I have ridden this route three times on mountain bikes with my Scout Troop, so this would be a new way to experience the route.
The road is ever changing from high meadows to aspen forests to pine forests. The scenery is ever changing as well - providing a number of nuggets along the way.
The road surface varied a lot. At one point early on, we encountered a stretch that had been freshly coated with Mag Cloride, a dust preventative. This was like riding on ice - it was very slick and snotty. Not fun stretch. It was fun to get to the Scout's first lunch stop in 30 minutes, something that took 4 hours on our bicycles.
There are a lot of new and old ranches along the first part of the route that are neat to look at.
As we road long and got to the eastern edge of the plateau, we could see smoke rising from a huge brush fire that has been burning for a few days near Montrose. As we watched it, we could tell it flared on them a couple of times by the sudden color change in the smoke plume.
The last 30 miles of the dirt road had recently been coated with a new layer of road base. This material is very loose, hard to ride through. I cannot image trying to ride mountain bike through that mess - and it was a struggle on our motos, for sure. But by God's grace, we made it through that stuff and made the steep decent down to the Unaweep Canyon, leading to our home for the night. We road 90 miles across the dirt in about 4 hours of saddle time, a feat that takes over 2 days to ride on a mountain bike.
Our plans were to go to the Gateway Canyons resort, a place I have stayed in before. But just before retiring for the evening, we called for a reservation. Surprise! The place has been "discovered" and the quoted price for an evening, a single room with 2 beds, came in at $600!!! So we decided to deadhead to Grand Junction and call it a day.
Tomorrow, we stay on the tarmac and hit Durango via Telluride and Cortez.
Thanks for reading...
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