Taking the V-Strom Where I Intended
These were exactly the kinds of roads I bought the V-Strom to ride. There are probably a couple thousand miles of these roads in Colorado alone, and I want to ride a lot more of them.
Yeah, we got a little wet.
We met early at Foothills BMW/Triumph and all the paying folks did their paperwork. As a tag-along there was no paperwork for me but Scott’s wife, Lorie, did insist that I take a T-shirt and a Butler map of Colorado, and I spent some time getting acquainted with some of the other riders.
Taking off, we went out Sixth Avenue to C-470, down to the Morrison turn-off and up CO 74 to Evergreen. We turned south on CO 73 to Conifer, jogged west very briefly on U.S. 285, and headed on south along Foxton Road. That brought us down to the Platte River where we headed southeast along the river to where we hit the road that comes over from Sedalia, via the Rampart Range. A turn-off from that road took us back into an area I don’t think I’ve ever been in before, because of course, all of this was on gravel. That’s why I bought the V-Strom, to ride these gravel roads.
We twisted and turned our way along these roads until we finally came out on CO 67 a little south of Deckers, and then went to Deckers for lunch.
After lunch we headed south again on CO 67 for about eight miles and then turned off onto a gravel road called West Creek Road. This road took us down into an area that, like so much else in the area, was burned out in the Hayman Fire years ago. You know that eventually the forest will regenerate but it’s surprising after this many years how few and small the young trees still are. At the same time, with the trees gone it opens up vistas that you never would have seen before, and which are pretty dang impressive.
We turned off onto one road that was a dead-end but Scott figured the area it went through was worth seeing so we went down and turned back. It was definitely cool. I really wanted to be shooting pictures but I needed to steer the bike. The two people in the group with the GoPro cameras undoubtedly good some good footage.
Back on the through-road again, we continued on into an area that is designated for dirt biking. I’m really not at all sure what this area is. It’s not the Rampart Range, and it’s over on the back side of Pikes Peak so that we got a great view of the peak as I’ve never seen it before. We did see a couple dirt bikers whizzing along.
We stuck to the road, which by now was pretty narrow and uneven–exactly what dual-sport bikes excel at. We were having fun!
The route looped around and we picked up a stream that wove back and forth across the road. There were no bridges; we rode through it and definitely got wet. This was the first time I’ve ridden the V-Strom through water. I’d crossed little bits of water other times on other dual-sport bikes, and then there was the time on my Concours when we were coming down Hoosier Pass toward Breckenridge and there was water running eight inches deep across the highway, so it wasn’t my first time with water. But it was an adventure just the same, especially the one time when my back end started slipping sideways before my traction hooked up again.
After looping around through all this fire-scarred terrain I was surprised when we emerged back out onto CO 67 less than half a mile from where we got off it. So from there it was just back to Deckers, back along the river and up over and down to Sedalia. At that point people started peeling off and heading their own ways home. It was a good day to be out riding.
Biker Quote for Today
Always take the road less traveled, unless the riding is better on the other roads.
