Thursday, September 7
Day 7: Utah

We had a lot of ground to cover today so we were on the bikes at 7AM and heading toward the amazing route 12. Once on 12 the scenery was just amazing, the rock formations continued to change colors and shapes and the road twisted between the canyons for miles and miles. This has to be one of my favorite roads in the USA. Some people go to Deal’s Gap for twisties, I rather come here and ride 12, 24 and 95. It’s THAT good. This is open range country, so there were cows hanging out in the road, but not where you’d expect them to hang out. Not where it was flat, they were up on the hills in the canyons. We would go though a corner and there would be a cow in the road or a cow crossing the road or a cow hearing us coming and looking our way to see what that was.

The temperatures were cool this morning, the skies were overcast and there was a light drizzle at times also, but it didn’t spoil our fun at all, even when at times drizzle would turn to light rain, the road was still so much fun that it didn’t matter to us if it was wet or dry. Also the small towns on the way were really cute, too bad we didn’t have time to stop and take a closer look.

Then in Torrey we headed east on 24, which is another one of my favorite roads, through Capitol Reef the rock formations are just amazing and the curves here are my favorite type of sweepers. You can really get in to rhythm as you turn left and right and left ad right and left and right. We stopped for a mi-day snack at one of the scenic pull outs. The sun had come out and the temperature was in the high 80’s now. There really weren’t a lot of people here, we’d only see a car go by one in a while.

In Hanksville Sandy took off to buy some fossils and I hang out at one of the gas stations where I talked to a few HD riders and the lady that ran the gas station. The wind was picking up again and the HD riders had come from the south and told me I’d be riding in to more rain on 95. As we departed, it seemed we were riding in a full sand storm, the winds were pretty strong and we were blown all over the road.

We were enjoying the awesome sweepers though the canyons and then the rain started up again just as we approached the overlook of the Glen Canyon and the river. At the scenic overlook we found two Triumphs from Texas. We chatted with the riders a bit, one of them frequents ST.N and thought I looked familiar. They were heading north and we took off towards the south.

The rain was light, sometimes a drizzle and sometimes none at all. Since I’ve been on 24 and 95 before, I rode it a bit harder then before, even when it was raining. That road is just like a roller coaster and is made to go fast on. Since there are no towns or gas stations for 122 miles between Hanksville and Blanding, I bet the only way they could catch speeders is via air planes and with the clouds and rain they would have to fly pretty low. This road was as amazing as I remembered, actually it was even better traveling south. The road travels downward so you see the amazing scenery unfolding right in front of you with each mile.

Once past Blanding the rain started up again and we decided to again grab a motel room in Monticello. We checked in to the Best Western and by the time we got on our bikes to get them in front of our motel room, it was pouring rain. I’m so glad I brought that small folding umbrella, I unpacked my hard bags without getting the contents too wet, I’m just to lazy to take them all the way off. We also used the umbrella to walk next door to the Spur restaurant for dinner. The Spur was a real western type place and we were served by real cowboys and cowgirls. It’s a family owned place, the daughter which was our waitress had on her boots, wranglers and big silver buckle and a toothpick in her mouth. Not a fancy place and only 5 things on the menu plus a few specials. This was also a dry town, so no beer for us - again. The food was just OK. Sandy went to soak in the hot tub outside in the cold rain and I stayed inside the dry motel room to figure out the route for tomorrow. It kept raining hard all evening and all night.

Friday, September 8
Day 8: Utah and Colorado

We got up to rain and by the time we left it turned heavy. We grabbed some really nice complimentary breakfast before we left too. We waited around a bit and it took longer to pack the bikes in the rain so we didn’t leave until 9AM. We headed toward Moab, but turned on 46 east before the town. This road was really nice, scenic with many twisties, some really tight curves posted at 15-25MPH, I’m just glad we were going down since it was raining really hard and there was so much fog on the mountain and the curves were super tight and steep.

We entered Colorado in the rain and headed down 145, which is such a nice road, with such nice sweepers and a river running next to the road. Then to 162, another nice road with super sweet sweepers, did both of these roads back when I was here last time, still as nice as I remembered them. Then we headed to Montrose, CO on 550 and then east on 50. A couple of years ago I only did 50 for a few miles around Gunnison, well let me tell you, 50 is an awesome road with so much beautiful scenery and so many awesome twisties. I’m so glad we were pressed for time and I chose that road as a direct route east. The only bad thing was it kept raining hard the whole time and it was cold. I had to plug in my heated vest and at times I was still a bit cold when we would go up in elevation. The curves and scenery kept on entertaining us though. On this road like on no other road on this trip, we saw so many bikes and so many sport-tourers.

In Gunnison we stopped for gas and hot chocolate, and I decided to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. There were so many sport-tourers at this gas station too. Since we lingered for a bit, many of them came and went and we exchanged road and weather information. It sure looked like we would have rain all the way to Colorado Springs where we were going to spend the night at my friend’s house tonight.

It was 50’s degrees in Gunnison and I was worried that at Monarch Pass which was at 11,300 Feet there might be ice, but all the riders coming from the east said it was cold up there but no ice. The road up the mountain to Monarch pass was super-sweet. Two lanes going up, curves posted at 35MPH, I enjoyed it immensely even in the rain and fog. This is my kind of mountain road since I like to ride fast. We stopped by the Monarch Pass sign to take some pictures, it was really cold up there, my fingers were numb even with the heated grips on high.

We continued enjoying the roads but after so many hours of wet riding, the rain was getting to us. I can deal with it for hours but this was too much. After 8 hours of constant rain there was finally a break in the foul weather. We enjoyed the last section of curves on 50, and there were some really nice sections too, although a bit of traffic on the road. Then we headed on 115 to Colorado Springs. It got dark as we entered the city limits and it was hard reading the directions and the street signs to my friend’s house, so there was a lot of looking around for roads and u-turns. The roads in Colorado Springs were all still wet, but at least it wasn’t raining there. We finally made it to the house, which we had to find with a flash light since we couldn’t see any of the house numbers from the road. Paul and Deb came out when they heard bikes outside, we pulled in to the garage and started to get out of our filthy riding gear. Even before we were totally out of our riding gear we had some good beer handed to us. After some chatting and hanging out we all went to dinner to the Rock Bottom, more good beer and good food and motorcycle stories, both Paul and Deb ride motorcycles, they both have Yamaha R1’s.

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Day 1 | Day 2-4 | Day 5-6 | Day 7-8 | Day 9-10