The Great 1998 Gold Wing and Steam Train Trip!

Direct Routing to Pages with:
Utah Desert and Escalante ~ Glen Canyon Dam and D&SNGRR ~ Silverton and Passes ~ Skyline Drive
 Royal Gorge ~ Gunnison Museum Display ~ Lake City ~ Slumgullion Summit and Creede ~ Cumbres & Toltec RR
Meteor Crater ~ Grand Canyon RR ~ Hoover Dam ~ Heber Creeper

After Ouray you hit a fertile valley, and hang a right at Montrose.

After a quick leg stretch, of course, while looking back where we came over the mountains! 



Then it is on to Monarch Pass at 11,312 feet.  And going up from there is a ski area.

We passed a lot of things climbing up to this pass.  Bicyclists and their chase van, to help the ones who pass out on the way up!

And if you ever wanted to know where the airlines send your lost luggage, you can now rest easy:  we passed an airline baggage cart, the kind they pull around the runway behind the little stinky tractor.  It was left unattended on a scenic pullout.  I think it said United on the canvas...I kid you not!!!



One of the goals of this trip was to find the road running down a ridgeline that Dad had ridden years before.  I found out about Canon City and Skyline Drive on the Internet.

This wasn't Dad's road.

Canon City is ahead and to the left; at the bottom of the hill is a prison, fairly new.

That is me coming over the hill from the other direction.

In a strange quirk, we figured out I had run over the ridge road of Dad's on the way to Kanab.  It is just north of the town of Escalante on Utah Hwy 12, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante Nation Monument.  A very spectacular stretch of road, that Hwy 12...


I think this is looking West-Southwest.



The prison is just behind and below dad.

The road (One Way entering from the west side of the ridge, west of Canon City) winds down the northeast side of the ridge, past a bunch of off-road motorcycle trails.

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