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A short blog tonight cos we're tired. But some lovely photos including some great ones from Diana. We were up and away reasonably early in the morning. Another fabulous breakfast with Richard and Shelli before packing the bikes, saying our last farewells and hitting the road.
We had thought that the freeway traffic at that time would be heavy but it was ok so we pretty much stayed on the big roads down 70 and 91 through Climax to Leadville where we stopped for a coffee. Leadville was a mining town, first gold, then lead and now molybdenum. Still an old fashioned town in many ways but lots of friendly chatty people.
Diana took Kiwi for a walk and met this young man weaving.
And then to a lovely lake with fish rising in the morning sun.
Somewhere along the line we went through a tunnel where Diana took this fabulous photo of the three of us. Yeah!
We turned onto 82 towards Aspen and rode over the Independence Pass. This was another really high pass - look at the reading on Karen. 3691 metres ASL. Lots of lovely climbs and 10kph corners! Aoraki/Mt Cook is 3754 metres.
At the top of the pass we met this friendly lady on an automatic Ridley. I have never seen one of these before and we were all impressed.
If you're interested you can read about them on www.ridleymotorcycle.com.
This was where we once again crossed the Continental Divide.
We went on down to Aspen for lunch. Aspen is a rather touristy town so prices were up and the service was only ok. Kiwi thought I should have a spag bog. So I did. Seemed ok.
As we got organised to leave a young women came up to us and said that there was a bear up a tree on the street that we were about to ride along. We have been well trained about how to cope with bears, especially black ones like this. Essentially you never stop close to them and try to take photos. So we stopped close to this one and took photos. Not great I'm afraid but you can see him there. Remember this is in the middle of a busy tourist town.
As we were clicking away, this chap came out of a car and started shouting at us. Essentially he was saying something like, "I say you, chaps and chapesses on motorcycles, could you please desist from your current activity and jolly well move along." So we did. I'm not sure who he was but he was wearing this kinda silver star thing on his chest (like we used to have when we played cowboys) so he was probably a cowboy.
After Aspen we went to Carbondale (which seems a rather unusual name for a town if you think of a dale as being a glen or valley) and hooked left onto 133 for the hot and sweaty run through Redstone (lots of red stones) and Hotchkiss (lots of hot chkisses?) I always thought a Hotchkiss was a WW1 machine gun? This took us through farmland and vineyards finally to Delta where we checked into a motel with a pool. Yay!
Splosh.
A couple of beers and a meal later and we are almost human again. It was a hot day for the last part today.
That's us!
Today's ride: 455kms
Cumulative: 14,838kms
Tipovers: 2
Location:Delta, Colorado, USA
Well done! I usually need a smoke and a nap after going through "Climax".
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