Day Six Photos

Click on the photos to elarge. Captions are below the photos.

The final day in the mountains took me from the most righteous garage in the west, through beautiful mountains, along spectaular creek and river beds out onto the plains of eastern Colorado.

The motorcycle started off the day up in the air waiting for a new tire.

This awesome chopper belongs to the righteous dude who put the new tire on the motorcycle.

And there he is, Righteous Richard, the man who saved the day. He was about to take the motorcycle for a test ride with the new tire. He came back grinning and in love with the bike!!

Righteous Richard let me sit on his cool chopper for this photo outside his shop. You can see the cobra-head suicide shifter.

The first stop of the day was lunch in Dulce, New Mexico. Prior to this I ran into a couple of fellows who recommended the fry burger from this roadside kitchen. It was quite tasty!

This is Brazos Peak, elevation 11,403 ft in the San Juan Mountains in northern New Mexico taken from the intersection of routes 84 and 64 just south of the Colorado border.

Going north into Colorado along route 84 towards Pagosa Springs I got a great view of these peaks in the Rio Grande National forest. The tallest of them is Canejos Peak at an elevation of 13,172 ft.

Okay, it looks like someone stood in the middle of the road to take this great shot of the mountains around Wolf Creek Pass just east of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

These are some rock formations on a cliff along the climb up to Wolf Creek Pass approaching from the east.

This is on the climb up to Wolf Creek Pass looking east. It provides a good idea of how they have to wrap the road around the mountain just to get us over the top.

Route 285 runs north/south and on the section of road between Sabuache and Villa Grove you get a really good view of the Sangre De Christo Mountain Range. This is the north end of the range.

This is also the Sangre De Christo Mountains but looking south this time.

I stopped here to see if I could get a better photo of the southern end of the Sawatch Range of mountains and I did not even see this horse until I came around to park the bike. While the sculpture is quite beautiful I still prefer my iron horse!

Riding east towards Salida along route 50 I got a great view of the north end of the Sangre De Christo Mountains.

This was a sad shot for me. I waited about 15 minutes along the side of the road for the sun to go down so that I could capture the sight. It was a beautiful sunset and a fitting end to an awesome time in the mountains.

The shadows were also growing long on my trip and while I was leaving the mountains and would be crossing the plains the next day, the seed that the beauty of the mountains planted in me has sprouted and taken root already and the winds of memory that gently brush its new-formed leaves exert a pull on my heart that will surely draw me back to the mountains.