Passes & Canyons Blog

We went to Dinosaur National Monument this past weekend for three days and loved it. Besides seeing the place, I wanted to see how the roads would be if you were on a bike–a dual sport bike of course. I already had a pretty good idea you wouldn’t want to take those roads on a street bike.

We came in at the east end of the park, turning off U.S. 40 at Elk Springs onto the Bear Valley Road or County Road 14. From here to the Echo Park campground, where we were headed, it’s about 46 miles of gravel–some of it quite rough. This road later becomes the Yampa Bench Road, which runs alongside–but way above–the Yampa River.

I’ll tell you about the road some other time; it’s definitely doable on a bike as long as it’s not rainy.

What I want to tell you about now is the guys who showed up in the campsite next to ours our second night there. We had gone up on the rim for the day and when we came back in the evening there were four motorcycles right next to us. Judy headed back to our site and I plunged right in, having a good time shooting the bull with these guys for half an hour or so.

They were out of Texas and they connect with each other for these rides through ADV, the Adventure Rider forum. They had trailered up to Oak Creek, Colorado, and took off riding from there. Between them there was a smaller KTM–not one of those big new Adventures–plus a Kawi KLR 650, I believe a Suzuki DR650, and another bike I thought he told me was a BMW but the guy is a big Triumph fanatic so I’m not so sure. It definitely wasn’t one of the big, newer BMW adventure bikes. I don’t know; I just don’t know every bike on sight.

They’re on a 2,800-mile ride with no time constraints. They’ll take it day by day. One guy told me he’s got the whole month set aside but expects they’ll do it in about two weeks. Their route was prepared for them by a fellow in Utah who sells these sorts of plans. That’s an interesting concept. Heck, I map out Colorado rides for people frequently and I don’t charge a dime. I don’t plan to start charging, either.

Taking off from Oak Creek, which is south of Steamboat Springs on CO 131, their route guy did get them off to a good start by sending them over Dunckley Pass and Ripple Creek Pass. They were heading into Utah, then up into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and then back to Colorado. And they’re doing most of it on the dirt.

These are not a bunch of young guys, either. They all have grey hair. The first one we encountered was heading to the outhouse just after they arrived and he said hello and “I’m getting too old for this.” Apparently not too, too old, though.

Their trip got off to an inauspicious start when one of them improperly engaged his clutch right at the start and before he had rolled eight inches, he told me, he dropped the bike. And then, they said, the guy we had met hadn’t gone a quarter mile on the dirt when he went down. Some people were starting to have reservations.

They got rolling though and things smoothed out. Coming over Dunckley and Ripple Creek, one said, it was gorgeous but the road was so rough you couldn’t look at the scenery, you had to keep watching the road. Bill and John and I rode over that pass once about 25 years ago and I do remember it being so rough that I didn’t remember much about the scenery. It’s truly is gorgeous, by the way. I’ve been over it in cars a number of times so I’ve had a chance to look.

Not sure quite what their route was from Meeker, where they came out, but they came into Dinosaur the same way we did, on the Yampa Bench Road. I believe they said one or two more bikes went down along this stretch. I remember there was one really muddy spot and that gave someone some trouble.

They made it in, though, and were thrilled to be out on the first night of this great trip. The next morning we all packed up around the same time and Judy and I left first. We were all going out via the road up to the rim so I was pleased to be ahead of them so we could stop and I could get some shots looking down on them as they came up the road. I picked a good vantage point, got shots of them below, then more shots of them as they passed us and went on up. We waved and they waved and that was the last we saw of them.

Biker Quote for Today

A good rider can overcome marginal equipment. However, even the best equipment can’t overcome a marginal rider.

Tags: motorcycling Dinosaur National Monument

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Adventure bikes, Colorado motorcycle rides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.