Passes & Canyons Blog

Judy told me on Sunday that she would enjoy going for a motorcycle ride, if that was in my mind, so of course we went. The mountains are not such a desirable destination at this time of year so I thought about where we might go on the plains. Hudson was what I came up with.

Not Hudson itself, really, but a fairly new attraction just outside of town that I had only heard of recently. It’s called the Wild Animal Sanctuary and they provide a home for rescued animals such as lions, bears, bobcats, emus, camels, and a variety of others. Yes, right out there on the prairie, in a climate where you have to wonder how the African lions and camels and such make out.

We checked the website and found that they’re open seven days a week and admission is $10. We geared up, climbed on the Kawi, and took off.

Now, it’s significant how I came to learn that this place existed. I had been following a thread on the Adventure Riders forum that is all about Colorado Front Range Tag-O-Rama. This is a game where you post a picture of your bike in a particular location and it is up to other players to identify the location and ride out, shoot a picture of their bike there, and post that shot. Then they select a new spot, get a shot, post it, and the game continues.

Well, very early in this game someone posted a tag at the Wild Animal Sanctuary. That’s where I learned about it. And because that is where I had learned about it, I kind of had the idea that the road to it would be paved. Wrong.

We got out there on Sunday and needed to turn south off of CO 52 onto Country Road 53 and 53 was not paved. I turned off onto it anyway but hadn’t gone more than 100 feet when it became clear to me that this just would not do. If we had been on the Honda I might have been game, but the Kawi is so squirrely on gravel that there was just no way this was going to be a good idea. The road was hard-packed underneath but on top there was an inch or two of loose dirt and gravel and I had no confidence at all that I’d be able to keep the rubber down over three miles to get to the sanctuary and then three miles back again. And with Judy on the bike with me there was no way I was going to risk it.

So we turned around, got back on the pavement, and followed a satisfactorily roundabout route back home. We’ll go back sometime in the car. In the meantime, it was still a good ride, and that was really the point all along.

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I would rather almost die riding in Mexico than almost live working in this stupid office.