Camo Mom: Motorcycling in the Rockies

Last week was one of the most amazing vacations I have ever been on.  I have a true love of the mountains, and seeing them on the back of a motorcycle was absolutely incredible!

We were set to leave out from home on Friday evening and travel until we got tired.  Our good friends, Greg and Karen Frink, also our neighbors, traveled with us.  As the time for our departure neared, a big thunderstorm came across the radar that was moving our way.  We decided to sit the storm out before leaving, which ended up being a wise decision as the storm carried with it 60 mile-per-hour winds.

The extreme heat didn't seem as noticeable as we could see the majestic giants in the horizon.

After the storm rolled through, we headed west.  The first night we made it as far as Salina, Kansas, before calling it a day.  With temperatures in the high 90s, we figured traveling through Kansas would be more pleasant in the late evening hours and early morning hours, which definitely proved to be correct.  By early afternoon, we still had a couple hours to go through the flat plains and the heat was pretty intense.  In fact, we were kind of wishing for a little rain at that point to cool things down.

The route we took, took us through a brief corner of Nebraska, then into Colorado.  Boy, was I glad to see that Welcome to Colorado sign.  I had been needing a mountain fix for a few years and we were about to converge into some of the most beautiful mountains in the world.  Somehow the extreme heat didn’t seem to be such a big deal as we traveled closer to the majestic giants and could see the outline of the stately range in the horizon.

There's nothing like being surrounded by beauty on the back of a motorcycle.

Our destination for that evening was Loveland, Colorado, although we hadn’t made reservations at a hotel there because we weren’t positive that’s where we would make it to with so much to see along the way.  There was no room at the inn when we stopped to check into a hotel in Loveland.  In fact, there were no rooms available, period, in Loveland that evening.  According to the hotel clerk, with Frontier Days going on in Cheyenne, Wyoming, everything was booked up.  We started calling around and found one room left at a Hampton Inn in Greeley, which was a short backtrack of about 20 miles.  After that, we figured we better call ahead for reservations once we knew approximately where we would end up each day.

The view above Grand Lake.

The next morning was one of those glorious mountain mornings as we ventured through Estes Park, which is where we stopped for breakfast, seated on a patio with a mountainous backdrop.  I called my mom just to rub it in a little that we were in her favorite spot in Colorado.  Rocky Mountain National Park was definitely in all its splendor that day, as we saw not only the picturesque beauty of the scenery surrounding us, we also saw elk, mule deer, mountain sheep, a coyote, and as if it were making an appearance as a grand finale, we saw a bull moose just as we were about to leave the confines of the park.

Traveling through Rocky Mountain National Park.

It’s amazing what you can see out in the wide open on a motorcycle with no vehicle top to block any of your view.  The scents were incredible too, as we wound through the mountain passes, catching the delicious aroma of the pines and sage.  I told my husband I would like to invent a camera that would capture the smells along the way.

Next week I’ll continue on with stories of our journey through the Rockies and hopefully you’ll feel like you’ve been on the trip with us.~Tammy Ballew