With my friend Tony we set out to ride the western part of the Trans America Trail, a route created by a guy who wanted to avoid pavement as much as possible and cross the entire continental U.S.A.
I originally blogged this on Tumblr, a platform that is no longer quite what it used to be. This is a combination of the individual photos with captions (and some of the videos) I posted there. That is, on Tumblr each post was a single video or photo with a short caption or explanation, but for my blog I am grouping them into each state we passed through.
Before the trip I spent a lot of time prepping my DRZ400S dualsport motorcycle. New tires, valve check, suspension linkage lubrication, and wiring a power cable for a new GPS.
One of my great neighbors and I drove my truck with the two dual-sport motorcycles in the back out to Colorado. Then my neighbor visited some of his relatives while I visited some of mine, then he drove my truck back home. After the family visit I picked Tony up from the airport so we could get on the bikes.
Beautiful sunset in Twin Falls Idaho is probably related to the big range fires we drove past.
We had a really nice dinner (which wasn’t intended to be a “send off,” but which did make for a great “last civilized meal”) with my sister, then Tony got to meet Flash Gordon, one of the wounded birds in the ‘bird ICU’.
Flash Gordon is awfully cute, but this young flammulated owl is blind in one eye and probably can’t be released back into the wild.
We met up with Tony’s friend Todd who lives in Colorado. Per tradition, the KTM needs some work before the trip starts.
Todd is going to guide us to Salida on some interesting roads, then after Salida we will begin following the TAT route.
Startled this little fellow on Guanella Pass road.
Pretty rainbow on a cool jeep road going into Salida. We went through plenty of rain to earn this rainbow view.
View over Salida.
Our gear was all wet, so we rode to dinner in “squidly” style.
We had a reservation at a place that we could have walked from, but somehow the reservation got screwed up, so we are staying at a funky little house. Stripped all the wet gear off and headed to dinner since we didn’t arrive in town until 7:00. We had a wonderful dinner at The Fritz in Salida.
187 miles in 9 hours.
On the way up Hancock Pass some of Todd’s luggage fell off - good thing he was still leading us!
Tony had a couple of spills on a section of big rocks on the way up, but wasn’t hurt, and no damage to the bike other than scratches. Super scenery!
Took a snack/lunch break at the tiny town of Sargents. Todd had to head back home - thanks for being our ‘local guide’!
Coming into Lake City from the south - a spectacular “skyline.”
Highlights for the day:
169 miles in 9.5 hours.
Tony was either suffering from altitude sickness, or maybe food poisoning. In any case, he wasn’t feeling well in the morning. We got a really late start. After going over Cinnamon Pass, Tony took a nap in an old building in Animas Forks while I rode to the top of Engineer Pass.
Corkscrew Pass - coming down this might be my favorite of all the passes we did today because it truly lives up to its name. Switchback after switchback, and they were steep. Toward the bottom my front brake started to smell like it was burning, and it faded a little so we had to slow down a bit.
Fantastic meal (and WiFi!) at the Dew South in Rico, Colorado. In case you can’t tell, Tony is feeling better now.
We’ve been geeking out with my iPhone and his iTouch - dueling Apple geeks in a very small town. We spent the night in a small motel a couple miles outside Rico.
98 miles in 7 hours.
The route out of Rico starts on the road to Dunton, which, according to the Rico locals we talked to, is a somewhat snooty up-scale hot springs resort. However, the TAT takes a turn onto some pretty sketchy roads for a while. Our first two hours riding today only got us about 40 of the 240 we needed to do to get to Moab.
The Rico local folk at the coffee stand where we ate breakfast were interesting. We talked for a while with Felix Snow, who is a champion-level disabled skier.
We also went through our first of many “please keep gate closed” gates this morning.
Once we dropped out of the San Juan Mountains, it warmed up and the landscape was different. We rode a lot of straight roads with 90-degree corners.
