Day fifty seven, glenwood springs to denver

ITs about 90 km from Glenwood Springs to Denver on the I70 but this is not the route we wanted to take today to get in some good Colorado motorcycling. Thus we left Glenwood Springs on Route 82 heading for Aspen where we did the compulsory coffee stop and gassed up, so we could say we had had coffee in Aspen. To be fair, this town is always packed to the gunnels with people, parking is a hassle, so I was not sad to see the back of it as we headed toward Independence Pass.

The road was relatively quiet for the ride up to Independence Pass, 15 degrees at the top which sits a little over 12,000’ asl. Couple pics from up there added to the blog. Down the other side is equally nice riding as we got to the end of the 82 and took a left onto the 24 into Leadville. Leadville claims to be the highest town in the USA but a couple minutes consulting Mr Google shows the town of Alma, a couple passes away is actually higher. We would ride through Alma later in the day.

We had a spot of lunch at Leadville then headed down to Copper Mountain, took the I70 for about 10 km then ducked off at Frisco and up route 9 to Breckenridge.

Breckenridge is an expensive wee town, not unlike Aspen I guess, plenty of the rich and famous there, it was a brief stop while the girls did some window shopping before we saddled up, headed up and over Hoosier Pass and down into the town of Alma, famous as I stated earlier and along to Fairplay where we gassed up.

From Fairplay we took Route 285 East, this is a very cool road with lots of stunning scenery, much of it vast open grasslands between passes. We cruised first up Red Hill Pass Down the other side, the next one was up and over Kenosha Pass, somewhat higher, with the roads great sweeping curves, once again, like climbing the western side of the Kaimai’s. Nice riding.

At the wee village of Grant, we took a left and climbed higher still to summit Guanella Pass on our way down to Georgetown,.

We stopped at Georgetown and had a wee look around, it is an original 1880,s gold mining town and is pretty much untouched. Gorgeous as, couple pics on the blog of that, not only in the village but looking at it from above as we came down off Guanella Pass.

At Georgetown, we rejoined the I70 into our accom At Wheatridge, in the western suburbs of Denver.

Bryn James, another Naki rider had flown over to join us for the last months riding around the Rockies and the Western states, he had picked up his hire Harley from Denver and was at The Hotel to greet us on our arrival. Naturally we had to rehydrate after our long day and Bryn gave us a hand with that exercise.

Welcome aboard to Bryn.