We dried out with a couple of cups of coffee and chatted it up with the hotel owner. She said Colorado has now ended it’s 10 year drought and all the rivers are full and reservoirs topped off.

After a nice dinner at a local steakhouse and a good nights sleep, our clothes dried out by the time morning arrived . We packed up and started our ride 7, San Juan highway aka CO145 to Telluride.

It was 7 am by the time we left Cortez on a crisp morning. Both of us had long johns on, and I had my electric vest on and fired up as we climbed into the Rockies.

We stopped a couple of times for Rick to change his gloves. We road along a river and the river was really flowing. The aspen tress here were just budding. After all, it is only middle of May. I usually come through here during summer.

As we climbed the temps dropped. We continue the climb till we reached the high meadows with beautiful vista of snowed capped mountains. The temps were in the low 30’s with snow still next to the roadway.

We finally start our decent when we past Telluride and finished our ride in Placerville and took our pics in front of the post office.

From there it was off to Moab Utah 130 miles away to start ride 8, The Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric highway.

The ride to Moab was a heading back westward towards drier weather and hotter temps. It was a great downhill run into some canyon valleys before we climbed again to get through a pass to highway US190. The town of Moab has really grown up since I was here last. We arrive in Moab around 12 to document and start the ride through this canyon.

This was a nice ride through the canyons along the Colorado river before we popped out the canyon and came to Interstate 70. From there it was west to Green River to stop for the day at a familiar hotel along the river.

Day 8 video