Day 21: The Southwest rain continues

20 May 2011


We were again knowingly going to be riding through some cold and wet weather. From yesterday's experience, I realized that even with rain pants, the bottoms of my jeans got wet by soaking up moisture from my boots. I solved that by rolling up my jeans underneath my rain pants. I think that it's a good look.


Durango turned out to be pretty nice. It was a quaint little town nestled amongst a bunch of green mountains. Although Colorado had even worse gas than New Mexico. They had 85 octane!


We started riding towards Mesa Verde, and along the way we encountered rain, snow, sleet and hail.


Getting a little hungry, and also needing to warm up, we pulled off into the town of Mancos CO. Upon first sights, it was not very good. But we then found this little cafe, which turned out to be a really hopping place. We managed to grab a seat at the last available table. Then, two other bikers come into the place. We offered them our free seats to share some stories. It turns out that they were from Holland, and had rented Harleys to tour around the 4-corners states. Like us, they did not expect the cold that we were experiencing. They also shared with us that they had come down from Silverton CO; a town on our original route. They encountered several inches of snow accumulation and had to follow a plow.


Mesa Verde is actually really high up. Who knew? The ride up there was a magnificent twisty road. Upon arrival, we discovered that there are actually several different sites but only one was available as a self-guided tour. The self-guided location was actually pretty good, and surprisingly interactive. It seems that the sections that they had to heavily restore were available to the public to play around with. From the top of Mesa Verde, we were able to overlook the lowlands below. It appeared that there was a rather large rain storm down there, but that it was passing quickly. By the time we got down from the Mesa, we hoped it would be gone.


We were riding through some spotted showers until we closed in on New Mexico. Then we saw some of the darkest clouds ever to have formed. The picture doesn't do them justice. It was weird to look behind us and see blue skies and fluffy white clouds. In front of us looked like a scene from a Ghostbusters movie. The impending storm that we rode through was not fun. Aside from getting beaten down by drenching rain, I had to pull over twice because of water getting into my fuel.


Oh look, a rainbow.


Those snow covered mountains covered by clouds in the distance are the ones that we were originally going to ride though.


The change over to Utah was fantastic. A few miles in, we turned a bend and everything started turning red and becoming dramatic. The rain subsided and the sun started to come out.




I really didn't know what to expect from Moab, but was pleasantly surprised. It was like an outdoor adventurers playground. I think most of the people there were tourists, but it was great seeing so many offroading trucks and other things just driving around town. It had a similar feel to Durango, just red and a little more in your face. Our campsite luckily had trees, but also had sheer red cliffs. As I went to bed, I could look out my hammock and see that sheer cliff with an indescribable number of stars silhouetting it.





At the campsite we met a man who retired, sold everything and now wanders around the country in his Wrangler with a trailer and his daschund. He was very nice and even let us throw our hammocks up in his section so we didn't have to pay for our own. Previously he had also toured around on motorcycles, but now did the travelling in luxury. He even had plants and a garden gnome set up.