2020 Colorado Tour on a Motorcycle

After having had to cancel our 2019 motorcycle trip due to the motorcycle/deer accident we were itching to take a motorcycle vacation this year. The COVID sure made it a challenge but did manage to have a great vacation touring Colorado in 2020!

As has become our habit for longer trips, we trailered the motorcycles to Golden, Colorado which we used as basecamp. Thanks to our buddy Doug Holschbach who lives in Golden, we found a nice hotel to stay at and park the vehicle/trailer.

Our first stop was Rocky Mountain National Park via an awesome route that Doug recommended. We approached via the Peak-to-Peak Highway (Hwy 119) to Hwy 72 to Hwy 7 to Estes Park. We got to Hwy 119 via Golden Gate Canyon which was a great ride!

Estes Park was a great place to stop. While not our first time traveling through, it was the first time we stopped at the Stanley Hotel which was the setting for Jack Nicholson's "The Shining".

We made the trip with our perennial motorcycle vacation friends, Fred and Karen Stumpf. The Stumpfs had not been to Colorado before so this was a totally new experience for them. We put on nearly 1,400 miles over the week and made several stops:

1. Rocky Mountain National Park was interesting as we were not aware that we would need a reservation just to get into the park. We finally were cleared to enter after 5pm without a reservation; we had to hustle across the park without time to stop much so that we could get to our hotel in Grand Lake before dark (we are still spooked with animals out at dusk!),

2. Gunnison is a small city that became our hub to go whitewater rafting on the Taylor River but also to visit...

3. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park which is really a beautiful park that we recommend,

4. Million Dollar Highway stretches for about 25 miles (40 km) in western Colorado and follows the route of U.S. 550 between Silverton and Ouray, Colorado.

5. Durango, and

6. Wolf Creek Pass

Black Canyon of the Gunnison