Friday, April 3, 2009

Friday Afternoon near Red Rocks Park

I'd managed to rack up enough hours by early this morning, what with all the nighttime changes and long days this week, to take most of today off. Needless to say, I went riding.

The temperatures were in the mid to high 50s when I started out shortly after noon, overcast skies for the most part though there was occasional sunshine here and there. I took the E470/C470 slabs over to the vicinity of Morrison, Colorado. The town lies to the immediate west of the Denver Metro area and southwest of Golden.

Near Morrison itself is Denver's Red Rocks Park. Home to an amphitheater carved out of gigantic red rock formations, and a favorite place for me in terms of posing my motorcycles for pictures. I was riding Maria today, my 2004 R1150RT Beemer. I am currently running some fuel injector cleaner through the next couple of tankfuls to help with the mild surging. The injector cleaner fluid seems to be helping, along with adjusting the pre-load on my rear shock absorber.

Here's a link to the history and geology of Red Rocks: LINK

Anyways, here's some pictures I took of Maria as I slowly rode through Red Rocks Park. Not many cagers visiting and viewing, I even ran into a young fellow on a new Ducati motorcycle.




You can see the park's Trading Post just past the large rock formations



Sorry about the water drops on the lens, I was briefly rained on while in the park and didn't notice it had hit the lens


Built during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

Once I left Red Rocks Park, I headed to the nearby town of Morrison where I rode about looking for interesting sights. It's a small town, full of tourist traps and restaurants. However, it does have this unique display of a vintage Fire Engine from yesteryear:

I had to shed a layer before I left Morrison as the temperatures were now high 50s to low 60s! I headed South on C-470 until I got to the Wadsworth Boulevard exit. I'd been watching these storm clouds as I rode south and found a good spot near Deer Creek Canyon Road to take this pano shot:

Looks pretty wicked doesn't it? However, it did not last long. It had become nice white fluffy clouds by the time I returned from riding the twisty turns on Deer Creek Canyon Road. Lots of gravel on the road so caution was the word of the day. I took this road all the way to the fire station at Fenders, then took South Turkey Creek Road to what I thought was the really small town of "Lost and Found".

I'd ridden past this "town" many times on my way towards US285 on past rides. Today though, after some googling, I found out it's a Substance Abuse Treatment Facility. Oh well.

I rode back the way I came on S. Turkey Creek Road, back through the twists of Deer Creek Canyon Road and back onto the C-470 slab which I took all the way home. 121 miles in about 4 hours of riding.

Snow storm is forecasted for tonight through tomorrow. Hopefully its not as bad as they're predicting.

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