Day 21 -The Million Dollar Highway

We start out this morning in Montrose, CO at the start of our required segment named "The Million Dollar Highway". It consists of US-550 from Montrose, CO down through Ouray and Silverton and ending in Durango, CO. It is also part of the San Juan Skyway Scenic Byway.

Todays route:

The elevation profile tells the real tale:

The ride from Montrose down through to Ouray was nothing too special, save the copious warnings for deer crossings and something called a "wildlife detection area".
You can see that we started out in Montrose at 6000 ft elevation, but then start a dramatic climb up to over 11,000 ft, and then drop and crest two more passes before descending back down to the 5000 to 6000 ft range. What those three peaks are the three passes that make this such a great motorcycle ride. For more information about this road see wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_550

The real fun began coming out of Ouray. Here the road begins a very steep ascent with numerous switchbacks and mostly no guardrails up to the Red Mountain Pass (11,018 ft). Then there is an almost 2000 fy descent and we climb once again up to Molas Pass (10,970 ft), and then one more smaller drop before climbing to the third and final Coal Bank Pass (10,640 ft) and then a dramatic 3500 steep descent. This all would have been much more exciting had we not been behind a large group of Harley riders who were very careful to strictly observe all speed signs, especially the ones in the turns. They were too big a group to pass so we just sat back and followed and tried to enjoy the views. I didn't get many photos as I was running the GoPro in video mode (the upload of only one segment is underway but scheduled to take over 3 hours).

Once we got to Durango we gasses up and headed south for a long ride down through northwestern New Mexico. The ride wasn't anything too special, though we did see a LOT or bikes headed in the opposite direction. Eventually we arrived at I-40 where we were supposed to head west, cross into Arizona, and than take US-191 south from there. As we approached I-40 however, the storm clouds were gathering and just as we got to the ramps we were seeing lightning so we stopped and re-considered our plans. A driver who just came off the road told us there was heavy hail. We decided to detour eastbound on I-40 out to Grants NM and then take a two-laner (NM-117) which would take us alongside the El Malpais National Monument. There we did also run into some rain, but never hard or long enough to force us into a gear change. We did pass an accident scene where another motorcyclist had apparently left the road. Eventually we ran out from the rain and arrived in Springerville, AZ about 30 minutes later and much drier than we would otherwise have!

Stats for the day: 437.5 miles in 7:50 moving time, 10:15 elapsed time.