Looking east from on top of Cottonwood Pass.

Nick and I got up in Gunnison the morning of the fourth day of our four-day ride and it was 37 degrees outside. I’ve known for a long time that Gunnison is known for being very cold in the winter but this was September. It turns out, Gunnison is in a basin that cold air settles down into and stays. And sure enough, once we got rolling and up out of the basin the temperature quickly rose.

In the meantime we put on all our warmest clothes. We headed north on CO 135, in the direction of Crested Butte, then at Almont turned onto the road that goes up through Taylor Canyon and over Cottonwood Pass, down to Buena Vista on the other side. We had a very nice ride up Taylor Canyon with almost no traffic. Just a beautiful cruise. On up to the top of the pass and a stop. That was where I met and spoke with that guy on the Honda Pacific Coast.

We ran on down into Buena Vista and stopped to shed layers, then the short jaunt south to where US 24 hits US 285 east to Denver. We made that turn, crossed the bridge over the train tracks, and came to a dead halt with traffic lined up as far as you could see. It turned out they were making improvements to the old, two-lane bridge crossing the Arkansas River and it was one lane at a time. But for some reason they were just allowing westbound traffic for about 15 minutes solid. What the heck?

I considered doing a U-turn and going back into Buena Vista, to take a road that I knew ran out from there to 285 on the other side of the river. We didn’t, and it was a good thing. As we finally started moving I saw that the road I had in mind apparently crosses back to the west side of the river and brings you into the Johnson Village area where we were right into the thick of this back-up.

The good thing about waiting so long was that the only traffic ahead of us anywhere were those vehicles waiting ahead of us to proceed. A bunch of cars and maybe four trucks. If we could get past the trucks we would have a wide open road ahead of us. And it was another beautiful day to ride.

Thanks to a couple passing lanes we did get past the trucks and we blasted. Only to Fairplay, though. Then it was time for lunch.

This Saturday was a holiday weekend, though, and there just wasn’t all that much traffic. That was a large part of why we picked these particular days to do this trip. Normally coming back into Denver on Sunday is absolutely horrid and Saturday is not much better. With Monday being Labor Day, though, we knew all the big traffic would be on Monday.

Which is to say, we made very good time getting down the mountain and into Denver. Then there we were once again crossing town on a hot afternoon. But there wasn’t all that much traffic in town either so our suffering was minimal.

Nice to get home.

Biker Quote for Today

I like my world. I love the wind. Peace and respect for all biker sisters and brothers.