Colorado - Utah - Colorado roundtrip

It was a sunny morning with only a few clouds yet still a little bit chilly. We took it easy compiled another video and watched one more episode of Star Trek from Netflix during breakfast. This day would be a short and easy riding day. From Grand Junction via Delta, Crawford and along the Black Canyon to Gunnison. The cliffs of Black Canyon appeared to me harsh, unfriendly, rough and uninviting. They told me: we are dangerous, and yet the view was very beautiful.

Chipmunk bouncing over the street :)

The weatherman promised freezing nights for Gunnison and we stayed two nights in a motel. In this way Skippy could now finally continue her studies and I got to ride some more adventurous roads. After we came back from our morning walk with girls we found two of our fans standing at our bikes (Hi there Joel and Kyle!). Cool! It felt motivating to meet people who followed our adventure already for months and now meet us. Skippy made me some smoothie to go and then I went of towards Cumberland Pass...

Wolfi's post on Cumberland, Cottonwood and Marshall Pass comes soon!

Extremely wide roads for cars in Gunnison, but not much walkways for pedestrians!

Skippy was bored and fed-up. For her it was time to leave Colorado in order to make progress towards North and West. The ride from Gunnison via Montrose to Silverton certainly did not help and neither did the fact that it was Saturday night many motels were booked and the only remaining option was camping. According to Foreca (International weather service from Finland with an excellent User Interface) the night temperature would be around +10C. When we checked in, the lady at the reception told that it was -2C last night! Ohohohoh – Skippy wasn't too pleased!

The night got really cold and the meter showed -4C. We put on all our thick clothes and it still was not enough. When we woke up there was a layer of ice over the bikes. What now? The days were beautiful and as soon as I was in sunshine I was hot (T-shirt and shorts weather) – the difference was enormous!

Smoothie time!

All frozen!

Our coldest camping night so far!

Girls warming up in the morning sun.

I still wanted to do my adventure riding and thus we needed two nights in a row. On top of that I needed some time to finish the White Rim Trail video. I tried to find a motel for two nights but the cheapest was 125USD/night. Too much for us. I created an alternative plan. If we would stay at the camping place and get us a cabin from here, then we would manage with one more night, the moving would take only a few minutes and I could go riding. The cabin was not cheap 55USD plus 25USD for the dogs and plus tax! And that with shower and toilet in the common space. Well, it was the cheapest of all the feasible options and so we did that one.

And of I went to ride Cinnamon Pass.

Wolfi's post on Cinnamon Pass and Engineer Pass will come soon too!

That night it was only 0C! Almost warm :D Since the campground was a bit outside of Silverton there was only little light pollution and what a fantastic night sky it was!

Silverton, CO.

The next morning we slept in late – I had deserved it. I felt stiff all over like after a major workout in the gym. The riding menu of that day included the Mesa Verde National Park where we met Francois who was on his way to South America on his KTM 990. We stayed in Cortez in a motel and it was amazing how much warmer it was there in the evening!

...and the tourist says "ooh aah" :D

We celebrated our 500^th day on the road with first some healthy smoothie, followed by some vegan burritos, indian food and ice cream :)

No hanging around for us. On the following day it was time to go to Moab via some small roads – quite ok but nothing spectacular. Since the day was hot (30+C) and the nights were supposed to be warm we decided to stay at the KOA Kampground. Lucky us we have poodles, because they have really discriminating rules about which dogs are allowed on the campground and which not! I remembered the way from Moab back to Uli, so no need for GPS programming.

Wilson Arch, Utah.

We had a cute bunny as our neighbor ;)

Before we rode back to Uli's house, we visited Arches National Park. Here are a few pictures:

The same rock zoomed in ;) (about in Aug2014, one rock collapsed nearby Hwy 128)

Some flowers in this stony region.

Along Colorado river at HWY 128.

Cisco ghost town, Utah.

Wow - decimal numbers in street numbering scheme ;)

Our track about 1150km

Height profile

These will be the last travelogues for a while. Skippy wanted to focus on her studies and besides that she hoped for more feedback which did not come. Enjoy!
Here is #35

and #36

And in case you still cannot watch our videos in Youtube,
click here for an alternative source for #35

and click here for an alternative source for #36.



~ Wolfi