Day Six – Hotchkiss CO. to Moab UT. - Miles: 308
We started the day by riding back through Crawford towards the Black Canyon and then stayed on CO 92 and were into new territory for us. CO 92 down to US 50 was such a great road I couldn't help but wonder why we hadn't been on this road before. It was one great view after another. We stopped several times to take pics and soak in the scenery. It was hard deciding to look at the views or ride aggressively and enjoy the road. I think we didn't some of both. As soon as we turned West on US50 we hit construction and traffic was at a standstill. We were directly behind a group of Harley riders who we struck upon a conversation with and learned they were from KC. I pulled out my Bengals water container and gave them some grief but in the end they had the last laugh. When we reached Montrose we headed south on US550 which we would be riding the better parts of in the coming days. Once we got to Ridgeway we went west on CO62. The clouds had rolled in and it looked like we might get some rain but we continued on our route and hoped for the best. We made one stop on CO62 at a nice overlook with a great view of the San Juans. As we progressed over to CO145 and began the climb up Norwood Hill it began to rain. It was nothing major and we thought we could see the extent of it in the distance so we rode on. Once up on the hill we got out of the rain for the most part and headed south on CO141, but this part of CO141 was new to us. We made a quick stop around Egnar in an area known as Slickrock. Nothing exceptional but it was a good rest after riding through some rain. We headed west again on US492 into Monticello before heading north towards Moab. This section of road has been travelled many times by us as well and the scenery is ok, but it is a fairly busy road so not all that great. Once into Moab we found our hotel which was a new one and we knew it was going to be good. Steve got a nice upgrade to his high end Hilton property and when we checked in we were very impressed. We had thought about going into the Canyonlands and riding around but we had done that quite a few times and the place where we were staying was so nice we decided to take a swim and have a nice sushi dinner before retiring back to our luxury digs and enjoying the surroundings. We sat poolside and enjoyed some wine.
