A Ride To Silverthorne, CO via Downtown Denver

Temperatures from mid-40s to mid 50s F°, overcast over Denver, sunny in the mountains.

A glorious motorcycling weather day, even better than yesterday which I could not ride during due to it being my turn to watch the boys while the wife got her kitchen pass to see her friends.

The ride started off sometime after 0830 with the initial objective of just going downtown to take a more recent picture of the Blue Bear who is a feature at the Denver Convention Center:

Security Guard who came to shoo me away and who asked to have his picture taken

After visiting the bear, I rode to the Denver Main Public Library where I got this picture of this "roadside attraction" I'd first seen mentioned in the roadsideamerica.com website.

Outside the Main Denver Public Library

I then wandered for a good hour around the area of the Colorado State Capitol, looking for insteresting backdrops to pose Maria at. The street people at the corners must have wondered about this motorcyclist who seemingly kept circling around the area, lost.

Colorado State Capitol Building

The US Mint
A guard came out to shoo me away from here too but let me take the picture first.

Denver City Hall?

The view of the Capitol from the steps of Denver City Hall

I left the Denver downtown area and headed for nearby Regis University on the west side of town. I earned a Masters Degree from this college with the monies from the GI Bill, and now I teach an online course for them as well.


After wandering about the Regis campus and failing to find further good locations for shots including Maria, I headed West on I-70 to see how far I could get before road conditions turned "iffy".

Westbound I-70 east of the Continental Divide

I made it through the Eisenhower Tunnel and the Continental Divide after seeing that Loveland Pass was still pretty much a mess from the snows we've had recently in the state. Here's the sight one is greeted with as one is rolling downhill from the Divide and is approaching the town of Silverthorne which is the first exit I could find so I could turn around.

The view as one approaches Silverthorne after crossing the Divide

I'd been watching the slab heading back East as I headed West and they looked wet, lots of spray from the road being blown north towards the westbound lanes. Could not find a good spot to turn around before the Eisenhower tunnel so I went through as I mentioned and turned around in Silverthorne. Quite the messy streets in that town, lots of mushy snow and cagers.

The ride home was wet and full of road spray until I neared Idaho Springs and points east. I was glad to get out of the wet road conditions, it makes one nervous and caused me to ride in the right lane where I could go slower.

Rest of the trip was uneventful, I took I-70 East to C-470 and rode it around the southern edge of the Denver Metro area towards home. Maria and I racked up about 225 miles or so today, about 6 hours in the saddle. Good ride, she was a bit messy after all the riding on the wet roads:

Note the road spray on the windshield