We FINALLY made it to the Rocky Mountains!! Just when I couldn't stand looking at another stalk of corn or whatever of soy (berries?). Last night we stayed in a Mantel, which is a motel but meant for men. It was like they took an old factory or car dealership and said, "what the heck, lets turn it into a motel."
It was actually pretty cool. Picture a large indoor room with giant steel beams everywhere. Add a swimming pool, then carpet the rest of the room. Now build a bunch of rooms that all have doors into the big room. Do not add curtains, but instead use cool plastic louvers that kinda work mostly. Then add a railroad yard outside to give the ambiance, maybe a little diesel smoke for mood. That's what I'm talking bout. A MANtel.
Bright beautiful sun this morning after our continental breakfast (we call it the Empire breakfast at MANtels). and our single mission was to follow Rt 34 until we hit the Rocky Mountains in Estes Park. It took an hour to hit the Colorado border and I begged Dave for a mid morning coffee stop since the MANtel coffee was obvious the train oil drained out back last night (yuck). We stopped in Wray CO, which was a surprisingly hopping town. The Wray Cafe was your classic small town coffee shop but none of the ambiance. Coffee was pretty good though.
Colorado marked the end of corn and soy and the beginning of feed yards with hundreds of beef cows being raised for hamburger. They all have that same distinctive smell. We kept seeing huge trucks with some kind of green chop which put their blinkers on at the feed lots so maybe that is what the sorghum was used for.
We stopped for gas in the town where Ward Bond from the 1957-1960 TV series Wagon Train grew up.
All was well until we starting hitting traffic in Greeley and then Rt 34 was closed all the way to Estes Park, but the good part is that the detour took us south and sent us to Estes Park up Rt 36 which is a beautiful canyon ride. First time we have had to lean the bikes in 4 days so very very welcome. And it cooled off and a storm was brewing to the west (big black ugly black thingie). A guy on a rebuilt crotch rocket talked us up and showed us the road rash from his latest accident. He wears sleeveless t-shirts and wonders why he has road rash?
We put on out rain gear and headed the back way to Boulder along the Peak to Peak Highway which is a 30 miles stretch of bliss. It did rain on us but we had our gear on so no biggie. Nederland is the turn to go down through Boulder Canyon and it was raining at the top of the 17 mile canyon, but cleared by the time we got to the bottom. We hit Boulder at rush hour so found a place to pull over and find a motel. We are staying at the same motel I stayed at last year which is cheap by downtown Boulder standards. We called Kerri (Dave's daughter who happened to be in town on her VStrom 650 and was staying a month or so in Boulder for work). She met us at the Dark Horse which is a tavern / burger place we could walk to and had a great chat about bikes and programming.
And it was our chance to check the bucket list box labeled "ate Rocky Mountain Oysters". and lets just leave it at "they are chewy".
Kerri met a guy who worked for the Butler map company that makes awesome motorcycle maps and he had an extra copy of the Colorado rides. We do not know where we are going tomorrow but it it might be back to Estes Park and then west from there on the same road Kerri road in on.
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