Throwing it out into the universe - southwest meet up.
I can make any date work. Thanks for doing this!It looks like there is interest in a southwest meetup! So far I count about 10 of us that indicated some interest (plus a couple more that would like to but not feasible for them). You know, I threw this meetup out there because we had recent members join the forum from the Phoenix area, I think 4 now, and thought there would be some excitement from you guys being in your backyard, but not a peep from any of you. Come on AZ folks! 🙌 Although not everyone will confirm in the end, there will be others and we have enough to get me excited and start setting it up!
I am leaning on basing in Cortez Co and doing alpine (Million $ hwy) one day and desert (monument valley) one day. Cortez seems to have plenty of budget motels and a couple decent eating places. If anyone has other route or basing location ideas, please post away. I like Durango, but cant figure out 2 reasonable loops out of there. I cant do late May anymore, so I would like to propose June 3-5 (preferred) or June 10-12. Everybody please let me know your interest status and which of these dates are good for you.
Lets do thi
If you just rest your mouse cursor on the attachments, you'll see the mileage at the end of the filename.This is gonna be a long post. Well.... without knowing what kind of mileage y'all (as a group) consider a 'reasonable' day's ride (for me it's ~350 mi) and, wanting to include day rides that were mostly under 300 miles, I did some work and came up with some awesome rides. I've been on most of these roads, but not all. But they're all paved GRIN. A couple rides I'll share here are 'out-and-back' rides, because in the West, distances are really stretched out. I have a couple suggestions, which I'll get to right now. First, and I don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers, but speaking personally, I'm not crazy about spending all day on the reservation. For those not familiar with this part of the world, the Navajo reservation encompasses the entire NE corner of Arizona. If you want to see Monument Valley (it's really amazing), you gotta traverse the Navajo Nation. You'll see lots of poverty. And you gotta watch oncoming traffic; lots of DUIs there. Now for my 2nd suggestion, much lighter: we're gonna be SO CLOSE to the incredible National Parks in Utah. If you haven't seen Arches NP or Canyonlands NP, they're reachable from Cortez. It would be an out-and-back, but easily doable. I also included a surprise package, a National Monument very few people have heard of, Natural Bridges. I also have mountain runs, straight east on US-160 to Wolf Creek Pass, and a great loop from Cortez on CO-145 to Ridgeway, then back down US-550 on the Million Dollar Highway to Durango and Cortez. The longest day is 336 miles, taking in both Arches and Canyonlands. The shortest day is 169 miles, kinda bland run to Shiprock and Farmington, NM. The graphics I'm gonna attach here have the main towns and mileages in the graphic. If you right-click on it to save it, hopefully it'll show the route name and mileage. Always interested in feedback...