Glacier - Day 9

Colorado Springs, CO to Garland, TX: about 730 miles

Forecast for the day was pretty ugly compared to the rest of the trip. Cool temperatures and rain possible all the way to Dallas. I was really planning on making it in one day, as this being Sunday, I needed to be back at work in the morning.

As well, after putting in over 3600 miles the last eight days, I was kinda ready to be home… still enjoying the ride mind you, but it would have been better had the weather cooperated some.

Again I pulled out the cold weather gear and bundled up from head to toe knowing that it was going to be cold most of the day.

I pulled away from Kevin’s house about 7AM that morning. The sun was not yet up and there was a quietness on the roads leading out of Colorado Springs. I know the cold front had overtaken us again as there were low hanging clouds and low temps.

I cruised down the road at the state mandated limits after a state trooper whizzed by me to pull over a truck that just passed. There were lots of troopers on the road that morning, fortunately I did not meet any of them personally.

And the weather was just plain cold with patches of rain on and off all the way to Raton.

I snapped these pics at the rest area on the north side of Trinidad before tackling the pass. It was clouded over such that you couldn’t even see it.

I throttled up the pass and over to Raton where it was time to fill up again, before heading to the Texas panhandle. Again, rain accompanied me all the way across the Texas state line. Anyone who’s ever traveled from Raton to Texas is familiar with the little hills in NM, just before you cross the state line. I snapped these pictures knowing the area had a special place in Jason’s heart…having broken down in this area twice in one week, he’s probably not that eager to pass by here again.

With those final shots I pretty much buckled down, trying to get home before dark. I still had a long way to go and there was no guarantee that the weather would cooperate.

Reaching Amarillo about lunch time I refueled the bike and grabbed a burrito at Taco Bell, called Nikki and let her know I was probably looking at sometime after 9PM to be home, if the weather would cooperate. I still had just under 400 miles to go before the day was done.

I pulled out the MP3 player and cranked up the tunes and headed down the lonely stretch of 287 that was my channel to great roads and scenic views. The weather was still cold and I had not removed any of my gear. Rather uneventful trip until I reached Wichita Falls, where I stopped to fuel up and saw the remnants of a huge rainstorm that I must have just missed. A guy asked me which way I was headed and I replied, 'to Dallas’. He just shook his head and wished me luck. He had just come from that direction and stated that traffic slowed to about 30MPH due to the rain. It was so heavy you couldn’t see to drive. That was encouraging.

I tightened up my gear and headed south on 287. It wasn’t long before I hit the rain and limited visibility caused mostly by the dark clouds, not the rain. It was raining off and on for most of the journey.

Finally, when I reached Decatur, it was warm enough that I could remove the cold weather gear… after about 13 hours in it I was ready for a change. I stripped it off at the gas station… my last fill up before I reached home. That last 88 miles was a welcome respite from the weather up to that point. The Valk was running smooth, the weather was great and the traffic was… well, welcome to the metroplex.

I cruised in about 9:30PM finishing a 14 ½ hour ride for the day. Google-maps says 830 miles based on the route I took, but the bike odometer says only 730. It kinda felt more like 830 to me.

This trip had just about everything but hail and snow… and we’re certainly glad that was not a part of it. Here are the odometer pre and post pics to show the 4300 miles traveled for this trip.

It was a great trip and I’d do it again without hesitation. But we’ve already been there, so we’re looking at new places for the next one. Stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated on our traveling adventures.

Glacier - Day 8

Buffalo, WY to Colorado Springs, CO: about 460 miles

In talking with the Hotel manager the night before we understood that it might be a little chilly in the morning. We awoke to cold temps and a few sprinkles. A cold front had pushed through, overnight and robbed us of the warm weather we had been experiencing. Must have been in the mid 40s; slightly colder than I had anticipated. We walked down to McDonalds and grabbed a quick breakfast, but more importantly, some coffee to get us warmed up and ready to tackle the road.
When we returned to the hotel, another one of the bikers was up and preparing to head north to Idaho. I did not envy him. He just purchased a Harley in Colorado and was taking it home. He didn’t quite have the right gear, but I loaned him some electrical tape so he could tape down his North Face rain paints to his boots to try to keep some of the weather out. I was really glad we were headed south as that pass had to be much colder than where we were headed.

We packed the bikes and layered on our cold weather gear in preparation for the super-slab slide down to Colorado Springs. I told Kevin to dress warm, not scary… he didn’t seem to think there was a difference.

It was good to have all the gear on as it did not want to warm up. We hit the highway and locked the throttles in about 85 MPH, that certainly warmed us up, not. We stopped down the road and had our first fill up of the day. These are a couple of pics I snapped at the gas station.

I then handed the camera to Kevin so he could take a picture of me in my cold weather gear. Here’s the shot he got. Seems I did not pull the zoom back out... and neither did he.

It was so cold I had frost build up on my mustache... oh no, that's just age showing through.

After that we mounted and pointed our bikes south on I25 in hopes of overtaking the cold front. That would allow us to lose some of this gear.

On some roads you’ve traveled, there’s no question why it’s there and what it’s used for. You can clearly see the need for such roads. This did not appear to be one of those roads. Incredibly lonely with hardly any traffic, with absolutely nothing between points A and B.

I think these are pictures are as we headed into Casper, WY. Still very overcast with low hanging clouds and low temps.

I don’t have too many pictures after that… we really wanted to overtake the cold front that snuck by us during the night, so we were pretty focused on getting down the road. We did not overtake the front until we reach Fort Collins at around 3 that afternon, where the temperature was a toasty 77º. That’s when we decided to lose some of the gear, grab some lunch at Arby’s, call our significant others and rest a bit.

I pushed the Valk to 167 miles before the fill up. Quite proud of that as we were doing 80-85 on the highway. Kevin just shrugged his shoulders as he put in his usual 2.5 gallons as I pumped in over 4.

After that we headed straight into Denver, where I thought the traffic was heavy, but Kevin called it light. We made it to Kevin’s house on the southern tip of Colorado Springs about 5:30PM. Only 8 ½ hours on the road, pretty short day for us.

We unloaded some, but more importantly we pulled out our memory cards and relived the trip as we watched the slideshow of all our pictures on his computer. Over 855 pictures between two cameras; aren’t you glad we didn’t put them all in the report. Of course, some of them weren’t any good, so we really had only about 850 worthy shots.

We left the bikes in the driveway overnight and headed to bed somewhat early as I had about 750 miles to cover the next day to make it back home.

Glacier - Day 7

From Columbus, MT to Buffalo, WY: about 350 miles

I really don’t think anything could have prepared us for the ride we were going to share today. Bikers of all ages continue to seek out the best roads that challenge your skills, stimulate your mind and touch your soul. We would spend most of the day on roads that did just that. This is the route we settled on prior to departure. Everything was already predetermined weeks ago, except for the initial run on 78 from Columbus to Red Lodge.

It was a crisp 47º when we headed out that morning. I doubled up on the top layers, but just went with the Levi’s on the bottom. With my larger engine I have a bit more protection than Kevin does. We headed south on 78 planning on having breakfast at Red Lodge. We thought it would just be a lively jaunt through some desolate areas. And it started out pretty much that way.

But shortly after we left, the famed ‘Big Sky Montana’ turned into ‘No Sky Montana’ as the cloud ceiling seemed drop in on us.

We slowed down a bit as the visibility decreased but then just before we entered Red Lodge the clouds disappeared as quickly as they appeared and we were able to locate the preferred café for breakfast right on the main drag through town.We parked in front of the café and headed in for some great fixings to break our fast and find out, in deed, this is the place to be as we have to wait for a table. While a bit slow, due to the heavy traffic, the food was good and served its purpose.

It’s about this time I could extrapolate on how Kevin ends up at another table expounding, yet again, on the incredible merits and capabilities of his V-Strom and its reigning superiority as the Adventurer Tourer of choice; except that I grow tired of such as I am sure you, the reader, are as well. I quickly point out how others are eyeing our table and that it would be in our best interest for him to gather up his things and we be off.

We head outside and as we’ve been informed it’s a full 20º cooler at the top of the pass than it is at Red Lodge, we wisely decide to dress for colder weather, which, in my case, is just about everything I brought with me. We bundled up and started up the rides after looking down the main drag from which we came;We point our steeds in this direction and head to the pass.

I’m not sure what I looked like in all that gear, but I felt like the Michelin man.

Our first stop after breakfast was at Rock Creek Vista Point. From here you could see the incredible roads we just navigated to get to this altitude on the mountain and we were not even at the top. We still had almost 2000 ft. more to climb to reach the top of the pass.

But this view point offered exceptional photo opportunities of the road just conquered. Some incredible turns and climbs make this road an absolute treasure. Red Lodge sits at 5555 ft. and we were now just over 9000 ft. These two pics give you and idea of the roads you encounter on the ride up.

The Rock Creek Vista also provided some exceptional views of the surrounding country side.

From here we could also see that the road ahead would quickly take us to higher ground.

So we headed off seeking the top of the pass…

Finding more and more signs like these… making our little hearts leap with delight and our throttle wrists twitchy.

Every time we completed a turn we were exposed to yet another.

And when you thought you were at the top… there was yet another turn.

And then a climb...

Till finally we reached the pull out at the top of the pass.

The view from the top is quite, well, massive, is about the only word I can think of here.

It was quite cold up here with about 40º and 40 MPH winds and I was reluctant to remove my helmet but eventually did to facilitate the picture taking. Did I mention the views were massive?

Found this guy at the very top… I think he owned the place and was just wondering what all of us were doing up there trampling in his backyard.

From the top you can see the road leading southward and down the mountain and it looked almost better than the road leading up.

Here’s a pic my brother took of me trying to stay warm and look cool at the same time. As you can easily tell I failed miserably at both.

Kevin had us head over to another area on the top of the pass, which was of course – dirt. But the wide tire mounted to the Valk handled it just fine.

One last pic from the top before we head down the mountain; it’s called Beartooth Pass, but seeing as how we were looking down on just about everything around us, I really think it was Beartooth Mountain. And at 10, 947 ft., I’d classify that as a mountain.

After that, we headed down the mountain with me following Kevin and trying to keep up with the Mad Stromtroooper.

Shortly after the descent from Beartooth we turned on 296 to head toward Cody, WY. This is also known as Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, and another outstanding motorcycle road. Kevin switched to the tail position and captured these pics as we swept our way to the Shoshone River.

I like to lead… here’s what Kevin looks like when I’m in the lead.

Here’s a few pics from the Shoshone river… there is a small pullout there that allows you to walk back across the bridge and take some pictures looking up and down the canyon.

As well as straight down.

After a light snack of trail mix and lukewarm Gatorade we continued our trek toward Cody. Next stop was Dead Indian Hill Summit at 8000 ft. I’m not kidding, that’s what it was called.

But it did have some breathtaking views.

And for you motorcycle riders... the road leading up to where we were... and yeah, it was a good one.

Then again, mounting up and heading out, we faced more of this during our ride to Cody.

Then we cruised through Cody with pretty much zero fanfare, although we did finally stop for gas. Timing was such that we needed to get on down the road in position to make the haul to Colorado Springs the next day. So no pics or info out of Cody, guess we’ll have to go back. We headed south out of Cody on 120 looking to link up with 20 and then over to 16, another scenic highway that Wyoming offers.

We stopped for lunch/dinner at this little Mexican place in Worland called Ranchita. Had to cruise through that little town twice to find something we could settle on, fortunately it was a small town. Decent food, but I’m used to my Mexican food being a bit more on the spicy side.

After that we picked up 17 and headed yet over another pass after first passing through the quaint little town of Ten Sleep. Situated on Ten Sleep creek this little town showed signs of both great wealth and very meager earnings. Highway 16 traverses through Ten Sleep Canyon up and over a pass and then down into Buffalo WY. Here’s a few pictures along the route.

Meadowlark Lake…

After that we headed down to Buffalo where we found a place to corral the steeds and bunk for the night.

It was a great day of riding and light enough in miles that we could have a few stops on the way to enhance the journey. This is a great route and I’d recommend it highly to anyone who is in the vicinity. Or, do like we did… make that your vicinity and then enjoy the ride.