Wanting What You Have

© Ken Bingenheimer

The year we stayed "home" was the best year of all.

One of the newer members of the OFMC commented a few years ago that a big part of our summer motorcycle trips, for him, is going a really long distance. It seems he liked returning from vacation and wowing the folks at work with how far we'd gone and the exotic places we'd been to.

The subject came up because John and I were using our weight as founding members of the group, not to mention the two most involved in planning each year, to establish the decision that our next trip would be an all-Colorado ride. Living in Colorado as we all do, it's just not as exotic to say you went to Telluride. But hey, people come from all over the world to visit Telluride, and ride the roads of Colorado. Staying in the state would make for a more relaxed trip, and knowing the state as well as we do, we could ensure a fabulous trip. Our desires prevailed.

We chose Cripple Creek as our meeting point. With guys coming from different places and arriving at different times, that seemed like a good spot for the early birds to hang out while waiting. Cripple Creek is an old mining town now reborn as a gambling town, and the roads getting there are worth the trip even if you don't gamble. 

With the crowd together we then headed south out of town on a little county road that wanders through the forest and the hills before emerging a bit north of Canon City. Canon City is the locale of the Royal Gorge, where a suspension bridge crosses the Arkansas River about 1,053 feet below. For an added treat, we took the back way in to the park, on one of the narrowest, windiest pieces of asphalt I've ever seen. Heck, I didn't even know there was a back way; I thought it was a dead end. Thank John for this bit of info.

Crossing the bridge is a thrill. It sways and shudders and if you're afraid of heights it can be more than a little scary. Of course we stopped and shot pictures of us and the bikes on the bridge. Then we cruised on to Canon City where we made a point to ride Skyline Drive.

To picture Skyline Drive, think of a 200-foot tall brontosaurus and riding up the very ridge of his back. The road itself is barely 12 feet wide and it's most definitely one-way. At the top you overlook downtown Canon City and it's a great view.

Our next stop was Bishop Castle, a ways south of Canon City. This life-size castle is being built by one man, Jim Bishop, and it's straight out of your wildest imagination of the medieval ages, complete with fire-breathing dragon. Forget about building codes because this is officially a work of art, not a building. Jim Bishop went to court to establish that fact. Translated that means it takes more and more guts to keep going higher and higher in this thing. And you can. You can climb all over it.

Lacking space here to go into detail, I'm going to list what came next. We crossed over Independence Pass to Aspen and then took McClure Pass over into the Grand Valley. We skirted along the north rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, rode past Blue Mesa Reservoir, and up to Lake City. From there it was over Slumgullion Pass down to Creede and then over Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs.

At that point we did exit Colorado just for a bit, dipping down into New Mexico, to Chama, and then back into Colorado along the road to Antonito. In Antonito we visited Cano's Castle, sort of smaller version of Bishop Castle built almost entirely out of cans and other scrap. From there it was south to New Mexico again, to Taos. Then we went northwest, back into Colorado, to Durango, over Red Mountain Pass to Ouray, to Montrose. At that point the trip was over and we scattered each in our own directions.