Day 5
Estes Park, CO – Cortez, CO. 517 miles.

It’s been a loooong day today. I was up at 6:00 and on the road by 7:00. I decided to backtrack over the Trail Ridge Road again because it’s such a great ride and I thought it would be cool to see it again in reverse. And it was. I stopped at one of the scenic overlooks and snapped the best picture of the entire trip:

I took some other nice pictures coming through the park too. You need to remember that for most of these pictures, I took them while riding one-handed and pointing the camera in the general direction of something worth photographing and sort of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best as I hit the shutter button. Sometimes it paid off.

At the base of the Trail Ridge Road is a town called Grand Lake, where I stopped for breakfast at the Bear’s Dean restaurant, where I had a very generic chicken fried steak and underdone hashbrowns.

When I got back on the bike, either I or my GPS unit lost its mind. I had programmed a great route into my Zumo that backtracked over the Trail Ridge Road again as I said above, then went off to cover new ground further south. The plan was to work my way down through Colorado to the Durango/Cortez area, covering new and hopefully interesting ground as I went, with the Four Corners monument being my ultimate target.

So I got on the bike, turned on the Zumo, and either I hit the wrong button or it went nuts or something, but the bottom line is that it told me to go “that a way” and I did. For about 120 miles. And as I was riding along, backtracking along roads I had already ridden on my way out to Colorado, I kept thinking “Wow, I didn’t realize this route backtracked so far.”

Along the way I passed the elk roadkill I had seen three days earlier and got a good look at what three days in the summer sun can do to an elk carcass. It’s probably fortunate that I have no sense of smell, because if the number of flies are any indication of just how much something stinks, then this elk was definitely ripe because the flies were out in force. Interestingly, the carcass was about 15 feet down the hill from the road from where it had been originally, and there were parts … missing. I think a bear had been doing some midnight snacking. I took some pictures because I’m twisted that way, but I’ll exercise some discretion and not post them. (Here, at least. I did upload them to flickr.)

Rather than rotting roadkill, I’ll thrill you with a shot of my bike a few miles on from the roadkill. There wasn’t another car for miles when I stopped to take this shot. I hung out there for a good 10 minutes with my bike parked in the middle of the road, just listening to the wind.

When I got to Glenwood Springs, where I spent the night on the way out, and the Zumo told me to keep heading west on the I-70 when I had specifically planned a route to the south, I figured something was off. And it was. I don’t know what happened to the outstanding route I had originally planned, but I wasn’t on it anymore. So I improvised — I told the Zumo to cancel the current route and find me a new one to Cortez. Considering how the Zumo had led me astray this far it may have been a bit naive and optimistic to let it lead me once again, but I did it anyway.

So the Zumo pointed me south (finally) on Highway 50, and a little way along I passed a turnoff to Highway 141, which a friend had suggested was a great ride, so I went that way. Man, what a ride that was. 150-some miles of 2-lane back roads that twisted and turned through a gorgeous desert landscape. It was incredible, on par with Zion National Park, even.

Then the GPS messed with my emotions. I’m already wound up enough with being up here to scatter my dad’s ashes and going to flood memorials and whatnot, but then the GPS led me straight to the town my dad lived in up until he had to go into assisted living. I knew I was going to be in the Dove Creek area and hadn’t made up my mind yet whether or not i thought I could handle it, but the GPS made my decision for me.

I gassed up at the general store my dad always went to (I asked the cashier if she had known my dad. She had and she said he was a really nice man and that everyone really liked him.), and on the wall outside was a listing of all the area campgrounds, which was convenient since I was planning on camping tonight. I picked one and plugged it into the GPS and headed for the outskirts of Cortez…

…where I got pulled over by a Cortez Sheriffs Deputy for speeding. I was apparently doing 57 in a 30 mph zone when he passed me going the other way. I watched in my mirror and when I saw his lights go on and he started making a U-turn to come after me I just pulled over and waited for him.

Fortunately, he was a nice guy. I was courteous and apologetic and when I mentioned that I was headed for the campground he told me that I should go to a better one and gave me directions. Then he gave me a warning and sent me on my way.

So here I am now in the KOA Kampground in Cortez, CO, and let me tell you KOA is THE BOMB. They have showers. They have a laundry room. They have a pool. They have campsites with electrical outlets that can power things like laptop computers. And they have wireless internet! Who knew?!? So I’m sitting in my tent writing these notes, checking email, and surfing the web, and all for $28. I’m doing this more often.

Here’s my campsite:

And here’s the obligatory Room from Here shot:

…and the View From Here shot:

But I’m doing with a different tent. Early on in these notes a thunderstorm hit while I was writing and I had to hightail it into the tent with all my gear. So I’m sitting in here with lightning flashing and thunder crashing and rain coming down in buckets, and I’m here to tell you that this tent is NOT waterproof. It has a nice big leak right at the entrance, which just happens to be where the head-end of my sleeping bag is. So I’m going to have a soggy night ahead of me.

But at least I can stay up surfing the net…

Day 6
Cortez, CO – Los Angeles, CA. 763 miles.

I was up at dawn the next morning, and as I packed up to get back on the road I started rethinking my basically non-existent travel plan for the day. The only firm thing on it was to visit the Four Corners Monument about 50 miles away, and after that I really didn’t have anything planned.

I’d been thinking that maybe I’d check out the Grand Canyon — but I wanted to spend more than just an hour or two. I thought maybe I’d stop in my brothers’ birthplace of Winslow, AZ just to say I’d done it — but then I realized I didn’t really want to do it. I considered spending a day wandering around in Utah and enjoying the desert scenery — but I’d already done that on the way out, and it’s hard to top Zion National Park. So then I started thinking about making it all the way home in one shot.

The more I thought about it the more attractive it sounded. I was missing Beth and Zoe, so getting home quicker would be good. The 500 mile days I’d been a little concerned about as I planned the trip had turned out to be cakewalks, so I wanted to test myself and see how much further I could make in a day. And finally, I was really just kind of tired of being out on the road and I was ready to be home again. So I decided to go for it.

But first, I had to stop at the Four Corners, one of the biggest, dingiest, cheesiest tourist traps I’ve ever seen. And I played tourist to the hilt — I asked strangers to take my picture, I bought cheap-ass Indian jewelry for Beth and Zoe and my mom, and I bought a Four Corners T-shirt for myself. What can I say? I like cheese.

But once I’d had my cheese ration it was time to make some miles, so I mounted up and headed west with purpose. From that point on I tried to stop only for gas. Tried, I say. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, seeing as how I’d spent the night getting dripped on in a leaky tent, so I had to make a few wake-up stops along the way as well.

One of the stops was here, at the Blue Coffee Pot Restaurant in Kayenta, AZ. The special of the day was mutton stew with Navajo fry bread. The stew was really just soup, and I’m not fan of soup — soup is a beverage, not a food. And the fry bread reminded me of naan, which is also Indian fry bread, but Indian from India, not Indian from America. My sleep-deprived brain thought that was really fucking clever at the time.

When I got to Kingman, AZ, which was just about the halfway point home, I was really dragging ass. I was half asleep, hot, sweaty, and felt like crap. I really wanted to get a room at the local Hampton Inn, jump in the pool, and then sleep for a few hours. But on the other hand I also really wanted to get home.

So I did the most logical thing possible: I went to Dairy Queen and had a banana split and a cup of coffee, and that did the trick. With all that caffeine and sugar in my system, I felt good to go again, and go I did. I blasted for home, stopping only for gas the rest of the way.

I finally rolled into my own driveway around 9 pm that night after clocking just over 750 miles on the day. Six days, two thousand five hundred fifty two miles had all gone by in a blur and I was finally home again.

All told, it was a great trip. It was my first long road trip on a motorcycle and I loved it. Now I know what I and my bike are capable of, so I think I’ll be doing more of these road trips. They’re exactly as much fun as I thought they’d be.