Back on Track....
So, although I haven't been very good with updating this here blogthingamajig, I have been having a lot of fun.
After Aspen and a few places south of there, I headed through Colorado Springs, Denver...didn't stop in either of those places...and on towards Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. For some reason, Denver seemed 'new', hard to put into word, but the roads, buildings and other things in a typically human infested city seemed cleaner and newer than I am used to in the Bay Area. I stopped for the night in a suburb of Denver called Westmininster. The next morning, I headed towards Rocky, it was a great ride the whole way through. Estes Park at the base of the park is kinda the town before you drive up the Rocky.
The ride to the peak of the mountain, is in one, inadequate word, astounding. I hadnt been told by the folks at the visitor center all the little details that came as a pleasant surprise. For one, there are sheer drops on some stretches of the road, also that it is the highest paved road in the US. A little more about the sheer drops...the end of the road surface is the end of the road....you slip past the edge and you can take flight :) Very hard to stay focussed on the road since it is very tempting to look around and as they so frequently tell you in the motorcycling world, your bike goes where your eyes look, needless to say, the edge of the road (and the world as I know it) and I had frequent intimate conversations :)
Anyhoo, the vistas and scenery is beyond what this mere mortal can explain in words, so, hopefully the photos do better justice....
Mountain goats/sheep...cant really tell...this was max zoom on the tiny camera that I carried
The Peak. There is a visitor center, store, cafe at the top from where the peak is a little bit of a hike. I did my best Tenzing Norgay impersonation...no oxygen y'all!!
After Aspen and a few places south of there, I headed through Colorado Springs, Denver...didn't stop in either of those places...and on towards Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. For some reason, Denver seemed 'new', hard to put into word, but the roads, buildings and other things in a typically human infested city seemed cleaner and newer than I am used to in the Bay Area. I stopped for the night in a suburb of Denver called Westmininster. The next morning, I headed towards Rocky, it was a great ride the whole way through. Estes Park at the base of the park is kinda the town before you drive up the Rocky.
The ride to the peak of the mountain, is in one, inadequate word, astounding. I hadnt been told by the folks at the visitor center all the little details that came as a pleasant surprise. For one, there are sheer drops on some stretches of the road, also that it is the highest paved road in the US. A little more about the sheer drops...the end of the road surface is the end of the road....you slip past the edge and you can take flight :) Very hard to stay focussed on the road since it is very tempting to look around and as they so frequently tell you in the motorcycling world, your bike goes where your eyes look, needless to say, the edge of the road (and the world as I know it) and I had frequent intimate conversations :)
Anyhoo, the vistas and scenery is beyond what this mere mortal can explain in words, so, hopefully the photos do better justice....
Mountain goats/sheep...cant really tell...this was max zoom on the tiny camera that I carried
The Peak. There is a visitor center, store, cafe at the top from where the peak is a little bit of a hike. I did my best Tenzing Norgay impersonation...no oxygen y'all!!
'needless to say, the edge of the road (and the world as I know it) and I had frequent intimate conversations' -- ha ha. nice. :D
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