Passes & Canyons Blog

I go out of my way for terrific motorcycle roads and coming home from Tooele, UT, last week was no exception. I wanted to revisit American Fork Canyon and the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway, which provide a great alternative route to Heber City and U.S. 40, which was my road back to Denver.

I’ve been this way before more than once. The OFMC discovered this road years ago thanks to a tip from a local and we ride it whenever we can. If you’re out in the Salt Lake City area you should make a point of riding it, too.

Fortunately, in the farflung reaches of the Salt Lake City metro area, the American Fork Canyon is easy to find, provided you know it exists. From I-15, exit east onto Utah 92 just south of Point of the Mountain and follow this road arrow straight to the cleft in the rock that is the mouth of the canyon. Then kiss the city good-bye, there’s none of that ahead.

You’ll quickly reach an entrance station for Timpanogos Cave National Monument but if you’re only passing through there is no fee. Should you pay the $6 fee and visit the monument? I have to admit we never have, but here’s what the official website says about the place.

Timpanogos Cave National Monument sits high in the Wasatch Mountains. The cave system consists of three spectacularly decorated caverns. Helictites and anthodites are just a few of the many dazzling formations to be found in the many chambers. As visitors climb to the cave entrance, on a hike gaining over 1,000 ft in elevation, they are offered incredible views of American Fork Canyon.

Make your way through the canyon, which is pretty spectacular in its own right, and then bear right to head on up the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway. This is a winding, twisting, amazingly narrow strip of asphalt that loops up to Alpine Summit and then on down past Sundance Ski Resort. It hits U.S. 189 running through Provo Canyon and a left will take you up to Heber City and U.S. 40, or a right takes you down into Provo.

Biker Quote for Today

God makes the lightning, bikers make the thunder.

I had my camera on the wrong setting, so this photo is not as good as it might have been, but this is a scenic overlook along the Tail of the Dragon. That blur is a bike racing by, in case you couldn’t tell.

Judy and I were in Clemson, South Carolina, last week visiting my mother and planned to drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, via the Cherohala Skyway to fly home. Plans changed so we didn’t have time for the skyway, so we looked at a map and found a route that was pretty direct but also identified as scenic, US 129. A no-brainer.

I was aware of a good many motorcycles going the other way as we headed along north on this road, but there was a point where I started having a very strong suspicion. This was when we pulled into a small community with a whole lot–I mean a lot–of motorcycle stuff as well as a large, metal dragon. Judy asked Google and sure enough, we had inadvertently found ourselves in Deal’s Gap, on the Tail of the Dragon.

So OK, we were in a car, not on a bike, but there we were nonetheless. Now we would get to see what this fabled road is like.

And it wasn’t very much like what I had imagined. Through everything I’ve seen and read I had the impression that the Tail of the Dragon largely ran down a river valley with the road following the twists and turns of the stream. Frankly, my mental image of it was not anything I was terribly interested in. I can find plenty of twisty roads out here in Colorado. That wasn’t it at all.

In fact, the Dragon has plenty of ups and downs as well as all the curves. It’s not unlike a lot of twisty Colorado mountain roads, although you don’t get the kind of views you do here. First off, it’s not so high and the hills are not so high. Secondly, the tall deciduous trees block your view a lot.

Not that we didn’t enjoy the road. Our rental car was a subcompact that had energy and was quite agile. And living here I am totally comfortable driving roads with a lot of curves. We whipped along and it was fun.

Now, part of the enjoyment may have been due to the fact that this was a week-day and there was not that much traffic, and most of what there was was going the other direction. From what I hear, the Dragon is super busy on week-ends and that would have been less than wonderful.

One clue that really tells you you’re on the Dragon is all the photographers staked out along the road shooting pictures of everyone who goes by, with big banners telling you the website to go to order your photos.

We stopped at the overlook in the photo above and spoke there with a couple Canadian brothers who had ridden the road one direction, turned back to ride it the other way, and were now going back again to continue on their journey. They thought it was a pretty fun ride.

And now having driven it, I will say I would enjoy riding it. I never had any interest before but now I do. It’s a nicer road than I had pictured. It would be fun on a bike.

Biker Quote for Today

You’re only one bike ride away from a good mood.

Some of the folks on this ride had never been up on Skyline Drive, at Canon City.

Just home yesterday from a four-day ride with a bunch of folks. It was Willie’s birthday (and our wedding anniversary) so what the heck, why not go for a fun little excursion.

I’ve mentioned Willie and Jungle numerous times before. They live in Eagle and Willie runs a motorcycle tour company called Ball O’ String Custom Adventure Tours. Willie did the planning and organizing for this excursion so we knew we were guaranteed to have a good time.

We met up the first night down in Pueblo, Judy and I having taken the scenic route through the mountains to get there, rather than the interstate. At that point we had one Yamaha, two beemers, and us on my Concours. Plus there were a few folks in cars. Hey, no need to exclude people just because they don’t ride.

We had a birthday/anniversary party at the home of friends in the area and got the trip off to a good start.

Next morning we headed west out of Pueblo on CO 96, otherwise known as the Frontier Pathways Scenic & Historic Byway, to Wetmore, and then south until we hit the Greenhorn Highway, CO 165. This took us by Bishop Castle, though we didn’t stop at this point, on to Lake San Isabel and our quarters for the night at the San Isabel Lodge.

After unloading and settling in we headed back to Bishop Castle where we were to meet more folks. Just as we arrived the skies opened up so it got a bit wet and muddy, but what the heck. Everyone who had never seen Bishop Castle was properly impressed and those of us who had been there were–as always–interested in the ever-changing progress Jim Bishop has made since our last visits.

While there we also spoke with a couple guys on beemer dual-sports, one of whom had ridden the day before from Billings, Montana, to Denver, and the two of them had come here and were headed on yet to Creede that day. Serious riders here.

Back at the San Isabel Lodge we now had another Concours and two Harleys added to the group. One of the cabins had a huge main room, dubbed the Grand Ballroom, where everyone could gather and more birthday partying ensued.

Come morning some of the group rode directly to Cripple Creek but the majority of us went to Canon City where we rode the Royal Gorge train up through the canyon and back, with lunch served. Then it was on to Cripple Creek, with a detour to do the Skyline Drive loop. Then west on US 50 to pick up the back route to Cripple Creek.

Still more people joined us in Cripple Creek, so when we headed out to a dinner buffet there were 19 of us altogether. And once again Willie was serenaded with “Happy Birthday.”

Sunday morning then it was time for folks to go their separate ways. Judy and I headed north to Divide to pick up US 24, to Woodland Park, and then north the way we had come down originally. Lots more people–and a heck of a lot of motorcycles–on a Sunday than on the Thursday morning we had come down. And then back to Denver and home on US 285. It was a good little 450-mile, four-day run. And now, as always, we’ve got a whole lot of stuff to catch up on here at home. Ah, travel!

Biker Quote for Today

To every biker girl her helmet is her crown.

I just got a new page up for the recently paved Guanella Pass.

Well, it took me awhile. It always does. Guanella Pass has been completely paved for at least a year now, maybe longer, I don’t recall, but I only just now got it up on its own page on the website. Plus, a few days earlier, I set up the Motorcycle Camping on Guanella Pass page, with info about each of the four campgrounds along this road.

Previous to this–and previous to it being paved–I had this pass up on the Dirt Roads and Side Trips in Colorado page. Not any more.

The reason it takes me so long to get these things done is that there is so much involved. First I had to go ride the pass a few times, shooting photos and jotting down pertinent information. Then in the middle of it all I got this GoPro camera so I went and rode it again shooting video so I could include some video highlights of the ride.

Well, you can chalk that one up to learning how to use the GoPro. I won’t bother you with more detail of that, only just say there is no video on the page at this point. And the photos are basically OK for now; I had to patch together a bunch from several different trips up there over the course of several years. At some point I’d like to make it less of a hodge-podge.

I also decided I want to make Guanella the first of a second batch of web pages that are designed to be mobile friendly. Something you can view easily on your smartphone. And along with that I wanted to use an interactive Google map rather than the static Microsoft Streets and Trips maps I’ve always used till now.

Once again, there was a learning curve but I figured it out and that is what this new page has. There is an issue, though, in that at least on my desktop computer the map loads very slowly. Like, five to ten seconds, during which time there is just this empty rectangle. I may swap out the desktop version with a Streets and Trips map, while keeping the mobile-friendly page with the Google map.

And oh yeah, I haven’t got the mobile-friendly page ready yet. You can’t just do a copy and paste. What works on a big screen usually doesn’t work very well at all on a tiny screen.

I won’t bore you either with all the little tweaks necessary to integrate a couple entirely new pages into the overall website. Let’s just say there is a ripple effect that no one but me would even be aware of.

Now it appears they are finally paving the west side of Cottonwood Pass. I guess in about a year I’m going to need to do this all over again for Cottonwood.

Biker Quote for Today

Oh, you ride a motorcycle? That explains why you’re getting so many women.

Carhenge the first time we saw it. It doesn’t look like this today.

Motorcycle touring is not like traveling in a car. A car is like a magic carpet: you just sit there and after a while you’re somewhere else. Riding a bike takes much more concentration and physical involvement. Consequently, for many of us, 200-300 miles is often a full day’s ride.

Motorcycle touring is more about discovering great places than it is about burning miles. Sure, there are the Iron Butt guys who go out and ride 1,000 miles in a day, but that’s not what I’d call touring. The beauty of the relaxed, easy-going riding approach is that you stop a lot, and sometimes those stops are the best part of the trip.

Case in point: My riding buddies and I were cruising down from the Black Hills, through western Nebraska near Alliance, and saw a place to pull off. (We’re really big on places to pull off – after an hour or so on the bike your legs are getting stiff, your butt is getting numb, and what could be better than to bask in the sun somewhere out in the middle of nowhere?) Looking around, we noticed there were trails heading into the trees, and somewhere off in there was something odd sticking up. We decided to go investigate, and then, our jaws dropped. “Oh my god, what is this?” we asked.

This was Carhenge. Imagine if you will, a farmer with a playful bent gathering a bunch of dead cars, planting them in the ground, stacking them up, and then painting them gray, to imitate Stonehenge, the Druid relic in England. And not just in haphazard fashion – the positioning of this oddball piece of art was carefully measured out to make Carhenge as true to the original as possible.

And we stumbled right into it. If we’d been in a car we would have just blasted on past.

Jerome, Arizona, was another of those serendipitous finds. Sure, today Jerome has been “discovered” and reborn with galleries, restaurants, and all the other things that come when a town becomes trendy. But we found it first.

A number of years ago, having spent the night in Sedona, Arizona, a trendy town that had already been discovered, we were heading to Las Vegas. Anyone whose intent was to get to Vegas would have taken the road to Flagstaff and flown west on I-40. That was not our intent; we were on motorcycles.

Instead, we headed west on 89A toward Clarkdale because the map showed some mountains and some twisty roads going over to Prescott. For a biker, twisty roads equals heaven. But we never dreamed we would find ourselves winding through switchbacks up the sheer face of a mountain, to find ourselves in a town built vertically on that face. This was Jerome, an old, nearly-abandoned, mining town.

Jerome has one main street that comes up the face of the hill, switches back and climbs higher, then switches back and climbs higher still. Some buildings have their front door on the same street as their back door, just at a different elevation. And of course the views are spectacular. We fell in love with this place. Apparently a lot of other people did too.

It’s not necessary, however, to stumble onto some unexpected gem to have a great stop on the bike trip. Just this summer my friends and I were heading toward Kamas, Utah, about to go over a pass, and there were black clouds up ahead. Prudence convinced us we’d better stop and put on rain gear. (Even though putting on rain gear is a pain and we try to avoid it unless it’s really necessary.)

In this case, as most of the guys were pulling on their rain pants, one guy suggested that if we just took a break there for a while the rain would pass and we could ride on without the gear. There was no shade where we were, and the sun was beating down, but just about then a cloud came over and the idea of waiting became very appealing.

Off came the rain gear, out came the cold beers, and for 45 minutes we sat and relaxed and reveled in the soul-fulfilling sweetness of just hanging out in some beautiful middle of nowhere. And then we rode on under clear skies. Beautiful indeed.

Biker Quote for Today

You don’t have to be a cowboy to ride off into the sunset.

This is what we woke up to our first morning on the road.

Judy and I headed out on this Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) “Pilgrimage to Barber” but we never got there. Mother Nature intervened.

The group was planning to leave on Saturday but Judy and I didn’t want to do the 450-mile day entailed in going all the way to McPherson, Kansas. We decided to leave on Friday and make that stretch a two-day trip. I found what appeared to be a delightful BnB in Coolidge, Kansas, and made a reservation.

Meanwhile, weather reports were saying a big winter storm was blowing in. The rest of the group decided to leave on Friday, too, and book a second night at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, so as to get the rest of the trip (and motel reservations!) back on track. We figured fine, we’d meet up with them in Eureka Springs instead of McPherson. We figured we’d be fine, because we would stay ahead of the storm.

Wrong.

We rode to Coolidge that first day and the BnB was everything I hoped it would be. If you’re ever out there and need to stop for the night I strongly recommend the Trail City Bed & Breakfast. It’s clean and very attractive, exceedingly well maintained, comfortable, and Lori is a great cook. Plus, it’s dirt cheap.

In the morning we got up to what you see in that photo above. OK, let’s think about this.

First off, you’ll notice that the pavement is only wet. It was windy for sure but the roads appeared clear, and after vacillating all morning I finally said let’s go for it. The weather radar was telling us if we could get east of Garden City we would be out of the snow. Into rain probably, but not snow. And Garden City was only 69 miles away.

We didn’t get that far. We were happy to make it 42 miles to Lakin where we pulled in to the first motel we saw. The wind was blowing like a banshee and the roads were not as clear as they had been in Coolidge. I’ll tell you about that 42 miles in my next post.

We stayed in Lakin three days. We had no choice. We were snowed in and the following day the highway was officially closed.

In the morning we were clearly snowbound. There were eight inches on the ground, it was still coming down hard, and the wind was still blowing like a banshee. Also, the power was out, so there was no heat in the motel. The road was closed because the powerlines had fallen down all along the highway.

Long story short, it was two more days before we could leave. We got east of Garden City and we both immediately noticed that the temperature went up 10 degrees. And there was no snow anywhere to be seen. So if we only could have gotten past there . . .

Initially we figured we would catch up with the group even later, and eventually later stretched to after they had visited the Barber Motorsports Museum–the object of this pilgrimage–and were headed back. But after three days in Lakin we decided to just go on to Wichita and visit a cousin of mine who I hadn’t seen in 60 years. And after that we went down to Oklahoma City and visited a nephew of mine and met his wife for the first time.

Then we spent three days getting back to Denver, playing tourist, stopping at several national park units, and seeing new country. It was a good three days.

Nearing home, we ran into a downpour between Elizabeth and Franktown, suited up, immediately rode out of the rain, started to cook in the rain gear, but then got closer to town and saw dark clouds. Sure enough, the last five miles home was in another downpour. And that was our 10-day trip.

Biker Quote for Today

What if I told you you need to actually ride a motorcycle to be a biker?