Colorado Cruiser: 2013 Summer Ride - Day 4 - Rocky Mountain National Park

I slept in until almost 7:00 this morning. We'd left the sliding glass door part way open and the fresh morning air was wonderful to wake up to. I got up, showered and tried to finish writing up yesterday's ride report, but I kept thinking of little things that I needed to do. I wanted to go do some things on the car and motorcycle, but because our room faced East, and the heavy curtain over the glass door was keeping the sun out, I knew that if I made any move to the door I'd wake Kyle and Nan up. So i tried to concentrate on the ride report but didn't get very far.

Finally at 7:45 Nan asked what was going on and started to get up. I'd heard John and Angela outside a few times, so she poked her head out the door to talk with them.

I was going to make breakfast, but our room was still very cluttered. Angela said to come make it in her room. So I put the computer away, grabbed all the breakfast stuff and setup in their room. I cooked 1/2 the bacon on the bottom half of the griddle, and scrambled a few eggs at a time on the top half. Within 15 minutes we started to make breakfast burritos.

I cooked the whole dozen eggs, a full pack of bacon, and a full pack of tortillas. We probably could have had half again, but since we're all trying to eat right, that was sufficient.

We cleaned up and packed up for another 15 minutes.

On our last trip, I commented that John's usually ready very early, and I feel like those family circus kids running back and forth and all around John as he sits on his bike while I try to get ready to go. Today was worse than ever. Between breakfast stuff, bike stuff, car stuff, luggage, dirty clothes, air matress, etc etc etc, we just seemed to make 30 trips in and out of the room before we were ready.

Our first stop of the day was the Stanley hotel, made famous by Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining. It was just up the road from us and Shauna is a huge Stephen King fan. We pulled up out front and took a few pictures, then John and Angela rode up into the parking lot for more. Eventually I tried to follow but was told that it was $5 to park up there. We have so many of us that we didn't want to spend that much, so I turned back around. But Shauna really wanted to go up, so she walked up to take pictures and we waited in the shade.

This was Shauna's revenge for Nan playing slots last night. This time we waited for her. I wonder if everyone on this trip is going to get a "But I Wanna" exception at one point or another.

When we got rolling again, both John and Nan's GPSes were leading us down into town. But there was a parade of some sort going on so we couldn't cross main street. We tried 3 times and eventually stopped to ask a man standing on a street corner. He directed us back the way we'd come and into the North Entrance of the park. The GPS was trying to take us in the South entrance.

When we reached the entrance we stopped to take pictures of by the sign. We took allot of pictures and had allot of fun doing it.

I bought a Nation Parks pass for Kyle and I. We're going to do several national parks, so I figured it would be worth it in the long run.

By the time we got into the park, several of us were starting to think about finding bathrooms, so we pulled of at a scenic overlook to figure out a plan. We'd actually passed the first set of restrooms and had to backtrack a bit. But we also wanted to visit the Alluvial Fan which we'd also passed, so stopping was a good thing.

We went back and hiked up to the Fan and took pictures of us and the water cascading over all the rocks. We again took a while at it and joked allot. It was a nice little hike and a good way to start our visit to the park.

From there we started up the Trail Ridge Road. It winds up and over the continental divide, but we stopped allot before we got to the top.

At our first stop we walked a path and a boardwalk that was kind of tacked onto the side of the highway. It had Big wide, sweeping views over the valleys around us. Kyle and John climbed up a jagged rock for what John described as "the same view as down there".

We decided to backtrack a bit from there, back to a picnic area called hidden valley. We walked up just as someone was finishing their lunch, so we got a shaded table rather than one out in the sun. We made our sandwiches and talked about the scenery and what else we wanted to look at.

After lunch we started back up Trail Ridge Road toward the top. We stopped at another scenic overlook which was packed with cars and people. We were trying to be nice, and put all 4 bikes into a single parking space. But the lady on one side said she intended to hit a bike with her car door if we stayed there. She was parked on the line and had a huge gap on the other side. The other car grumbled about bikes taking up car spaces, but the got in with just a little squeezing and left.

We sat enjoying the views, but Nan was starting to feel a bit ill. She opted to take a short nap while we looked and took pictures.

A few miles down the road we stopped again, but by now Nan was really bad. We decided to skip the other scenic views and go to the visitor center to let Nan have a long nap.

We saw several elk along the way, people playing in the snow, and allot of tundra.

At the visitor center, the parking lot looked very full so we started to meander looking for a parking spot. Up at the top, right by the visitor center was a large area covered with diagonal stripes, and the words "Motorcycle Parking". I looked at it several time trying to decide if it meant "NO motorcycle parking", but it was clear. The area was reserved for motorcycles, but there were none there, It was empty.

So we pulled in and parked. Several people gave us dirty looks, thinking we were being the typical biker who parks wherever he feels like, but then they'd read the words painted in the middle and turn away grumpy because we weren't doing anything wrong.

A car pulled out of a spot right beside us, so Angela stood in the spot until Nan could come around and get it.

I rubbed Nan's head for a few minutes, then left her to sleep while I browsed cheap tourist gifts. I did find a few things that I bought. I got books for my 3 grandkids, and a great map of Colorado highlighting motorcycle roads. I also got a bar of chocolate thinking I'd offer some to Nan to see if she was just suffering a chocolate deficiency.

We all sat in the gift shop, looking out the big bay windows at the million dollar view of the mountains. We spotted some Elk across the valley from us and watched them quietly walk the tundra eating what they could find. It was almost too calming and peaceful that a few of us fell asleep.

After 30 minutes I went to check Nan, but she was feeling no better. We decided she might be feeling the effects of the altitude and that maybe sitting at the highest point on the road wasn't the best idea. So I got everyone back to the bikes and we readied ourselves for the decent. Shauna offered to drive the Subaru and Nan accepted. So we started down the back side of the park.

After just 10 minutes or so, Nan said she was feeling a bit better. Still not great, but she was improving.

We hurried down through the hairpin turns and the big sweeping turns until we were back at a mere 8,000 feet or so.

We left the park out through Granby Lake and started following the Colorado river towards Steamboat Springs. We stopped to refill some water, and let off other water at a gas station. Nan was allot better by now, but Shauna continued to drive.

The roads here continued to be very nice. We took most of the road about 9 miles over the limit (or at least that's what we're admitting to). There wasn't much traffic to contend with, but we quickly passed what little there was.

Shauna and Nan couldn't really keep up with us, so they slowly fell back as we ate up the miles and enjoyed the turns.

The sun started to sink in the sky and again, became a real bother as the road would turn west, right into the sun.

We reached Steamboat around 6:00 and tracked down our hotel. The subaru looks like homeless vagabonds have been living in it, with all the spare clothing that everyone has thrown in, luggage, empty water bottles, news papers, dirty clothes, and lots of trash that we've accumulated over the last 4 days. Tomorrow we're going to pull out EVERYTHING and repack it.

The guy at the front desk suggested a place across the street for dinner, so we walked over. It was point three miles away. But as we opened the front doors, we realized he had a very different idea of restaurant than we do. It was a bar, packed with people and very loud.

John, Eric, and I walked back to the hotel to get the subaru and bikes so we could go into town to find something better. We tried one place, but the entre's were $25 or higher each, and we were all tired of expensive dinners. So we left and headed farther into town. Eventually John spotted a BBQ place and we decided to give it a try.

As we walked in, it was swealtering, and we should have just walked out but we didn't. We sat down and the waiter went to get us waters. He did bring us big cups full of ice cold water, and brought pitchers of water after that, but it was still very hot. He said the air conditioner was broken and had been for a week.

We ordered, then waited about 40 minutes for our food to come. In the mean time, a different man brought us a pitcher of water. Nan asked him if he was the owner and he said yes. She told him he really needed to get the A/C fixed and he grumbled something about really needing to look into that. About 10 minutes later though, there was a real difference in the air, and soon it became apparent that the temperature was dropping. The owner came back by and said he'd climbed on the roof and fixed the A/C. But the waiter came by later to say that he'd been told all week that the A/C was broken, but in fact it was just off.

Out food finally arrived, but Nan's order was messed up. The food was mediocre at best. None of us liked their BBQ sauce, much of the food was overcooked and dry, and they kept bringing out the wrong thing for Nan. In the end, we wouldn't go back again for lots of reasons.

On the way home, we stopped at Wendy's to get Nan a salad.

Back at the hotel, Nan started some laundry. I finished yesterday's report and began writing this report. It's 11:10, and I still have 20 minutes before the laundry is dry and I need to go get it. That'll be just about the right amount of time to add the pictures and get this report posted.

The entrance sign for the Stanley Hotel