{"id":6807,"date":"2015-11-09T11:37:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T18:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=6807"},"modified":"2015-11-08T17:38:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T00:38:03","slug":"exploring-the-prairie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/exploring-the-prairie\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring The Prairie"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"motorcycle<\/a>

On a beautiful, clear day like this those mountains are right there even when you're 50 miles away from them.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

It’s the time of year when I don’t go up in the mountains much any more. Even if it’s warm and dry down here on the prairie it can be cold and snowy up high. So when I go for a ride I turn my sights east.<\/p>\n

I did that on Tuesday. It was a gorgeous sunny day so what else could I do?<\/p>\n

As is so often the case, I had no plan in mind when I started off. I figured I’d ride across the top of Cherry Creek Reservoir dam over to Parker Road and make up my mind from there. And then I immediately took a left onto Quincy and rode it out of town. Now, looking at the map I see that I could have taken Quincy all the way to Deer Trail. I didn’t know that at the time, though I do now.<\/p>\n

I got as far as Watkins Road, which I believe was only paved in the last couple years, so I decided to take that all the way up to Watkins. If I saw anything interesting along the way I would turn. There really wasn’t anywhere to turn east, however, so on the south side of Watkins I turned down the road that leads to a development where some friends of ours live. Cruising its length, whereas we go left to get to their house, I saw that that road is now paved to the south so I turned right. Now it was time to explore. This was county road 101, by the way.<\/p>\n

Wow, there is a lot back in there. It’s mostly farms and ranches–saw a lot of horses and a lot of corn and wheat fields shorn of their crops. I saw a lot of really large houses, and big agricultural endeavors. One thing these farmers\/ranchers do not seem to be is poor. And I saw a lot of dead ends.<\/p>\n

I was on the V-Strom so if the pavement had ended I would have been good with going further, but it seemed that no matter which road I turned down, inevitably it dead-ended at someone’s dirt driveway. Maybe there is a “No Exit” sign at the turn-off from Watkins Road that I’ve never noticed. This entire area–a really big area–is one big dead-end.<\/p>\n

But at the eastern extent of the area I was amazed at the forest I ran into. There are one heck of a lot of trees out there on the prairie, along the river drainage.<\/p>\n

So I was looking for a way out that wouldn’t force me to back-track all the way to Watkins Road but it doesn’t exist. So I did. I’d covered a lot of miles in that cul-de-sac, and heck, I was all the way out east to Watkins, so it was time to head back. I had work to do at home. Heading back south on Watkins Road I took the first right I could, Jewell, and rode that all the way back to town. I bet I know more now about that area south of where our friends live than they do. I love exploring.<\/p>\n

Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n

The back roads around here are better than Prozac. — Clement Salvadori<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the time of year when I don’t go up in the mountains much any more. Even if it’s warm and dry down here on the prairie it can be cold and snowy up high. So when I go for a ride I turn my sights east. I did that on Tuesday. It was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[731],"class_list":["post-6807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado-motorcycle-rides","tag-watkins-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6807"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6814,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807\/revisions\/6814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}