Tamara and I decided to take a motorcycle ride over Labor Day weekend. I had planned two routes. The first route is shown at the bottom of the page, and involved Southwestern Colorado. The alternate was scenic, but had more straight roads and involved Four Corners and Northern Arizona. Although Tamara has not seen the Grand Canyon yet, I opted for the Colorado route.
Day 1: Friday Night in Cuba, NM
We left late on Friday, but managed to knock out about 90 miles. There were thunderstorms on the distant horizon, but we managed to steer clear of them. Northern Sandoval County had Flash Flood warnings, too. We stopped in Cuba, NM because it was getting sort of late (~10:30pm) and there were thunderstorms not too far in the direction we were heading. The next place to stop would have been another 90 miles to Bloomfield. We found a decent motel and called it a night. It was not a bad place, but I parked the bike in the room anyways. You can never be too safe I suppose.
Day 2: Aztec, Mesa Verde, and Adventures in Camping
We drove up the rest of Northwestern New Mexico, saw a sign for Aztec Ruins National Monument, and decided to stop. Ends up they aren’t really Aztec ruins, they are actually from Ancestral Puebloans. A person that found them thought they were Aztec ruins. From there, we headed to Mesa Verde National Park. During the ride up to Aztec, NM and beyond, we saw lots of evidence of rain in the area, flooded arroyos, and flooded roads that we would have gone through if we made it to my first scheduled stop in Colorado for camping. Thank goodness we stopped in Cuba Friday night! After this detour we continued up to Colorado and spent the afternoon at Mesa Grande National Park. Half a day is not enough to see the entire park, but we were able to knock out the stuff on the west side of the park. We took a guided tour down into a canyon to walk through a cliff dwelling. The Ancestral Puebloans that inhabited this area started with life on the mesa top, and then moved down into the cliffs over time. The cliffs provided better shelter. The other neat part about the area was the fire damage.
There was a large fire that destroyed a large portion of the west side of the park. One of the park rangers said that it would probably never grow back to how it was, but if it does, it would take hundreds of years. The good part was that the fire was started by lightning. It would have been disheartening to hear that it was due to humans. The road leading through the park was beautiful and looked out over the mesas of Southwest Colorado and into New Mexico. There was a large butte in the far distance that I am pretty sure was Shiprock, New Mexico. That’s a good 40 miles away from where we were! After we finished our day at the park, we ate dinner at a microbrewery in Cortez called J. Fargo’s. It was pretty good beer, but the service was under par. The food was alright. None of it beat Socorro Springs though. After dinner, we headed north towards Telluride in search of camping. I did not find any decent information online regarding primitive, remote camping in this area of the San Juan Mountains, so we sort of just went on an expedition. It was getting dark when we left Cortez and we finally found a forest road off a road off of CO-145. We were about 25 miles south of Rico, CO. 
It was dark and hard to find a camping spot. When we first entered the forest road, we found a side road that looked promising. It ended up being a nightmare of a hill climb! Large gravel in the road knocked us about and we almost dumped the bike! After we got through that, we thought we were safe in our expedition. Not much further down the road, we found a nice patch of grass that ended up being a full of mud and cow pies! The bike almost got stuck, and I had to tell Tamara to get off to negotiate the mud. There was next to no traction, and the bike’s rear tire became caked in mud. We ended up camping next to a caravan of fifth wheel RV’s that found a nice spot tucked in off the road. There had obviously been rain in the area on Friday, but the weather was not calling for precipitation. The sky was clear and beautiful that night, too. We set up camp and fell asleep.
It started to rain early in the morning on Sunday, and persisted through the morning. We also heard cows that let us know that we were on the wrong side of the cattle guard. They did not bother us though. The rain stopped just long enough for us to pack up camp before it really started to rain hard. The day was a wash… literally! I thought the rain would surely let up as the morning rolled in, but it was relentless. We skipped donning all of our rain gear in hopes it would give up, which resulted in being quite cold and wet. We made it to Rico in hopes for breakfast, but there was nothing there. We pushed on to Telluride and stopped for food and some time to dry a bit.
The rain would slow down, but did not go away. We called Tamara’s cousin in Montrose to be sure that they would still have some time for us. They invited us to stay the night, and we decided that we would skip the Black Canyon of Gunnison and call it a day there. We went over to an outfitter store down the street in search for gaiters for my boots and some better gloves for Tamara. We found the gaiters, and we also found Otter Paws! They are neoprene gloves made for kayakers. These additions to our rain gear provided much better protection from the rain. Luckily, I had brought two pairs of boots (one for riding and one for hiking). This was great because my boots and feet were soaking wet from water running off my pants into the boots. The gaiters protected the tops of the boots. The neoprene gloves were able to wick away water and keep our hands warmer than our regular gloves. Tamara’s gloves in particular were not designed for cold or wet. Shame on me for making her wear them and not providing better gear. After settling into our gear, we left Telluride and headed for Montrose. When we arrived, we were absolutely exhausted from the rainy weather. The road to Telluride and onto Montrose was beautiful, but hard to enjoy in this weather.
John and Ann welcomed us with their garage. We took off all of our gear, removed all of the luggage from the bike, and hung it all out to dry. The VStrom made friends with John’s ’96 Honda ST1100 while Tamara and I treated ourselves to hot showers and dry clothes. We sat around and socialized in the late afternoon. John and Ann already had dinner plans with their son, daughter-in-law, and infant grandson that live in Grand Junction (just north of Montrose). They did not mind adding us to the dinner. We had wonderfully large marinated steaks! We socialized with everyone. Tamara had not seen John’s son (distant cousin) in a long time, so that was neat. Not soon after they left, we called it a night as we were exhausted from the rainy ride.
Day 3: A Beautiful Ride Home
Sunday, we had a simple breakfast and packed up for the ride home. We couldn’t thank John and Ann enough for their hospitality. Without them, we’d probably still be wet! All of our gear dried very well overnight. There was no rain in the morning forecast throughout the area, but clouds still loomed. We decided to skip the rain gear, but promised to stop if it started to rain in the least. We headed out and south on US-550 towards Ouray. The valley working its way down to Ouray reminded me of the valley in the Jemez Mountains near Jemez Springs. US-550 was mainly wide sweepers tucking in and around the valley and following the Uncompahgre River into Ouray.
Once you get through town, the road immediately climbs up onto Red Mountain Pass. Before you get too far from town though, you find a beautiful waterfall that crosses under the road. This is Bear Creek Falls. It was a narrow falls that fell about a hundred feet into a beautiful blue pool before running off and into the Uncompahgre. The road then twisted further and further up the 
Red Mountain Pass. Then, the pass plateau’s at a beautiful meadow with a nice, small lake on the West side of the road. This is where you learn why it is called Red Mountain Pass. Off to the East lies Red Mountain 1 and Red Mountain 2. These gigantic peaks are full of Iron minerals in the rock and soil that make them up. They are both over 12,000 feet above sea level, too. This meadow was at about 10,400 feet above sea level looking up to the two Red Mountains.
The road took us down into Silverton (about 9,400 feet above sea level). We stopped here for lunch and walked around town. The Durango-Silverton narrow gauge, steam engine train had just arrived from Durango. It left that morning and slowly crept along the mountainside, meandering its way to Silverton on about a 4 hour journey through some of the best views Colorado has to offer! There was even an old World War II half-track parked on the side of the road. It looked functional as it had license plates! We did not sample any beer, but there was a local micro-brewery that was tempting. If we did not have such a long ride to go, I would have been interested in trying it. This town was really neat. After walking around town and seeing all that there was to see, we geared up and headed down the road.
The next stretch of road climbed up the Molas Pass. It was another beautiful pass that reached just over 10,000 feet above sea level. There were beautiful mountains on both sides of us as well as a few small lakes. This was the final pass of the trip and descended into Durango. We did not stop for anymore photos from here on down. This was the first time we’ve seen Purgatory Ski Resort without snow. Durango is also a fun town, but we just passed through and continued home. We stopped for gas in Cuba, New Mexico and I managed to drop my cell phone battery into the engine area of the bike. After a little work on moving bodywork around, I got it out. Tamara took the opportunity to make fun of me. You’ll notice this on the photo gallery linked below.
We got home late that evening, unpacked, showered, and went to bed! It was a bit shorter ride than we could have done if the weather was cooperating. However, we got to spend some time with John and Ann. That was well worth the bad weather. They are fun people and motorcycle enthusiasts. We hope to find a chance to meet up and ride together sometime. We have to go back eventually to visit the Black Canyon of Gunnison. It is supposed to be beautiful. There were too many photos to post, so you can find all of them here: http://www.tonyfugere.com/gallery/v/trips/2008/labor_day_08/
The Route
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