Since we arrived after dark, we hadn’t seen the beautiful scenery all around us! We also arrived too late to eat so, we were good and hungry at breakfast at the little diner across the street! I honestly can’t remember what I ate but, I recall being quite unsatisfied with it despite my hunger.
Our little motel.
The diner.
Saw lots of similar, crumbling structures all along the way.
The view!
Another couple of rail pics!
The next 200 miles were absolutely glorious! We rode up mountain passes at over 10,000ft and down into valleys and along twisty river roads that were an absolute blast! Saw lots of rafters in the rivers. Nice flow, not a crazy rapids but, rough enough to be fun! Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics of this section as we were having too much fun to stop for pics!
Correction! I have one pic!
We emerged into a valley and followed the road for many miles and all along the way to our left there were these mountains rising from the floor to above the treeline. There were also long, straight roads that lead straight from us up the the edge of the treeline. So, we decided to see where they went! All along the road to the mountains, prairie dogs would run back and forth across the road! Came close but, didn’t hit any!
Our brief sidetrip destination.
The road turned to gravel and headed up the mountain. It eventually led to a trailhead which had the symbol for motorcycles on the sign! I had to ride up it a ways! Had I not had the luggage, I could have ridden to the top but, too much risk of damage to the luggage too far from home! So, I headed back down to where Mark was waiting.
It was there we discovered my petcock was leaking! It appeared it was only leaking when the engine was shut off so, I fired it up and we headed on down the road. We came to an Ace Hardware Store that had absolutely everything you would need to maintain a working farm! The drawers for the nuts and bolts and springs and things were 10 feet tall and had rolling ladders to access everything! While there I took use of the facilities and encountered a most unusual flushing mechanism! There was a galvanized pipe sticking straight-up through a hole drilled in the tank lid and you pushed it down and it jerked out of your hand and plunged downward and flushed violently! Freaky! I bought some RTV as I knew at some point I would be forced to mend the petcock. We drank some Gatorade and ate some snacks and hit the road again!
At this point, the winds started picking-up worse and we could see a storm approaching. We had dealt with wind the entire trip but, this was the worst of the journey! At one point, we were heading down a mile or more long straight that had a 90 degree turn to the right at the bottom. From the top I could see huge dust clouds ripping across the road and we braced for the impact once we passed the shelter of the cliffs to our left! I have ridden through all forms of weather known to man! Hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. However, nothing came close to the force we encountered!!
The rain began sprinkling lightly and I was truly worried the wind would slide us off the road! The aforementioned turn to the right was a large even-radius turn that normally you could easily take at 80mph with no problem. We went around that RIGHT-HAND turn LEANING TO THE LEFT!! We were on the edge of having to drag our left knees but, we were going to the right!! Absolutely insane!
We had to stop at one point and call our hosts for the evening and let them know where we were so they would know when to expect us. We had to lean against the bikes to keep them from getting blown over! Brutal!
Mark’s excitement level rose when we encountered the Eagle County sign since Red Cliff is in Eagle County! We were moving forward into his past!
He hit a fever-pitch when we finally found the Red Cliff sign!
Along the way, we passed over the world famous Red Cliff Bridge! You may not have ever heard of it but, you’ve seen it in countless car commercials!
We arrived at the home of our most gracious hosts around 9pm and had a lovely dinner prepared for us! For dessert, Bob had made some homemade fudge! No, that’s not correct! Bob had scaled Mount Olympus and fought the Gods themselves and stole their sweet chocolate ambrosia and shared it with us!! I have had much fudge in my life but, I have never had fudge like this!! Both the regular and the Amaretto were divine! I really need to have him send some to me!
We spent the night in a guest house Bob and JoAnn built themselves! An absolutely lovely accomodation!
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