Lake City, Colorado

Once I finally made it to Colorado, the ride conditions improved greatly - although my luck did not, more later.
One of my favorite Colorado rides is on Colorado Highway 149 from South Fork to Gunnison. Two towns along that way are great for motorcyclists - Creede and Lake City. Both of these towns are fantastic mountain towns to visit and very motorcycle friendly. The road between them is to die for. Like a normal Colorado summer day, there was some rain in the mountain passes, but not enough to make me pull out my rain gear. I stopped in Creed to visit with some Goldwing riders, then over Slugmillion Pass to Lake City. You need to be careful riding that pass, often there is debris in the corners from the winter road sanding. But for the most part the roads were in great shape, the weather perfect, and the riding was inspiring. I passed dozens of motorcyclists on the road and never was passed myself. The BMW 650 will run pretty good as long as you keep the RPM's up and don't let your speed drop in the corners. I never came across any true full-on sportbikes dragging their knees in the corners, but I passed dozens of Harley's, Gold Wings, Vstroms, and other BMW's with no problem. The other riders probably thought I was a goofball Rossi-wanna be as I went by them with full luggage on a glorified dirt bike, hanging half off the bike like a monkey. Colorado allows you to pass on the inside of many corners when you have a clear view ahead, and that is my favorite passing move - going past on the inside, my little Beemer engine pounding away, pulling them as I exit the corner. Pretty cool!

Wanting to camp out for the night, I looked around Lake City for an appropriate location. Nothing was available so I planned to ride over Engineer Pass to Ouray and camp. Climbing higher and higher, the trail got more difficult but easily doable on my BMW. At about 11,500 feet I think I took a wrong turn, because the trail turned from a passable jeep trail to a very rocky and rutted single-track goat trail. As I was picking my way with full luggage over giant rocks, I noticed my engine coolant light was on. Just as I turned off the bike my radiator started boiling over! Thinking it was the altitude, I let the engine cool and worked my way back down the pass to lower ground. I found a good spot to camp right at dusk.

After setting up camp I ran into town for a quiet dinner and then back to my tent well after dark. Good think I marked it with my GPS, it would have been very hard to find in the pitch-black Colorado wilderness!