Colorado 2009 Part 2

Thursday July 23,2009

Dillon Co - Estes Park CO

Todays ride was a short ride in comparison to the past few days. About 175 miles or so. We slept in a bit and got a late start knowing we did not need to be in a big hurry. The plan was to be at Bill’s house in Estes Park around 2:00 PM. I had talked to Bill the evening before and he was going to ride the Old Fall River Road (more later on Fall River), in the morning and then be home around 2:00 to meet us. As plans go, the plans did not exactly go as planned. The hyperspace ride through the Johnson side of the Eisenhower Tunnel, the ride up Hwy 40 through Granby, lunch in Grand Lake, all of those well laid plans, fell into place as were they placed the evening before, however the ride through the park on Trail Ridge Road is where the plan was cleanly removed from its well laid tracks. It seems that the National Park Service, in it’s infinite wisdom, had determined that the the middle of the 3 or 4 busiest months of it’s operation would be the best time to repave the only road that runs through this area for hundreds of miles. A two hour delay was the result of this planning, which ultimately affected our plans and we pulled onto the bridge that crosses the Big Thompson River to Bill’s front drive at around 4:00 PM. Our Destination had been made, and the next few days we would add another BMW, a brand new G650GS to the F800GS and R1200GS that had just completed the journey from North Texas.

Friday July 24, 2009

Estes Park CO

Our First Day in Estes Park started off with a ride up the Old Fall River Road. The Old Fall River Road is a one way dirt road that travels from the north entrance of the park off of hwy 34. It used to be the only road that went to the top (which, by the way is only 12, 172 ft, the Trail Ridge road actually climbs to 12,223 ft - it is not marked in any way, so I don’t know if anyone is actually aware of this or not), now it is kind of a novelty, scenic road that travels to the top. It is a beautifully scenic, tree lined, river bordered, road of gravel switchbacks that slowly creeps it’s way 11 miles from the bottom of the park to the Alpine Visitor Center at the summit. When you get to the summit, there is the common tourist attracting gift shops, information centers, $2.37 bottles of water, and restaurant. There was even “Mr. Buckles”, a rather eccentric older gentleman who used to work at the Grand Lake Lodge before it shut down a couple years ago. Traveling up Old Fall River is a great ride, however I have to warn, it has a lot of traffic. Most of the auto traffic is courteous enough to pull aside and allow motorcycles to pass, however on occasion, you will get a Prius, or Hummer wannabe, who just not get it. Once you find the opportunity, you can fly past, but those opportunities are far and few between. The ride back down Trail Ridge from the top was much better than the day before as the road work was on the Grand Lake side, not the Estes Park side.

After our Old Fall River Road excursion, we headed out to Stove Prairie Road. Stove Prairie Road is a fantastic road for a sport bike, and having a dual sport, it was right up our alley. The only problem we had was that it started to rain. That tended to show us down a bit. The rain was scattered, and hence the wet roads were scattered. So we were able to ride some of the road as intended. Our intention was to ride Stove Prairie, then grab a quick afternoon snack a Hooters in Loveland, and then head back to Bill’s. Rush hour traffic in Ft. Collins and Loveland, more or less changed those plans and we ended up having dinner instead of a snack and headed back to Estes Park.

Saturday July 25, 2009

Estes Park

What a fantastic day of riding. Sometimes I don’t understand why every single individual who owns a motorcycle, does not own a dual sport. The weather was threatening to be less that cooperative today, so we got up a bit early to beat the afternoon showers that were posed to be eminent. A quick breakfast at Ed’s Cantina (served by my “muggs” our waitress), and we were on our way to Pierson Park. Bill had camped there a few times in the past, and we had driven my Xterra up a little bit of it several years ago, but a lot of the forest access road would be a first for all three of us. This was a fantastic off-road trail for 3 of BMW’s finest GS models. After the ride today, I am even more impressed with the off-road capabilities of the 1200, it easily ate up the rocky terrain. Perhaps not as easily as Gary’s F800 and Bill’s G650, but I was able to keep right with both of them. In fact there were times I had to stop and let them get a little ahead of me, not so much that the bike more suitable, but more because I have learned over the past few days of off-road riding that I need to keep the RPMs of the big boxer up and the momentum of the big bike moving. I can not creep up some of the terrain the lighter more capable bikes can take on. I have been watching Gary ride the 800 in our back country excursions for a few days now and have grown accustom to his and the bikes abilities, I was very impressed with Bill’s ability off-road - he took his newly acquired beemer up this mountain road like he had been doing it for years. We spent a few hours riding up and around the mountain, ended up making a big loop and headed back to Bill’s house.

After we took a quick break back at the house, we headed out to an unknown road we had found on a map in one of the shops we made our way through a day or two earlier. All we knew was that there was a hiking trail head called Cow Creek. The trail head was just down the road from the Gem Lake Trail Head. A few years ago, I had hiked up to Gem Lake and kind of had an idea of where the road would be if we knew which road it was off of. We did a bit of research, and figured it was off of the Devils Gulch road. Devils Gulch is a great motorcycle road between Estes Park and Drake that runs through Glen Haven. This was perfect. We found the road we were looking for, it was really just a graded gravel road, but scenic none the less. Gary and I had switched bikes so it was interesting to ride the 800 for a while. After riding the gravel road, we switched back to our own bikes and hit Devils Gulch. Once we got to the road, Bill looked over at me and said, “tear your ass”, I obliged, Gary followed in quick pursuit and we downshifted our way through the hairpin turns. The only thing holding us back being a Honda and a Harley.

After straightening out all of Devil Gulch’s twists and turns, the next item on the agenda was to make a quick visit to the BMW dealership in the Ft. Collins/Loveland area, and a quick lunch. While the guy behind the counter seemed pretty cool, the dealership itself seemed to lack the character of the dealership we are used to in Dallas. North Dallas BMW is more of a neighborhood motorcycle shop, they bring pizza in for lunch on Saturdays, and you can really just more or less hang out and shoot the shit for a few hours if you want, this dealership - while very nice, and knowledgeable, seemed more like a car dealership. Of course that did not stop us from picking up a few items. On the way back through the canyons on hwy 34, we got a bit of rain, and pulled into Bill’s driveway around 4:30. During the rain, Bill and I had passed a couple of cars, Gary was not abel to safely make the pass, so he fell behind a bit. As Bill and I pulled onto the bridge I decided to wait for Gary - knowing he may not know where to make the turn because he had only been this direction up the canyon once. While waiting on the bridge in the falling rain. Because my camera was occupying the tank bag, I decided it would be wise to put the rain cover on. When doing so, I shifted the bike to neutral, and started to lean the bike onto the side stand. As the bike leaned just past that point it should have stopped it’s decent, it continued it’s downward travel toward the ground and continued it’s journey of demeaning my self esteem. A great day of riding topped of by dropping the bike on a rain covered bridge over a roaring river. Truthfully not a big deal, a 500 lb bike is really much easier to pick up than you think it would be, and it was just a simple momentary lack of reason, in the end - another great day of riding under our belts.