Up and Down the Front Range

My loving wife ended up letting me have the whole day instead of just the morning to go riding. I spent the morning riding around the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, the county roads East and North of the Arsenal, Brighton and neighboring small towns. Very scenic and nice long flat roads with little traffic. The weather was in the 60s so it tended to get a bit cool when the sun was hidden by clouds but otherwise perfect riding weather.

One small incident heading back on Gun Club Road, there's construction near where one turns on Missisippi to get back to Gun Club. It was a gravel filled dirt detour and I failed to slow down to a crawl before traversing the gravel. (the fact there was a crotch rocket rider riding pretty close behind me did not help things either but I should have ignored him, lesson learned) Front wheel slipped a bit but I managed to keep the motorcycle upright by putting down the right foot quickly and gunning the engine a bit to stabilize the motorcycle. Close one!

Found out after I got home for lumch that the afternoon was mine as well, so after cleaning up the motorcycle a bit, headed out towards CO Springs by way of backroads to Parker and Franktown. First though I went up Gun Club road to negotiate that detour where I had the close call, no problems this time! : )

I did some meandering on backroads until I got to Powhaton rd which lead me the back way to Parker via Inspiration Drive. A quick traverse of Parker's main drag and headed south on US 83, passing a large gathering a motorcyclers at a bar in Franktown, kept heading south towards Colorado Springs.

The main goal had been at this point to rack up the mileage and empty the main tank to observe behavior of the motorcycle when one's main tank empties. She sputtered once at 192 miles and I reached down and switched to reserve while maintaining 65mph. No problem! Decided that since I still over 20 miles to the Springs that I would detour towards Monument instead. Glad that I did since I found some rather scenic views on Douglas County Road 53 heading North out of Monument. This is the best out of four pics I took on that road.



Rest of today's pics are here

Kept heading north but missed the turn to get to Perry Lake Road in Larkspur, and ended up being forced onto I-25 heading North. Oh well. Took this to Castlerock and got off on the Founder's Parkway exit and used Crowfoot Parkway to get back to Parker and from there the back way to home. A glorious day of riding, Gretl performed beautifully and my butt was not too sore from the riding.