the cyclist and once in while I passed folks riding three abreast with a decent safety margin from the vehicular traffic.
When I turned onto Left Hand Canyon Road I was greeted by even more bicycles. As promised, this proved to be a beautiful winding climb to Ward through a valley with sheer cliffs on both sides populated by a conifer I cannot name. Every now and then I saw clumps of a variety of Ponderosa pine that is easily recognizable to me because of its flaky tan bark .... I was happy to be able to name something more than a red rock!
Left Hand Canyon ended at Ward which is a community trapped someplace in the past. There was a time when the roads here were dominated by brands from the big three automakers and almost every driveway in this little town bore testament to that era. It was like a museum of cars on blocks. To call this town scruffy would be generous. You could invent the absolutely most amazing razor in the world and even if you offered to pay people to use them you would not find takers here!
It is a different way of life and I am pretty sure whatever happens in the rest of the world neither matters nor permeates through to the locals.
Up on the Peak-to-Peak the pace picked up a little and there were easy sweepers taking me through upland pine forest mixed with what I think were Aspen (white bark deciduous tree with little leaves?)
Along the Peak-to-Peak road I caught a glimpse of what awaited me in the park.
Shortly after passing through Allenspark I turned off the main road to the southernmost entrance to east side of RMNP. The ranger at the gate told me that I had a two mile ride on an unpaved road to the trail head and he wondered if I was okay with that on this bike. He must be used to seeing the BMW GS that is purpose-built for unpaved roads and forest tails. He raised a skeptical eyebrow at my assurances and waved me on by.
The road was actually pretty good. I have been on some pretty nasty rock-strewn and muddy roads on this bike and this one was a far cry from any of those. It was a pleasant little ride into the forest, part of the way alongside a bubbling mountain stream. For those out there on straight-pipe Harley’s I will let you know that my nice quiet bike allowed me to enjoy the sound of that stream as I rode by.
At the trail head a couple of the rangers gathered around the bike and we chatted for a few minutes about traveling and I got some good information from them on the things to see in the rest of the park. They did let me know that I was missing a lot by not hiking any of the trails but I assured them that I would be back. One of the rangers was a retired man from Santa Fe New Mexico who came up here in the summer to work as a forest ranger because he loved being out in the wilderness and among people who appreciated and enjoyed the forest.
On the way to wild basin I noticed a reflection in the water of a little pond.
This is a parking space on a camping site in the Wild Basin area. Should I choose to camp on my next visit here, this would be my "garage". Somehow, I don't think this is what the engineers who developed this bike had in mind when they designed it but, I can confidently say it is up to the task!
I left that helpful and friendly group of folks and continued north towards Estes Park.
Just south of Estes Park I stopped at Lilly Lake for a couple of photos before descending into town. I stopped by the information building to pick up area information for a friend back in Cleveland. She and her husband travel to cool locations and bring back some of the most amazing photographs. He is a very talented photographer with an excellent eye for a good picture and I would put his work up against any National Geographic photographer. If they make it up here to hike the back country I will be begging to see the photos that come from that trip!!
There are two way across the top end of the park. One is the main road, Trail Ridge Road, and, the other is Old Fall River Road. No prizes for guessing which one I chose. I anticipated that most folks would stick to the paved road and I would pretty much have this one to myself.
Oh, how wrong I was!! It was rougher than the road to Wild Basin trail head but nothing that was any threat or challenge to the bike. I soon caught up to two other BMW’s and what looked like a Suzuki multi-terrain bike chugging along behind a short line of cars. We putzed along and the only challenge was the sharp hairpin turns on the switchbacks. The gearing on my bike is designed for the open road so I had to goose the clutch in order to get around the corners. And then the cars slowed down even more. While it was relatively cool in the low 70’s the engine temperature on my bike started to climb way above normal. After about ten minutes of this the two BMW’s ahead of me pulled over in the shade and I was behind the Suzuki. The cars kept stopping and then creeping along. I can understand doing that if there was something to see but on one side there was a rock face and the other dense trees. There were no wide vistas or spectacular views here folks and it seemed to me that they were going that slow just for the hell of it.
Anyone who rides motorcycle knows that things get dicey when you are going really slowly, add to that loose stones and pebbles, rutted close-to-full-lock and somewhat sand and silt-covered corners and the degree if difficulty is dialed up by an order of magnitude. That, in addition to the soaring temperature of the engine on my mind, took my building full head of steam past the limit and I went around the Suzuki, nudged up to the left side of the trailing car with my left turn signal on and (this is a narrow one way road on which you cannot fit two cars side by side) when the driver saw me there he instinctively pulled to the right and I went by him. The next couple of cars must have noticed strange movement in their mirrors and they also moved aside and I was soon back to a more reasonable pace! This bike has a high performance engine and is happiest in the top third of the rev range; this engine does not like to be lugged in first gear!
A little way up the road I caught up to another group of cars crawling along and they too stopped for no apparent reason!! There was less room on this part of the road and a sharp drop to my left but I had totally HAD IT by now and inched by with pebbles displaced by my left foot careening down the cliff a couple of hundred feet. After I passed the offending vehicle I took off leaving in my wake flying pebbles and a cloud of dust. As I approached the summit the road passed above the tree line and opened up a little bit so I just passed the slow cars without bothering to slow down. By the time I got to the Alpine Visitor Center I was significantly more than supremely agitated. I was also hot, sweaty, dusty, hungry and thirsty. There was a trail leading up to a view point about a quarter mile from the visitor center and I wanted to go up there but I thought it best to first get a meal and settle back down into a more leisurely frame of mind. I got a pulled pork sandwich and a cup of chicken noodle soup – nothing like chicken noodle soup to soothe the soul.
The view out of the visitor center cafeteria was spectacular and as I sat there munching away, with the distance of a little time since my mad dash up the last half of he climb, I contemplated the happenings and realized that most people who drive cars don’t understand motorcycles and they really had no idea that by crawling along at a snails pace they were making it hard for the bikes behind them.
I rode through this meadow soon after entering the RMNP
This is a shot of the same meadow from a higher elevation.
I was feeling better after eating and I walked over to the visitor center to see if I could glean some more information on the park. The ranger who helped me out was really friendly and informative. I asked about winter up there and he showed me photos of the first clearing of the season and only the peak of the roof on the windward side (about 20 feet tall) showed through the snow. The rest of the building was buried in an enormous snow bank! Hmmm ...... that’s why this road is closed in the winter!
I took the walk up to the summit and I had to stop three times to catch my breath! The signpost at the top told me that I was over 12,000 feet above sea level ...... sheesh, no wonder I was winded!!!! I spoke for a few minutes with a retiree from New England, snapped a few photos and started heading back down. I was walking along with a couple from Florida and I told them that I sounded like an asthmatic whale with a semi-plugged blow hole on the way up and the wife said she wished she had walked up with me because she too had wheezed her way up.
A little further down I was stopped by two brothers who asked about my riding gear. They were from Denver and just out and about for a nice day’s ride. As we got done chatting one of them looked up the path and then let out a long and loud, and I mean LOUD fart. The other dude stood there like it was nothing so I waited until he was done, signaled by a deep and satisfied sigh. With a totally straight face I said that is a sincere compliment to the chef. They both cracked up and wished me a good and safe ride as they turned to head up the path. I laughed all the way down.
Back at the parking lot I stopped to chat with a guy who had just ridden his bicycle up – there were probably a couple dozen bicycles at any given time with more constantly arriving and departing – and he told me they had ridden up 11,000 vertical feet in a couple of hours. Here I was wheezing from a quarter-mile relatively flat walk to the summit and these guys freakin’ rode their bicycle up here!! There was a guy up at the summit who had also ridden up and his legs were amazingly vascular at rest and I imagine they would look like they were wrapped in ropes once he got warmed up! As I mentioned earlier, Colorado is the land of the amazingly fit. All through the day along Trail Ridge Road and other roads in the park I would see these folks conquering the mountains in what appeared to be relative ease!! I can’t wait to get back on my bicycle when I get home!! I won’t be able to ride like these guys but I will have fun all the same!
This was the view looking to the right out of the windows at the cafeteria of the visitor center.
Okay, let's see if this works. Above is information on the view in the photo below. See if you can accurately name the mountains.
These are the mountains you are supposed to be naming
This is a view of the Alpine Visitor Center from half way up to the 12,000 foot marker.
His companion had lived on a ranch and spent many years riding horses and this was her first time ever on a motorcycle. She had been nervous the day before but today she was much more relaxed and thoroughly enjoying herself. I suggested that maybe it would soon be time for here to move to the front of the bike and she seemed to take that into consideration. It turned out that he was originally from the Cleveland area and he gave me his email address and I promised to email him that night and send him the photo I had taken of him and his companion. Before I took off he wanted a picture of me and her so I told him he would have to email it to me when he received and replied to my email.
This and the photo below are taken along Trail Ridge Road
With that, I was off on my way. I rode into Estes Park to gas up and then, back on Trail Ridge Road, I took a left on Bear Lake Road to ....... yup, you got it, Bear Lake! About half a mile down there was a meadow with a herd of about 100 elk not far off a road that led to a camp ground. Cars lined the road above the heard and there were dozens of people down in the meadow with their cameras. There was a stream between the people and the herd so I too walked down to snap a couple of photos.
I had been warned that the parking lot at Bear Lake was full and the best way to get up there was by shuttle bus but on of the advantages of traveling to places of interest by motorcycle is that they normally have special parking for bikes and such was the case here. Bear Lake was another pond but, except for the tons of people and tour groups, it was a peaceful place. As I was leaving there was a young ranger struggling to put up a sign and I stopped to give her pointers. I think it was the first time she had laid hands on a ratchet wrench so I asked her if she would mind me showing her rather than trying to describe how it works. She happily agreed and in a couple of minutes we had the sign securely hung. She thanked me profusely and wished me a great day. As I walked past the shuttle bus stop another ranger asked if that was my BMW and when I said indeed it was he told me that he owned the Gold Wing next to it. We chatted a bit about bikes and then duty called him. Before he left he warned of an elk jam and told me to be safe.
A good sized heard of elk not far from Estes Park.
The treat that is Bear Lake. Clear enough to see to the bottom and still enough to reflect the surrounding tree line.
I have to be honest and say that the first thing that popped into my mind was some sort of mountain jamboree but after the gears spun for a couple of minutes I realized he meant that traffic would be held up because elk were either close to or on the road and people stopped to take photos and stare without consideration for the traffic building up behind them. I ran into my first elk jam about ten minutes later. It was only after the car in front of me moved on that I realized the closest elk was nibbling on a tree about five feet from the side of the road. I could hear her nip the sprigs off the tree she was that close!! I decided that it was a little too close for comfort to take a photo so I moved on. A few more miles up the road, my next elk jam. I was thankful for this one; it was an absolutely enormous male with a huge rack (not sure if, on elk, they are known as antlers or horns). It was only about twenty feet off the road and with each ooh and aah from motorists it would stand in full profile with its magnificent head held high in a pose of regal pride befitting beast that is surely king of the forest! I did get off my bike and walk back to take a photo in the probably false sense of comfort I found in having a line of cars between me and him.
A little further up the road there was a cow/she elk on the upper side of the road in a visible state of agitation and some people had taken the opportunity to get out of their cars to take photos. On getting up to the action I realized what was going on. The she elk had crossed the road but its very young calf had chickened out and was darting back and forth on the lower side of the road mewing (no, now meow like a cat, mew like new). I got nervous and hoped that the car in front of me would move on which, after letting a couple of people cross the road, it did and I followed in hot pursuit.
One thing you absolutely do not do is get between an animal and its agitated offspring. When that animal is a two thousand pound elk, pay special heed to that pearl of wisdom! The folks out of their cars felt a natural concern for the calf but what they didn’t realize was that being out there between the mother and the calf put them in grave danger. As I pulled away I saw in my rear view mirror that the elk took advantage of the break in traffic behind me to jump across the road with a single landing on the centerline right about the spot where I had been waiting just moments ago! Phew!!
The one thing with photographs is they are not good at revealing scale. This bull elk is larger than the average work horse but not quite as big as a full size draft horse. That's plenty big!
A look down at a valley on the way west from Estes Park
This is another valley view that pretty accurately captures ridge, after ridge, after ridge of mountians.
Okay, enough excitement for the day. I stopped a couple of times to take some more photos and then made tracks for Steamboat Springs. The road descended past Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain Lake and Lake Granby, each a postcard perfect blue hemmed in by mountains in the background.
I jumped on route 40 and rolled on the gas, determined to make it to Steamboat before sundown, which I barely did.
I have been booking my hotels on this trip using www.hotwire.com where I have been able to find good deals on two to three star hotels. This was billed as a three star hotel but when I got there I learned it was a timeshare condo. The condo owner’s approach to landscaping and grounds maintenance was, shall we say, lackadaisical. The exterior of the buildings evidenced a rather light hand and feeble effort in aesthetic attention and the same could be said for the grass and shrubbery. Being that Steamboat Springs raison d’etre is skiing it is understandable that this is the case because in the winter all that pesky grass and those darned shrubs are hidden beneath a couple of feet of snow and the winter has a way of masking the true condition of buildings.
The inside of the condo was not too bad, though. It was a two bedroom apartment with a full kitchen (dishes, pots and pans and all) living room, two bedrooms with a master with its own bathroom! The one thing that got me going, though, was if you wanted to use the wireless internet you had to pay $10 and fully reconfigure your wireless settings. A silly thing in a time when the vast majority of hotels offer this service for free!
Slightly agitated I went for dinner to the restaurant behind the condos, which, the desk clerk promised would be really good. Being a holiday weekend and this being north central Colorado, it was understaffed and somewhat disorganized. I qualify that by saying this being north central Colorado because the general approach to life here is that lifestyle takes priority over everything else and if members of your staff choose to take the holiday off, or call off, then, that is just how it is. Anyway, the food was way over priced for the quality ...... imagine going to Applebee’s and paying thirty bucks for a grilled fish entrée!! This meal, eaten at the bar was a far, far cry from the one I had enjoyed in the company of friends just one day before!
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