6 Days, 4,069 Miles
Road Master
Joined: Aug 2013
Posts: 941
Likes: 9
From: Denver, CO
Great trip and great write-up!
I ditto your sentiment about HD dealers and installation of showers. Would be really nice to pull in and get the poker chip and take a much needed shower when I'm out on the road and roughin it.
And yea, the Rockies are MUCH bigger than the Smokies. Denver sits at 5280ft with Mt. Evans and Bierstadt towering over the city...Evans is 14,265 and Bierstadt is 14,065.
Next time you're in Colorado, head towards Buena Vista and the Collegiate Peaks area. There are dozens of 14,000+ ft mountains in the area that just seem to rise up from nothing out of very flat land. I grew up back east, in Jacksonville actually, and spent a lot of time in the Appalachians...but when I saw the collegiates for the first time, I was absolutely in awe of how the individual mountains seemed to just stand alone rather than have a gradual buildup from foothills and connectedness to all the surrounding peaks like the Appalachians do. Really something to see.
Btw, if you're planning on coming back for the slow tour of the Rockies, the best time to ride the mountains in Colorado is late June/early July...or late August into September (though you can run into snowstorms and cold weather at the highest elevations). May and June usually has severe weather like what you encountered and July into August is Monsoon season and the afternoons are usually very rainy in the mountains.
I ditto your sentiment about HD dealers and installation of showers. Would be really nice to pull in and get the poker chip and take a much needed shower when I'm out on the road and roughin it.
And yea, the Rockies are MUCH bigger than the Smokies. Denver sits at 5280ft with Mt. Evans and Bierstadt towering over the city...Evans is 14,265 and Bierstadt is 14,065.
Next time you're in Colorado, head towards Buena Vista and the Collegiate Peaks area. There are dozens of 14,000+ ft mountains in the area that just seem to rise up from nothing out of very flat land. I grew up back east, in Jacksonville actually, and spent a lot of time in the Appalachians...but when I saw the collegiates for the first time, I was absolutely in awe of how the individual mountains seemed to just stand alone rather than have a gradual buildup from foothills and connectedness to all the surrounding peaks like the Appalachians do. Really something to see.
Btw, if you're planning on coming back for the slow tour of the Rockies, the best time to ride the mountains in Colorado is late June/early July...or late August into September (though you can run into snowstorms and cold weather at the highest elevations). May and June usually has severe weather like what you encountered and July into August is Monsoon season and the afternoons are usually very rainy in the mountains.
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