June 27 2006

Departed Salida @8:30am and made our way to Fairplay via Hwys 50,291,24 and 285. Stopped for coffee at the Fairplay Hotel, a neat old west type of hotel and then on to Hwy 9 over Hoosier Pass, through Breckenridge and over Swan Mountain arriving Summit County @ 12 noon, our starting point. Ride over!
Spent the rest of the afternoon loading bikes and baggage in to trailer for our drive to Connecticut. Next ride will be June 2008 British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado.

June 26 2006

Left Durango @8:00am headed north on HWY 550 the "Million Dollar Highway" to Silverton a unique and authentic mining/cowboy town via Coal Bank Pass and on to Ouray. The scenery between Durango and Silverton was once again awesome and became even more so between Silverton and Montrose where the road took many twists and turns and factor in some steep grades, rock cliffs, no guard rails, Red Mountain Pass and that gives you a pucker factor (at times) of 10.We stopped for a beer at the Golden Nugget (doesn't every western town have one?) in Ouray and headed to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison N.P. Once there we headed down to the bottom of the canyon, another pucker ride down and back up a 16% grade. Beautiful though, both top and bottom views. Now we are ready to spend the night in the town of Gunnison because we are starting to get some ice cold rain...wrong! They are having some sort of @#^*&#bike tour going through and there is not a @#^& 'room to be had! The closest room around is in Salida 65 miles to the east. Well off we go and while crossing over Monarch Pass, more ice cold rain! We are getting too old for this. Pulled in to the Days Inn Salida, nice place, nice people run it and went over to the Windmill for dinner, excellent restaurant.