Day Two

Well day 2 started out at 5:30 while it was still dark. We got up and packed our bags and were on the road by 7:00. Mornings are not my strength and today was extra special. I had driven a long way on the bike and then stayed up to shower, blogging and emailing until 12: 30. So not quite a full nights sleep. Today’s travels proved to be a little bit more of the same. From Salina to Colorado Spring is 560 miles. We took mostly secondary roads and saw some beautiful sights of Kansas. The wheat crop is being combined. It was really cool to see all the farmers and workers in the field. 500 miles of beautiful wheat fields gets pretty boring with no activities to draw your eye. So we're in the middle of nowhere, and I saw this metal farm shed and thought I would HDR it. In the next town, I had to take this picture of a ice cream shop. What a name!
The land in Colorado seems to be unable to grow crops. Most of the land was covered in weeds and scrub brush. It was pretty but a lot different than Kansas, maybe do to lack of moisture. Once we got to Colorado Springs We called Adam Patterson (my cousin) and was invited to eat at Chiles. We got our directions scrambled and ended up driving all over town. Once we got to the location we ran up on an accident. A group of Mexican roofers lost a whole load of tear off. Panic is an understatement!! For those of you unfamiliar with a roof that has been torn off of a house, it’s full of nails. That’s bad news for motorcycle tires. Somehow we lucked out, or we think we did. Once at Chiles we had a nice visit with Adam. We discovered that his home that he invited us to stay at did have anywhere to park the bikes inside. So we headed out of Colorado Springs at 7:00 pm. The plan was to stop in Monument and spend the night. We stopped and got gas and decided to just head on up to Fort Collins (100 miles). This would allow us to get through Denver and avoid rush hour traffic. Traffic in Denver was heavy and fast. It was an exhausting two-hour drive. The plan was to get to a K.O.A and crash out as fast as possible. So the GPS was used to triangulate the location. At 11:00 pm we discover that the Lake Side K.O.A. was an abandoned trailer court on the bad side of town. Exhausted and with no place to sleep at the end of a sixteen hour day on a bike is a bad combination, really bad. So we found a hotel - and found that there were no rooms available. More good news! So the lady pointed us back to the hotels along Hwy 25. We finally found a room at the La Quinta Inn and got checked in at 12:00 pm. That was the end to an 18-hour day on the road. Wireless at the hotel didn’t work; just as well I didn’t have the energy to say too much anyway.