Living in Florida is really quite nice, with year-round riding, nice and warm, but it's so flat! For certain, if we wanted to experience some high mountain peaks, we had to go north from here!
We began looking at maps of Colorado, which everyone told us is the best motorcycling anywhere. Ever look at a map of Colorado? There are roads running up and down the valleys, over the passes, back and forth and up and down. Even the interstate is curvy! And where to stay? How long is a day's ride in the mountains? How many more questions do we have?
Forrtunately, Wing World runs an ad for Freedom Tours in Colorado. We chose to call them, and soon we were set to go.
The trip to Colorado was fun, but uneventful. Our exitement began increasing when we could finally see the top of Pikes Pead from many miles out on the plains. Imagine how the settlers felt beholding this sight! (We remembered the joke about Kansas being nothing if not the driveway to Colorado. At least it's paved!)
We had done some reading over the winter about the early years in the Rjockies - the fur trappers, the Indians and the explorers looking for routes through the mountains, the Gold Rush and Silver Rush years, and the incredible competition among the railroads in the 1870's. We were anxious to see some of the sights we had read about and had dreamt about.
The tour started from a quaint cafe in Longmont. We sat outside under an arbor covered with grape vines and got our Freedom Tours T-shirt, maps and briefing for the first day. Breakfast was ordered from an unusual menu and turned out to be excellent.
This was just a taste of a pattern that would continue through the week. Mike Broadstreet, the owner of Freedom Tours, has lived in Colorado all his life and like to eat well. Both he and the former owner of Freedom Tours were on this tour, and between the two of them, they've tried a lot of restaurants! As a result, they have a list of excellent eateries. Most were fascinating places with a genuine country flair, some were very unusual in out of the way places in old mining towns, but all had excellent food and selection.
On our own, we never would have figured out the itinerary. It is obvious that much thought and many years of refinement have gone into it. The days were neither too long or too short. We usually went over the highest mountain passes in the morning while everyone was fresh and there was less chance of rain, and we always arrived at the perfect destination town at five or earlier in the evening.
We then had time to soak in the hot tub, go for a swim, or just relax and enjoy the luxury. All tof the hotels were first class and would have been impossible to get a room in if we had arrived without arrangements being made.
A motorcycle trip is only as good as the roads, and these were beyond description! Each day we wound our way over curvy mountain passes, crossed valleys of green farmland, followed clear water streams through tight canyons and stopped to smell the wildflowers in high tundra. Our leaders certainly knew the best pullouts and photo opportunities. We took so many potos with our new camera that Mike almost automatically came over to us at each rest stop to see if we wanted him to take our picture again!
The tour pace is very relaxed and the stops frequent, but you don't have to ride with the group. You have freedom to ride ahead to spend more time in the destination town, stay behind to take in a favorite vista or choose a different route from the daily maps. We usually lead the group on our Chapter rides, so sometimes it was hard to resist the urge to go on ahead, but we learned early onthat our leaders knew the best stops and we didn't want to miss anything.
Some of our group took advantage of alternate routes that were recommended, some even over unpaved roads, but not us with our new Wing! One rider from New Jersey had a CBR and came out to scrape his pegs. We hardly ever saw him except at breakfast and dinner. Mike told him of open, curvy roads he could blast around on and he had an absolute ball! Freedom of choice. Is this a great country or what?
So when you are mulling over your maps trying to choose where to go this summer, give Colorado some consideration. We feel we really know something of the state now, and are sure we would have ridden right past many beautiful waterfalls and mountain vistas had we not had someone with us who knew where they were.
The cost of the tour was also quite reasonable. We figured if we stayed at the same hotels and ate at the same restaurants, we would have spent about the same as the tour cost, but without the knowledge of our tour leader who obviously knows Colorado well, loves it dearly and is anxious to share it.
The entire trip through Colorado was exciting and the scenery was spectacular right up to the last few miles of the last day. It was sad to think of going back down the "driveway" with Pikes Peak in our mirrors, but our saddlebags were full of film and our heads full of memories. We have wonderful new friends to add to our Christmas card list and have sweet dreams knowing we made the right choice for our vacation.
Now, what about next year? We only put 6,000 miles on the Wing (1,300 in Colorado), and it has several hundred thousand left in it. There must be lots of things we missed; maybe we'll choose to go back and do it again!
If you would like to open the door to more choices for yourself, contact Mike at Freedom Tours.
