Colorado Day 5, Time to come home

[twotonevert]

Well, it came that time again, the day where you have to pack up and head home. I always hate this day, especially when I am up here in this country. The view from our balcony on Saturday morning.

[expat1970]

i love the mountains, so peaceful. thanks for the pics

[twotonevert]

No one was in a particular hurry to leave, so I think we pulled out about 9:30. We had to stop and get some pictures of the snow plow train. It took 5 engines to push this bad boy down the track. This is sitting in Breckenridge just as you go up Boreas Pass.

[twotonevert]

i love the mountains, so peaceful. thanks for the pics

Your welcome, many more pics coming.

[twotonevert]

So we head south on HWY 9 with the intent of heading towards Canon City to check out the Royal Gorge Bridge, and it was suggested we detour and go to Pikes Peak. None of us had been there so away we went. We stopped in South Park Colorado, which if you didnt know is the inspiration for the tv show, South Park. Marie got herself a T-shirt. Pretty cool town. This is the original town site.

[twotonevert]

We then cut across to Colorado Springs to get to Pikes Peak. We had to drop the trailer and the bikes at the bottom. I wish we could have ridden them up, especially after you see what we saw. The Pikes Peak HWY is a tollway, 12 bucks a person and totally worth it. A pic of the lake and people were swimming in this. Too cold for me.

[twotonevert]

Now the interesting part of this: We came the weekend before the 89th annual Pikes Peak Hill climb. Starting line! Average drivers make it up this road to summit in 10 minutes, your average tourist takes an hour to drive this.

[twotonevert]

More pics on the way up.

[twotonevert]

More pics on the way up, 19 miles from the gate to summit.

[twotonevert]

Woo hoo, to the top! This location was the inspiration for the song, "America the Beautiful".

[twotonevert]

Shane and Marie checking out the cog rail.

[twotonevert]

Juli, she is a trooper, made it up baby, we got the t-shirt to prove it.

[twotonevert]

More pics from the top. You are on top of the world. And this is the second highest peak in Colorado at 14,110? Mount Everest is 29000 and some change. It was about 40 degrees at the summit.

[twotonevert]

Yes, did you notice the bikes. Ducati was set up at the start line.

[twotonevert]

The cog train and more pics from the top.

[twotonevert]

I hope you can read this, and a shot of my truck. This explains why you can see the curvature of the earth.

[twotonevert]

On the way down. There is a check point point ahead where the Rangers do an infrared check of your brakes, if you ride them too much you have to stop and let them cool down. We were at 97 degrees and good to go.

[twotonevert]

More pics. Shane wrote Maries name in the snow, in the name of Love. Isnt he sweet?

[twotonevert]

Some pics of the road going down. Lots of the bikes at the top were passing us on the way down.

[warp10]

cool pics, great state to ride