I met my friend in St. Joseph MO so we could ride Highway 36 out to Boulder. To be exact, we met downtown St Joseph right in front of the house where Jesse James was assassinated. It was eerie seeing this house after having watched The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford about 20 times, and if you haven't seen that movie yet, I highly recommend it. Especially if you're from Missouri.
This is the living room and the hole in the wall where the bullet supposedly went into the wall after exiting Jesse James head.
We decided to take Highway 36 all the way across Kansas instead of I-70 because we've seen enough of I-70, and since we had the entire week off, this trip was about actually getting out and riding instead of trying to make good time. Being from Missouri I'm supposed to hate Kansas, but once we got in on the back roads and saw some of the small towns, it's not that bad. Not as great as Missouri, but not terrible. It was like this quite a bit though...
I'm going to go ahead and skip ahead to Colorado now since I didn't seem to take too many pictures of Kansas (can't figure out why...) But these are the roads we couldn't wait to see once we got up into the Rocky Mountains.
One of the first things we decided to do once we got to Colorado was ride up to the top of Mount Evans, which has the highest paved road in North America. The reason we did this 1st is because they were closing the road to the top the day we arrived in Colorado. I'm glad we got there though because the views from the top, and the ride up there, were incredible. Unfortunately, since there was a lot of traffic I didn't want to take my camera out of my bag every time we pulled over, so I just decided to use my camera phone which decided to crash once we got to the top. So I lost all of my photos of the ride up, but I have a lot of us at the top though.
It was like another world up there. I had never been up above the tree line before, so to do it for the first time on a motorcycle was incredible. The only problem I had was that my bike stalled on me once as we pulled into a parking lot at the top, but it started right back up. I think the computer just hadn't learned how thin the air was yet as we made pretty good time getting up the mountain.
View from the rest area before making the final ascent to the top of Mount Evans, although I took these pictures on the way back down. We needed to stop for a little to warm up, the temperature difference from the very peak, to half way down was incredible. It's early September, and even though we started the day off in Boulder in 80 degree weather, it was closer to 40 degrees at the top. I'm glad we stopped though, because these are some of my favorite pictures of the trip. Really need to get a better camera though to do this scenery justice.
Cheesing for the camera, took a few of these to send home to the wife so she wouldn't worry while I was gone.
On our way back down the mountains to Boulder for the night.
Almost home for the night, to relax, enjoy a few beers, get some sleep, and start all over again in the morning.
The next morning we decided to go for a short ride up to Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park. We stopped at this little place to get some snacks, everything was very good, especially if you love cherry's as much as I do. They had cherry everything, cherry juice, cherry cider, baked cherry goods, cherry jams and preserves, cherry candy, etc. I was in heaven.
As we entered the Rocky Mountain National Park, we were greeted with this beautiful nature. It was warm, sunny, a beautiful day. I was also about to find out how quickly the weather can change in just a few thousand feet of elevation.
On our way up, and it's getting colder as expected, but the clouds are starting to move in too. We figured we better get a move on it and get to the top and back down before we're riding in wind, rain, and 35 degree weather. Had just enough time to snap a picture of this little guy though.
The higher up we got, the cloudier and more windy it got, fortunately for us though the rain held off, and were able to get some incredible pictures of a herd of elk that was passing by.
Finally we're near the top, and decide to go ahead and turn around and head back home for the day.
I was always impressed with his Concours, I believe it was a 1996, with more miles than mine, had definitely been crashed at least once by the previous owner since it has about 5 different colors of fairing on it, and the transmission would slip out of 2nd every once in a while, but living in Boulder isn't cheap so this bike will do just fine for my buddy. I was always afraid we were going to have to call AAA for his bike at some point throughout our trip, but it turns out all that worrying was for nothing. That bike just will not die.
We actually got completely rained in for a couple of days in Boulder, but that was ok. We just spent some time relaxing, eating a lot of really good food, drinking a lot of really good beer, and watching tv. When the skies finally cleared up, we decided to go up north a little and check out Highway 14 (Poudre Canyon Highway). The water along the highway was pretty damn cold, but we decided to go for a short swim anyway.
Back on the road again. This road was a lot of fun, it didn't have the crazy elevation changes of some of the other roads we had done already, but the canyon was beautiful, and the road itself was in pretty good condition, with A LOT of curves.
I have a feeling it's pretty hard to find a better road than this.
On my final full day in Colorado, we decided to give the Rocky Mountain National Park another run since we checked the weather and it was supposed to be a lot better than the last time. We headed out to Estes Park via the Peak to Peak Highway, which turned out to be another incredibly fun road.
We got back to Estes Park, and I decided I had to get the shot everyone gets when they go there. This is the Stanley Hotel, I'm sure most of you are already familiar with it, and have probably already been there. Just in case you're not familiar with it though, this is the hotel that inspired the Stephen King novel The Shining. No it was not filmed here (although everyone seems to think that), but I think the NBC TV remake of The Shining did use some exterior shots of this hotel. Still a really cool looking old hotel.
The first time we visited Rocky Mountain National Park it had that cloudy, mysterious look about it. It couldn't have been any different this time, it was just absolutely gorgeous! You could see for miles with all the sunshine pouring down on the park that day.
This little guy was frantically running around looking for food, he knew what was about to come in a few more weeks. Lots, and lots of snow.
Also saw my first moose on this trip! Great weather, great wildlife, great scenery, I couldn't have asked for a better last day in Colorado.
So here's the last picture I took before we went home for the night. It was a great trip, ended up doing about 2,500 miles total in the 6 rideable days, and now I'm sitting at home in Missouri, it's January 8th, about 50 degrees, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing inside right now, and why I'm not out enjoying this unseasonably warm weather. Thanks for checking out my post, and I can't wait until next summer when I get to do another big trip (big trip to me at least) and post it up here for all of you to check out.
