Earache

Today's (Sunday) ride will probably be a bit shorter and we'll stick to teh hills and dirt roads to avoid traffic. More pics as it happens...

Good God man, are you insane?!??!?!?!?

Diggin' the trucks...

...but all cruisers were cool...

Not all cruisers were old...

I really liked the old trucks...

We made it home in time to get cleaned up and head to Golden for the monthly old car drive in and cruise. Guys with their old cars just drive through town and all of the locals get their lawn chairs out and watch. It was a good time...

Holiday weekend here in the States, so the traffic on the freeway below us was at a standstill. Glad we avoided that....

Troublesome Pass. We had reached the end of our route and headed back at this point...

But it was a prefect day to be out and we had a great time...

Loads of dirt bikes in the area as well - ripping around like loons. I was jealous.....

We started the day at about 40F (4C) and it got up to about 70F (21C) in the afternoon. Perfect!

We finally get to the dirt - headed towards Troublesome Pass. Had an awesome time on this and did about 100 miles ...

Once out of the burn area, we crossed the Continental Divide again. This area didn't burn, but you can see why other areas did. Look at all of the dead trees lying on the forest floor - all killed by the pine beetle infestation. Lots of fuel on the ground ready to burn...

Named "The East Troublesome Fire", it was a doozy....

Could still smell the smoke as we rode...

Todd, ever the animal lover, tried to resuscitate a deer but it was too far gone...

We rode for 25 miles through a huge burn area. Really sad. Flowers are making a comeback this year...

Saturday morning dawns and we're headed north to some off road areas that I know of. We ended up just south of the Wyoming border. This used to be one of my favorite areas, but last year's huge forest fire took care of that. Nothing but burnt trees everywhere...

Dunno what these are either, but they looked pretty cool...

Ahh. That's an ore chute. Gold ore was loaded into the top of it from up the mountain. When the wagon arrived, the chute door was opened and it filled the wagon with gold ore. The ore was taken to a stamping mill where the ore was crushed and refined to extract the gold. Narrow gauge train rail was laid to the top of the ore chute and ore carts (pics below) brought the ore to the top of the chute. They tipped the cart to pour ore into the chute. Once the chute was full, the horse drawn wagons picked it up.

Today we are headed northwest from here towards Steamboats Springs, CO. Lots of off road riding on National Forest roads (fire roads) around Rabbit Ears Pass. Pics to follow.....

Good rides are close by and in every direction. Only have a couple more months to hit them all though before the snow starts again

We have extremely low humidity, very little rain and dry snow here. It never has gotten wet! So not much rot going on.

Which one?