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Every year for the past few years the wife and I have taken an extended motorcycle trip for vacation. This year would be no different. We decided that we would head up the Rockies, hitting almost every state that we haven’t travelled by motorcycle and eventually end up at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. Tam had seen some pictures of Lake Louise and they looked absolutely gorgeous, isolated and relatively remote. We should have known better…
Tam did a good deal of research through the internet for this trip, setting out a general route and gathering intel on our destination. I did my usual trip prep by getting the bikes ready with new tires and fresh oil, then sitting on my butt.
I did manage to throw a monkey wrench at her plans though.
I never knew my Grandfather on either side of the family. My Mom’s Dad is a total mystery. She never spoke of him and when I ask she redirects me ever so subtly. So I have dropped that one. What I learned about my Dad’s Dad had been rumor and most of it had been bad. Womanizer, gambler, all around ne’er do well. The story was he abandoned my Dad and G’Ma when my Dad was a small child. But I find as I get older I’m more interested in where I came from so I started making some phone calls to a relative I met a few years ago that does our family’s genealogy. I found out he was buried in Farmington, New Mexico. I also get hooked up with some cousins I never met and I get another side of the story; a young teenage girl (my Grandma), an older man (my Grandpa), possible infidelity, a man with a job that forces him to travel, you get the picture.
So our plans change. We’re still going to end up in Canada but first we’re going to Farmington so I can find where my Grandpa is buried. To speed things up we’ll be hauling our bikes west and dumping our truck and trailer in New Mexico. At the end we’ll have ridden over 1,800 miles by truck and almost 4,000 miles by motorcycle.
The first day was an absolute blitz. We left before 3am and headed west. I had loaded the bikes the day before and stored the trailer in my garage so all we would have to do is back up and hook up. We were headed to White Rock, NM where a member of this forum has a house and most graciously volunteered to let us park our truck at while we were gone.
On the way we located a “historic spot” that Tam couldn’t pass up.
If you go, skip the museum. Total rip-off. Totally ignore the pasty white legs…
We had hotel reservations in Santa Fe but as we got closer we just weren’t tired enough to stop so we cancelled and kept on, getting to White Rock in the late afternoon. We checked out the spot we were to leave the truck and then went to find a hotel. What we didn’t know was the national lab in Los Alamos was having some type of convention. There were no hotel rooms in White Rock/Los Alamos or anywhere near there.
Traffic jam in White Rock!!! It extended as far as you could see.
We pushed on for a few more hours and finally reached Farmington. Apologies to any New Mexico natives but what a God-forsaken drive and what a crappy town. We were already tired of semi-arid high country and we hadn’t even gotten started yet. All total I think we were in the truck 20+ hours the first day.
The next day we got a suggestion on where to store the truck/trailer and pushed on to the cemetery to find my grandpa’s grave.
Success!
White pasty legs now covered up.
We left there and hauled posterior to Bloomfield where we would drop off the truck and trailer. Good looking rig belongs to the wife.
Our destination for today would be Telluride, CO. On the way we crossed an Apache Reservation and kept seeing signs for “kneel down bread”. What the **** is kneel down bread?
We didn’t know either so we stopped and hit this guy up:
According to him, kneel down bread is the most awesome invention/food/wonder material ever made. Ask me and I’ll tell you it’s a gooey wet nasty mess that was once perfectly good corn.
Scenery to Colorado:
Closer to Telluride:
At Telluride Tam found a few couples travelling in their custom rigs and got the advice to bypass everything and get to Banff immediately. In one of the guy’s words “The Canadian Rockies are beyond awesome. I’ve travelled all over and the only mountains that come close are the Swiss Alps.” So we decided to push on as hard as we could to get to Canada.
Interesting tidbit from Telluride that was a reoccurring theme; we found a pizza place out of the way for dinner. Specifically we chose it because judging from the amount of kitchen help, cleaning people and basic ski bums that we saw at this place it appeared to be stuff the local people ate and we figured it would be cheaper than the touristy stuff. While waiting for our pizza to get ready I struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter. We discussed the high price of everything in Telluride, from hotels (our crummy room ran over $100) to rental homes to meals. He told me it was because there was nothing made in Telluride; they had to “truck everything in”.
I figured I would let that one go. No need to destroy this guy’s imaginary world where cities exist that produce everything they need and nothing gets shipped in. But it would make a funny catch-phrase for the rest of the trip.
Custom side car rig of the Canadian Rockies #1 fan:
North of Telluride was beautiful but it was dry and HOT.
After buckets of sweat and another night in Colorado we finally made it to Utah.
Did you know between Grand Junction CO and Vernal UT there isn’t any *&^%$ shade!!??!! A bird-dropping covered picnic table is all we could find. And yes, I’m sunburned now.
The area did have some beautiful sights though:
After some misadventures in Vernal, which I won’t mention, except to say “Make sure you don’t accidentally turn on your parking lights when you lock your forks”. We headed to Idaho Falls, ID.
A little detour into Wyoming.
You think they might mean us???
After a night in Idaho we decided to make a little time by hopping on the interstate and going into Montana. Then we would jump back off on back roads. We planned to cross into Canada in Roosville and up there your road choices are a little limited.
Montana was beautiful!!!
One of Tam’s artsy photos:
Gearing up to ride into a thunder shower near the Idaho/Montana border:
Dropping off a big hill in a small Montana town you see this:
You get closer and then you can see what’s really going on. SWEET!!!
Crossing into British Columbia. I NEVER would think of taking this photo crossing INTO the USA. Too much chance of getting detained.
More to follow!
Tam did a good deal of research through the internet for this trip, setting out a general route and gathering intel on our destination. I did my usual trip prep by getting the bikes ready with new tires and fresh oil, then sitting on my butt.
I did manage to throw a monkey wrench at her plans though.
I never knew my Grandfather on either side of the family. My Mom’s Dad is a total mystery. She never spoke of him and when I ask she redirects me ever so subtly. So I have dropped that one. What I learned about my Dad’s Dad had been rumor and most of it had been bad. Womanizer, gambler, all around ne’er do well. The story was he abandoned my Dad and G’Ma when my Dad was a small child. But I find as I get older I’m more interested in where I came from so I started making some phone calls to a relative I met a few years ago that does our family’s genealogy. I found out he was buried in Farmington, New Mexico. I also get hooked up with some cousins I never met and I get another side of the story; a young teenage girl (my Grandma), an older man (my Grandpa), possible infidelity, a man with a job that forces him to travel, you get the picture.
So our plans change. We’re still going to end up in Canada but first we’re going to Farmington so I can find where my Grandpa is buried. To speed things up we’ll be hauling our bikes west and dumping our truck and trailer in New Mexico. At the end we’ll have ridden over 1,800 miles by truck and almost 4,000 miles by motorcycle.
The first day was an absolute blitz. We left before 3am and headed west. I had loaded the bikes the day before and stored the trailer in my garage so all we would have to do is back up and hook up. We were headed to White Rock, NM where a member of this forum has a house and most graciously volunteered to let us park our truck at while we were gone.
On the way we located a “historic spot” that Tam couldn’t pass up.
If you go, skip the museum. Total rip-off. Totally ignore the pasty white legs…
We had hotel reservations in Santa Fe but as we got closer we just weren’t tired enough to stop so we cancelled and kept on, getting to White Rock in the late afternoon. We checked out the spot we were to leave the truck and then went to find a hotel. What we didn’t know was the national lab in Los Alamos was having some type of convention. There were no hotel rooms in White Rock/Los Alamos or anywhere near there.
Traffic jam in White Rock!!! It extended as far as you could see.
We pushed on for a few more hours and finally reached Farmington. Apologies to any New Mexico natives but what a God-forsaken drive and what a crappy town. We were already tired of semi-arid high country and we hadn’t even gotten started yet. All total I think we were in the truck 20+ hours the first day.
The next day we got a suggestion on where to store the truck/trailer and pushed on to the cemetery to find my grandpa’s grave.
Success!
White pasty legs now covered up.
We left there and hauled posterior to Bloomfield where we would drop off the truck and trailer. Good looking rig belongs to the wife.
Our destination for today would be Telluride, CO. On the way we crossed an Apache Reservation and kept seeing signs for “kneel down bread”. What the **** is kneel down bread?
We didn’t know either so we stopped and hit this guy up:
According to him, kneel down bread is the most awesome invention/food/wonder material ever made. Ask me and I’ll tell you it’s a gooey wet nasty mess that was once perfectly good corn.
Scenery to Colorado:
Closer to Telluride:
At Telluride Tam found a few couples travelling in their custom rigs and got the advice to bypass everything and get to Banff immediately. In one of the guy’s words “The Canadian Rockies are beyond awesome. I’ve travelled all over and the only mountains that come close are the Swiss Alps.” So we decided to push on as hard as we could to get to Canada.
Interesting tidbit from Telluride that was a reoccurring theme; we found a pizza place out of the way for dinner. Specifically we chose it because judging from the amount of kitchen help, cleaning people and basic ski bums that we saw at this place it appeared to be stuff the local people ate and we figured it would be cheaper than the touristy stuff. While waiting for our pizza to get ready I struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter. We discussed the high price of everything in Telluride, from hotels (our crummy room ran over $100) to rental homes to meals. He told me it was because there was nothing made in Telluride; they had to “truck everything in”.
I figured I would let that one go. No need to destroy this guy’s imaginary world where cities exist that produce everything they need and nothing gets shipped in. But it would make a funny catch-phrase for the rest of the trip. Custom side car rig of the Canadian Rockies #1 fan:
North of Telluride was beautiful but it was dry and HOT.
After buckets of sweat and another night in Colorado we finally made it to Utah.
Did you know between Grand Junction CO and Vernal UT there isn’t any *&^%$ shade!!??!! A bird-dropping covered picnic table is all we could find. And yes, I’m sunburned now.
The area did have some beautiful sights though:
After some misadventures in Vernal, which I won’t mention, except to say “Make sure you don’t accidentally turn on your parking lights when you lock your forks”. We headed to Idaho Falls, ID.
A little detour into Wyoming.
You think they might mean us???
After a night in Idaho we decided to make a little time by hopping on the interstate and going into Montana. Then we would jump back off on back roads. We planned to cross into Canada in Roosville and up there your road choices are a little limited.
Montana was beautiful!!!
One of Tam’s artsy photos:
Gearing up to ride into a thunder shower near the Idaho/Montana border:
Dropping off a big hill in a small Montana town you see this:
You get closer and then you can see what’s really going on. SWEET!!!
Crossing into British Columbia. I NEVER would think of taking this photo crossing INTO the USA. Too much chance of getting detained.
More to follow!
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About 5 minutes not counting the time we BS’d with him about how they (the Canadians) don’t carry guns. The guy was fascinated that in my day to day job I carry a sidearm and have access to a long gun if I want one. My future encounter with US Customs and Border Protection would not be so agreeable. 
and political views but he had y’all beat. Very interesting conversation though and that little town is really neat. 
great report and a big thank you for sharing!!!
