The day's plan take us from La Veta, Colorado to Salida, Colorado (shown by the blue line). Now we are really starting to work our way up into the Rocky Mountains!
It was definetely cooler today so the jackets came back out and the grip heaters were turned on occasionally. Now we were up in the mountains passing beautiful valleys mountains, and ranches.
We stopped at this old church. There are so many reminders of the old west out here. This place was clearly hand built with mud plaster on the inside. It looks like it had been upgraded through the years with a ceiling and floor. It's very easy to imagine people coming here in wagons, on horses, or on foot.
'just one of so many amazing vistas along the way.
We had two delays today: First I left my pannier bag open after a stop and my baggie with all my paperwork blew out. I discovered my mistake at the old Church but it was a 25-mile round trip back to retrieve it (of course it opened before blowing out so there was a 1/4 mile stretch of little papers along the road). Then Hank's backpack, that was lashed on the back of his bike, came off. That was a 15-mile round trip. We were running late so when we approached a decision point on the route to go on single track or stay on the faster road - we chose the single track! How could we say no to Colorado Rocky Mountain single track??
What a fantastic stretch of trail.
Sorry, no quads.
Some of the trails had a lot of exposure. The photos never show it very well but this felt like one slip would send our bike down a cliff where it would be completely irretrievable. When it got even worse, I didn't stop to take a picture!
The aspen groves are always wonderful
Much of the trail was in dense forests.
After a few hours on the single track we had to make up some time. It was now close to 3pm and we still had over 130 miles to go. But I had a stop planned for today that I didn't want to miss. Bishop Castle is a crazy castle built by one man (Jim Bishop) By hand, by himself! This was definitely the largest concentration of building code violations I have ever seen and it was completely open to the public!! This place was awesome!
OK, my camera sort of morphed this a bit but it still looks like it felt to me standing there. This was Jim's lifelong project. He taught himself masonry and ironwork and just went at this piece by piece. There are two floors with giant ballrooms and two crazy tall tours. We had to climb both towers and you could feel the towers moving as people came up! The stairways wound around inside the towers in super steep and very narrow spiral staircases.
Yes, we had to climb to the very top of all three towers!
This one was the highest tower, and gave us a good dose of vertigo!
If you ever get a chance to visit Bishop's castle, I'd strongly recommend it. It's clear that the state is after Mr Bishop to close this place down. He's currently fighting lawsuits from the state and it's clear that there is a liability suit waiting to happen. I applaud him for sticking to his beliefs against all of that.
After our visit to Bishops, we ran into some rain so we stopped for dinner with about 80 miles left to go. It was 7 pm when we hit the road again and we were faced with another decision:
Our planned route would take us to the left in this photo. It was a trail called the rainbow trail and it sounded very fun. But it was clearly pouring rain. To the right was clear and it was 7pm with 80 miles to go..... OK, this time we will take the easy way out.
Just as we started on our easy way out, we were rewarded with this. Maybe it's a sign that we made the right choice!
We rolled into Salida, Colorado shortly after 8 pm. Just as it was getting dark.
Today was our last ride on The Long Way Home for one week. Tomorrow we head out to Denver to take a flight back to San Diego for five days (shown by the purple line on the map above). Hank is going to his college orientation for Cal Poly Pomona. I have to say that we both are looking forward to a small break and a chance to see our loved ones. We've been pushing pretty hard for 25 days straight. So far, this is what we have accomplished:
I think we have traveled in 19 different states. and put 5000 miles on our motorcycles! When we return next Saturday, July 25th, we will continue The Long Way Home through Colorado, across the great divide, through Utah and Arizona, and finally into California.
Thank you all for following us. Your kind words and interest in our journey have been very encouraging. A huge thank you, especially, to my wonderful and so supportive wife. Without her support, none of this would be possible!
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