A Ride To Guffey For Lunch
Monday, September 6th, 2021
The Corona’s at Freshwater in Guffey was a busy place that Sunday afternoon.
There’s probably no one in the RMMRC who knows these roads better than Tim, so when Tim planned a ride to Guffey for lunch you knew it was going to be a good one.
A good-sized group assembled at the Phillips 66 out in Morrison and we headed out US 285 through Conifer, over Kenosha Pass, and down into Jefferson. We turned south on Park County Road 77 (Tarryall Road) past Tarryall Reservoir–thus the name–and picked up US 24 at Lake George. I hadn’t been along that road recently and I was surprised anew at how pretty it was, first of all, and also at how green South Park still is this late in the season.
From Lake George we headed east just to Florissant and then turned south on Teller County Road 1. If you stay on it all the way, this road will take you into Cripple Creek via the back way, and it’s a terrific motorcycle road. But we turned right off at Teller County Road 11 and then turned right off that onto Teller County Road 112. Crossing into Park County the road becomes Park County Road 102 and after some twisting and turning you come to Guffey. Just a few miles past Guffey the road ends at CO 9, coming down from Hartsel and up from Parkdale, near the Royal Gorge.
It had been years since I had been through Guffey, and I’ve never stopped there. This is quite the little town. Coming in from the east the main road is lined with really, really old cars, tractors and a lot of other stuff. Talk about character! And then the road does a quick right-left and in that bend is the Freshwater Saloon, home of The Corona’s at Freshwater.
On a pre-ride scouting visit a week earlier this place had not been busy so we weren’t expecting it to be this day, but that didn’t anticipate the big biker crowd the restaurant had been alerted was coming. We barely got seated before this thundering horde of Harleys roared in and took up the entire area set aside for them. We were glad we got our lunch orders in first.
After lunch we headed back the way we came in, out 102/112, 11, and 1, up a point where, instead of going all the way to Florissant, we turned east on Teller County Road 42, a road I had never been on before. This turned out to be a cut-off that takes you much more directly to US 24 just outside of Divide. Nice to know this road is there.
We took US 24 to Woodland Park and then turned north on CO 67, up to Deckers, and then CO 126 to Buffalo Creek. I had been thinking at this point about Sunday afternoon traffic coming down out of the mountains on US 285, and not looking forward to it, but apparently so had Tim. So at Buffalo Creek we turned off onto the West Platte River Road, which runs along the South Platte River. Just past Foxton we turned onto Foxton Road, again headed north to US 285.
But again, Tim was not planning on riding 285. We turned right onto Running Deer Road, which connects to Broken Arrow Drive, which then connects to Pleasant Park Road, which becomes High Grade Road winds around and takes you down into the Little Bear Creek, now being called Deer Creek Road. This finally runs into Deer Creek Canyon and the Deer Creek Canyon Road, which comes out of the hills at Wadsworth, just south of C-470. So there we were–all the way down without any Sunday afternoon traffic. Good job Tim!
At this point the group scattered and I made my way home. It had not only been a really nice ride, it was a great day for riding. Glad I got to take advantage of it.
Biker Quote for Today
You know you’re a biker when someone says you have an “iron butt” and it’s a compliment.
