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Pike's Peak
or Bust 2007
Stan's Daily Log and Photos
Hi Folks,
At 3:00 PM today Floyd and I were at the intersection of Washington Hwy 4 and Hwy 101, after riding 3740 miles from home. Every mile from now on will be toward home. Tonight we are in Seaside, OR an expensive beach resort town as evidenced by the cost of a single room at the Best Western Resort hotel, @ $299.00 each, needless to say we didn't linger long there. Can you believe they were fully booked anyway? We are down the Hwy about a mile at a Microtel @ $88.24/ea. A lot of Hwy 101 is under construction so we only rode 334 miles today, the coastal Hwy will be slow going, as it is hard to pass, so much traffic.
Attached are a few pictures, the mountain is Mt Shasta, Mt Hood and McKinley were not visible due to the haze, same for Mt St Helen.
That's all for now. Keep cool, it was 68 to 73F along the coast, I will send some cool your way soon. I will have my electric vest on in the morning.
Stan
We are all leaving this morning, will eat at the Cracker Barrel in Pueblo then we will scatter.
Terry and MC will go to Denver then to Mount Rushmore, Bob will head to Kansas City and Floyd and I to California. The rest will head to Memphis.
This will be our last group MTR happenings from me, hopefully others can send pictures and reports. See everyone when we get home. Beautiful scenery, camaraderie,
miles of smiles and lots of mountains what more could you ask for?
Have a good one.
Stan
We went to the top of Pikes Peak this morning at 8:00 AM on the Cog Rail Road, it takes about an hour to go up, you stay at the top for an hour and the return trip takes an hour. We were at 14,110 feet elevation, it was probably in the 40's. The scenery, rocks, trees were beautiful. We were well above the tree line. We saw several motorcycles at the top. The upper vehicle road is gravel but looked in good shape. We came down ate lunch at the Mason Jar Restaurant and then a few of us went to the Garden of the Gods, this park has many fabulous rock formations, a few are pictured.
For dinner tonight we went to the Flying W Ranch, about 7 miles out in the country, this is their 54 year. They had a good crowd for a Wednesday night.
The setting is old, rustic and they served a meal of BBQ beef, BBQ chicken as well as steak for an additional charge, beans, baked potato and applesauce and spice cake,with lemonade, ice tea and coffee. They had the Great Flying W Western musical show performance after dinner, the group were very good and claim to be the 2nd oldest Western show after the Son's of Pioneers. The food and music was great and well worth visiting but their parking lot needs attention.
The group will leave in the morning, Day 7 for Memphis.
We left Grandby to our motel in Manitou Springs. These 5 pictures are of our stop in Frisco, on our by pass around Denver. We again came over some high mountains, in fact it rained and a little sleet on one of them. We arrived in time to eat before we had rain but this time we were safely in the motel.
Stan
We rode to Estes Park to meet Brenda's Son Greg and his wife, we then entered the Park to ride to ride to Bear Lake, the parking lot at Bear Lake was full so we had to ride a shuttle from the RV parking lot to the Lake, a lofty 9475 foot elevation. most of us made the .5 mile walk around the beautiful lake. The picture are of the lake and shuttle.
We then rode the Trail Ridge Road to our motel in Grandby, so far this is our highest elevation, over 12,300 feet at the peak. Several parts of the rode are under construction, meaning one way traffic on gravel, really mud. The traffic was heavy in both directions and every visitor centers were packed. lots of motorcycles mixed in with the RV's and cars. The natural beauty of the scenic views are outstanding, many of the peaks still have snow. I wasn't able to take pictures and ride the Ridge at the same time but we had several others taking a bunch of pictures for later viewing.
Stan
We rode from Garden City, KA to Loveland, CO, 375 miles.
The ride was cool until 11 AM due to a huge storm we managed to miss, thanks to our Road Commander, then the heat came back, we made it with out any problems.
We spent the night in Loveland, Co at a Marriott Motel, one or our most expensive rooms to date. Can you believe their wireless access was so poor I couldn't get on line, but the continental breakfast was great.
We are anxious to get to the mountains and cool weather.
Stan
We are in Garden City, KA. 408 miles today. It has been another hot one, 96F at one point. We came through Greensburg, KA, this is the town that had the major tornado earlier this year. You can't believe the devastation, there is not hardly a building standing, lots of construction and cleanup going on now. The hospital is still in several tents. The whole town is gone, luckily they had a single self serve station, one bike was on reserve and need gas bad.
We rode in strong winds today, steady at 24 MPH and gusting to 36 MPH most all day, I really think the wind was higher than 36. When you met large trucks it was pretty bad, tiring to say the least. One Trike had the speaker cover blown right off the bike.
We came through Dodge City and the whole downtown area roads are being rebuilt and re paved, slow going. Looks like an old western town.
Tomorrow night we will be in Loveland, CO another 375 mile day.
Thanks,
Stan
Hi Folks
Just a short note. We had 15 members on 9 bikes: BJ and Hildia, David and Brenda, Mike and Brenda, Terry and MC, Paul and Dian, Charlie and Darnell, Floyd, Bob and me,
SV. We departed from the Petro Truck Stop in West Memphis at 6:45 AM August 3rd, it was 77 degrees, then it get progressively warmer, then hot. It was around 95 most of the way, we ate lunch at the Cracker Barrel in Alma, AR, our trip was uneventful, no problems. We arrived at our motel in Broken Arrow, OK at 3:00 PM. So far so good, 422 miles from home.
Have a good one,
Stan
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