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June 21, 2011

Montrose to Crawford to Grand Junction

Franz' plan for this day was to see the sights of this part of Colorado and then end the day in Mesa, but Daryl's Internet search found no motels listed for Mesa so the day's ride was extended to Grand Junction, a larger city which also had a Harley-Davidson dealership, making the decision an easy one. After a group breakfast in a local coffee and bagel house, the group headed out on 50 towards Gunnison and then turned north on 92 to see the Blue Mesa Reservoir and long and meandering lake and then to ride through the eastern parts of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, which ended up including over 30 miles of winding roads that were listed as "loose gravel" and lived up to their name. His first stop was in Crawford, which also held memories of the VOA meet in 1998. At that time (and currently if Google is to be believed) the British singer Joe Cocker owned a very large ranch outside Crawford and his wife, Pam, ran a cafe in town. In 1998, Pam catered a barbecue meal to the whole VOA group in the town park. She no longer owns the cafe, but there was a longish stop for coffee and ice cream sodas, depending on how cold you were. From Crawford, we rambled through the hills and were glad we had not opted to stay in Mesa as it was barely a town and most important to us at that point, did not even have a gas station. Beware to all motorcycles that there are not many gas stops in this area and certainly not between Montrose and just before Grand Junction. Rob was glad the last part was all downhill as he was able to coast for many miles. Our search for a motel in Grand Junction led us to the very nice Comfort Inn, with everything on the wish list, including an indoor pool, but not quite under $50. There was a very nice Italian restaurant across the street and they set up tables for 6 and 8 on the outdoors patio. The evening's entertainment was to listen to Spike order an 18" pizza with his own chosen toppings in English – he might not speak a lot of English, but he ordered one heck of a pizza!