Day-9 Jul-16-09

Our ride today took us across 2 more high elevation mountain passes, Independence Pass, and Monarch Pass. We covered about 255 miles in 7.5 hours, including food, gas, and rest stops.

Independence Pass rises to about 12,200 feet, and extends from Aspen to Twin Lakes Colorado. It is closed during the winter months and typically opens back up in May or June, depending on the snowfall during the winter season.

The trip up Independence takes you well above the timberline. You can see the abrupt end to the forests in the photo below.

Aspen is an upscale ski/tourist town, with lots of shopping and ski condos. Aspen was originally established as a mining town during the Colorado silver mining boom. The town was named Aspen, due to the large number of Aspen trees in the area. The photo below shows how heavily the Aspen trees line the road heading up Independence Pass.

As you can see, the road up Independence Pass is very steep, and is also pretty narrow with some places not being much more than one lane wide.

Both Independence Pass, and Monarch Pass take you across the Continental Divide at elevations near 12,000 feet.

The sign below says it all, a bikers dream !! :)

Here are a couple of shots on the ride back down from Independence Pass. As you can see, there are tons of switchbacks.

Below is a photo from Morrow Point Reservoir near Black Canyon of the Gunnison State park. The lake is fairly large, and the rock formations as a back drop make it a really scenic area. Makes us want to buy another boat :)

Hey Ed K. is that you? Did you surprise us and ride out to Colorado ??

The photo below is for Ed K. and Daiva. For Ed, because the dog is a maltese. For Daiva, because the dogs name is Bella. The man in the photo was toting Bella around in a small sack. The dog seemed to enjoy seeing the sights, and needless to say, he got a lot of attention from other tourists.

The weather in this area has been very hot, with daytime highs in the mid 90's. It is nice to get up to the higher elevations to cool off. The temperature at the top of Independence Pass was 51, and felt great.

Tomorrow we have a pretty full day. We are going to travel down to Silverton and Durango via the Million Dollar Highway. The road supposedly got its name due to the fact that more than a million dollars worth of ore was mined while cutting the roadway (who knows if that's a fact). The road is also considered by many to be one of the most scenic byways in the US. Hopefully we will get some time in Silverton and Durango to check out the narrow gauge railway with the old steam engines. We will also visit Mesa Verde National Park, which contains roughly 600 examples of Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings. To get back north to Montrose, we will travel on the San Juan Skyway, which will include a stop at Telluride, a neat western style ski town.

We will also pass through Ridgeway, and hopefully will stop for lunch at the True Grit Cafe.

From the cafe's website... "The True Grit Cafe was built to recognize Ridgway's movie making history. Back in 1967, Paramount decided to film the movie "True Grit" starring John Wayne, Glen Campbell and Kim Darby here in Ridgway, Colorado . Sitting in the 'Grit', you can look out over the Town Park and see where the hanging scene was filmed, right behind the park is the old Train Depot you can see in the movie and if you just tilt your head up and look at the mountains you can see the famous Chimney Peak that is shown prominently in the big shoot out scene in the movie. Ridgway has quite a history with two other movies that were filmed here including parts of "How the West Was Won" with Debbie Reynolds and John Wayne and "Tribute to a Bad Man" with James Cagney."