thebottle Blog

Colorado

The Rocky Mountains were visible in the horizon off to my right as I rode, and the traffic started to get annoyingly busy about 60 miles outside of Denver. I didn’t stop, I stayed on the interstate, but I could see the city. I saw the industrial/factory zones, the train yards, the skyscrapers, the stadium. I saw the big, expensive gated housing communities high up on the hills and edge cliffs, and the slums below in the city; I saw it all at 75mph from the seat of my bike.

The Rocky Mountains were even better than the Black Hills. It had the same cool mid-70 degree weather, the long winding curves, the trees, and the cliffs, but it also had much more. It had a river that followed the winding curves of the highway. It had trains coming out of tunnels and rounding bends right on the edge of a cliff across the river. It had mountains so high that it made you dizzy to look up at them. It had small little mountain towns with ski resorts offering helicopter and horse rides and everything else you might ever need or desire.

Some of the best scenery was seen from the seat of my bike where there was no time to stop and take a camera out. I stopped at a few waysides to snap photos of the scenery, but I was later disappointed.

As soon as I crossed the Colorado/Utah border everything changed. The earth turned dry and hard, the grass turned scarce and a sickly yellow/brown, and trees turned into 2 foot high brown shrubs. This is all you could see, for as far as you could see. It was a barren wasteland, and it was hot. I stopped in Green River, Utah to stay for the night. The plan was to make it to Las Vegas the next day.