Day 2:
I woke up about 6:15am, took a shower and started packing up my gear. My colleague, his wife and I were planning on getting some breakfast at the restaurant next door, but by 7am I was all packed and ready to go. She was still sleeping so I decided to head on down the road as it was already drizzling, and the forecast for San Luis Valley was clear, so I wanted to get out before the rain set in, I’d just get breakfast on the road. So, I said my farewells to Jake, my colleague and headed out.
Day 2 supposed to be map:
Day 2 actual map:
Starting trip meter for the day:
Starting mileage for the day:
As I headed out of South Fork I swear it was drizzling mud. It was drizzling just hard enough to cover me, the FJR, and especially my helmet visor and windshield with a nice mud coating. I cruised East towards Del Norte on Hwy 160. As I pulled into town and made the left turn on CR 112 to head up North to go to the Great Sand Dunes I decided I better turn around and get gas as there was nothing between there and the Great Sand Dunes via the county roads. While I was filling up I decided that I wanted some breakfast. I also decided that I should have breakfast in Monte Vista as I forgot to take a picture of the Mexican restaurant I had lunch at the day before. Kill two birds with one stone, and it really wasn’t that far out of the way. The decision was made, Jill could be cranky and recalculate all she wants. I’m going to Monte Vista.
I ride in to Monte Vista and snap a picture of the restaurant posted yesterday. Then I venture further down not seeing much open, and I see one of the gas station attendants at the Love’s station outside sweeping the sidewalk. I pull up and ask him if there are any good breakfast places in town. Just as he’s about to give me a response, Jill decided to pop into the conversation. “Recalculating, turn blah blah blah”. Poor guy probably though I had a bee inside my helmet or something as I reached for the jog dial on the Sena to turn down Jill. Anyways, after I could hear again I asked if he could repeat himself. He said there are only two places in town, the Best Western and the Mountain View Restaurant. I thanked him and was on my way. Well, the Best Western didn’t sound like much fun, so I headed to the Mountain View Restaurant. Turned out to be a very good decision. Although I forgot to get a picture of the restaurant again.
I pull up to the restaurant and walk in, order some coffee and take a gander at the menu. Typical breakfast menu, but I was feeling some biscuits and gravy this morning. Now these people know how to make some biscuits and gravy. They don’t just take a biscuit and put gravy on top of it, no, they make two sausage biscuit sandwiches and poor gravy over that! Way too much food and only $5.99. Fantastic! Lucky for you people I remembered to take a picture of the food, although after I was done, so you only get to see a ¼ of what was there:
As I was cleaning the visor of my helmet waiting for the check, one of the gentlemen sitting at the table next to me asks where I am heading. We talk for a bit about the ride I was doing and then he said, be careful when you get near Ft Collins, there is a big fire behind Horsetooth Reservoir as the smoke is supposed to be terrible. I start to think, that’s bad, that’s my boating spot and I have several buddies who live up behind the marina up there (turns out they are fine). Looking back, I wish the only challenge I had to face for the day was limited visibility due to smoke.
I suit up and get back on the bike and head North on 285 to catch back up to CR 112 to the satisfaction of Jill.
CR 112 is a completely flat stretch across some of the farm country in San Luis Valley. I enjoyed the ride, as I work for a John Deere dealership group and always enjoy checking out the farm grounds and machinery. Shortly I meet back up with Hwy 17 and follow that down to CR 6A. CR 6A is out in the boonies, you could see for 20 miles and there wasn’t a soul on the road, and I had a 30mph tail wind, so, we cruised the rest of the distance to the sand dunes at a very comfortable legal speed. This time, the FJR speedo was a good 55% off so I was only going 65mph.
Soon we were approaching the Great Sand Dunes.
Then we got a little closer:
And we made it!
I hadn’t planned on going in the park as it was too windy to get too close to the dunes as there were spin drifts of sand coming off the top of them, that is unless you wanted to come out with no paint or skin left, but breakfast was wanting to make a hasty exit so I decided to go into the park and make a “visit” to the visitors’ center. When I pulled up to the gate it was only 9am, so the gate keeper booth was still closed and had a big sign on the window to pay when you left. So I pulled into the park, went to the visitors’ center and took care of business and took a look around as well. Neat place, I especially like the exhibit they had about the night sky and all the constellations you could see on a clear night out there.
View from the back of the visitors’ center trying out the panorama feature on my camera. Didn’t work out so well:
So, since I was already in the park I decided to go down to the parking lot near the dunes to get a little better picture. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and pointed the nose of the Feej straight into the 30mph wind, pulled out my camera while straddling the bike. Just then a huge gust of wind came from a different direction. This is when being 5’8” and having a 28” inseam really has its disadvantages. I am on my tippy toes when straddling the Feej and that wind caught the side of the bike with a vengeance. I dropped the camera (it was tethered to the bars) grabbed the bars and try to stand it back up with all my strength, but it was too late, the loaded Feej was going over. I was fairly disappointed. I had never dropped a street bike in my life and I have really good balance with the Feej and have never felt unstable on it before, even on slopes while stopped, but I guess with the wind, and me not being ready for it was too much.
When I bought the bike, I soon learned that my height disadvantage might be a real disadvantage some day and purchased a set of OES frame sliders from the recommendations of people on this forum. THANK GOD! That was the best $80 I have ever spent. I don’t know if it was adrenalin or what, but when the bike was on its side I had it shut off and back on its wheels in about 3 seconds. I was surprised how easy it came back up. It fell on its right side, so I turned the bars all the way to the right, put my right hand on the handle bar and my left hand near the sub frame in the back and got in the squat position and she stood right back up. WHEW!!
The resulting damage, not bad, couple scrapes on the bag, and some small dents on the bottom of the exhaust, faring was completely undamaged:
All because I was trying to take this picture:
After that I decided to get the hell out of there and back up to speed where I can manage the wind better. I stopped at the gate on the way out, as the ranger was now there, and pulled up to the window. He opened the window and I told him that they were closed when I got here and I needed to pay my entrance fee. He said, don’t worry about it, be safe as it’s windy (huh?) and asked if I wanted a brochure. Nice guy!
So I exit the park and head South on 150 to meet up with 160.
Yeah, it was still windy:
From there I head East back into the mountains and over La Veta Pass. Didn’t get any pictures as I was busy counter steering into the wind the whole time, but there were still some fun sweepers coming over the pass.
This is the point where I should have spent more time checking my route out on Friday night before I left. Jill was intent on getting me to take a gravel county road between 160 and Hwy 69 to bypass Walsenburg. I checked the GPS and it was 14 miles. I live on dirt roads so I am not afraid to head down them, but this one had loose freshly laid gravel, and with the winds the way they were I didn’t feel it was the best decision, so I took 160 all the way to Walsenburg and caught up with 69 there via the paved route.
I headed Northwest on 69, and this would probably be a pretty fun road if I didn’t have a crosswind the whole time but it was a constant battle to keep the bike going straight, so it wasn’t the best road of the trip. It did make me want to have a dual sport at that point as I kept seeing signs for roads over the mountain range back to the sand dunes. I could see them climbing the mountains in the distance and they looked like they would be a blast to do sometime. Oh well, will have to wait until I get a BMW F800GS to add to the stable.
In Westcliffe I stopped to get gas and was again approached by the local “wildlife” (thanks Morecowbell, I’m using that term from now on). They had just come up the same way from Walsenburg and couldn’t believe I was crazy enough to ride a motorcycle in that wind. Well after with chatting with them for a bit I got back on the road.
Once North of Westcliffe the terrain changed for the better in a hurry!
I continued to wind my way up this blast of a road all the way to Hwy 50.
Hwy 50 is a great ride as well, and I had never been up it before so I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
I pulled off the hwy at one of the stops to take some pictures of the river:
As I was stopped I saw an SV650 all loaded up ride by and gave the rider a wave and he waved back. I would meet up with him again later. I got back on the Feej and continued down Hwy 50. As I was getting close to my next turn off to the North I saw signs for the Royal Gorge. How could I have not put that on my route! Of course I had to take a detour as I had never been there either, to the dissatisfaction of Jill. So I passed my turn off on Hwy 9 and went South on 3A to the Royal George.
What a tourist trap this place is! Reminds me of the Wisconsin Dells. So anyways as I am going up the road and looking at the GPS and see that if you cross the bridge 3A continues back to Hwy 50, so that was my plan…… until I got up there. They charge $25 to get into the area! I told the lady at the ticket counter that I wasn’t planning on being there more than 15 minutes and asked if they had a cheaper ticket that just allowed you to drive across the bridge. Nope, $25 to do anything. So I decided to head down to Parking lot B as it looked to be on higher ground and thought I might be able to see the bridge from there, and I sort of could, if you like looking at things like you are in prison:
So, I got my picture of the big bridge and was on my way feeling stealthy. Well, as it turns out, in the main parking lot on the way out there is a viewing area. Hah, so much for being stealthy. I decided to pass on stopping again to take another picture satisfied with my prison view picture. I head back down the way I came to Hwy 50 and back track the couple miles to Hwy 9.
From there I took Hwy 9 up to CR 11 to CR 1 to CR 42 back to HWY 24 and Woodland Park. This stretch of road was fun, and must have been more fun than I thought, as I didn’t take a single picture of it. Anyways, going up CR 42 towards Woodland Park you go up a pretty fun little pass. Once I got on the other side of it the weather turned for the worse. It started to snow. It was still almost 40 degrees so I wasn’t too worried and continued my way into Woodland Park.
As I pulled into Woodland Park the snow got worse. Also, while I was somewhere on Hwy 50 my phone had gotten a voicemail and I noticed it while I was at the Royal Gorge but didn’t have service to check it. I remember a Starbucks near the intersection of 24 and 67 from the day before so I decide it is a good idea to stop there, check my voicemail and get Wifi on the iPod to check the weather forecast. As I pull in the parking lot I notice the SV650 that I saw earlier was there as well. I chat with him a bit about our rides and he had done a fairly similar route I had done in the last day and a half, in the last 4 days. We start chatting about the weather, I check my voicemail, which is from a friend at home and she said it was blowing snow and ice at home (not good, still 170 miles from home at this point). I log into the iPod and see that it is snowing about everywhere North of us. SV650 guy calls a friend of his in North Denver and finds out it is snowing there but it isn’t really sticking to the roads. Both of us had planned on riding up 67 thru the mountains but decided we better just take 24 down to Colorado Springs to drop some elevation and hopefully get out of the weather. So that was that, we shook hands said safe ride and we were on our way. Should have exchanged information but we were both fairly concerned about the weather and at this point just had home on the mind.
Hwy 24 down to the Springs wasn’t too bad, but what had my attention was that the temp kept dropping as I dropped elevation and it was still snowing a little bit. I got down to the Springs and turned North on I-25 hoping that the well traveled road and lower elevations would keep the roads from freezing. Not the safest train of thoughts, but the lesser of two evils I thought. Well, by the time I got out of the Springs and towards Monument it was flat out SNOWING. It was still above freezing and nothing was sticking, except to the bike so I forged on.
That “ladder of risk” that they teach you about in the Experienced MSF courses (I take one every couple years to keep fresh on slow speed maneuvers), yeah, I was standing one footed on the top rung. Visibility was crap, it was approaching 4pm (dark soon), it was snowing, traffic was moderate. Nothing about the situation was good.
I decided that the roads were just wet, and weren’t freezing, so I decided to forge on. Right decision or not, not sure, but I made it out alive, but the next 80 miles were hell. Finally my visor on my helmet became worthless and my left arm was about worn out from reaching up to clear it every other second. I finally found a vortex with adjusting the vstream (which had about ½” of ice and snow on it at this point) and my visor that I could look underneath my visor and over the vstream and see ahead without getting pelted with ice and snow. The thought of stopping crossed my mind, but it was late in the afternoon and I knew if I was on the road still at dark I would be in more trouble than I was already in.
Somewhere south of Denver I approached another black FJR and passed him and gave him an uneasy thumbs up. I posted in the sightings forum to see if you are on here. I forged my way thru Denver and took the HOV lane, that way at least there was a concrete barrier between me and the other loonies on the road. Finally, once I got up around 76 the snow slowed down and visibility improved. By the time I was past 120th Ave the snow had completely stopped and visibility was good.
Snow covered windshield after I had already cleared most of it off:
Someone is happy to be out of the snow!!
From here it was a nice 30-33 degree ride up to Wellington with a nice 30mph headwind. I’ll take a headwind over a crosswind any day!
Final gas stop:
I then headed back East on CR100, pulled the bike in the garage, gave the gas tank a big hug, thanked the Feej for getting me home safely and reminisced about what a great weekend I just had!
Ending mileage:
Ending trip meter:
