Colorado to Utah.

The ride was fun and unfun at the same time.  I rode from Manitou Springs through to Craig, avoiding the interstate highways.  This lead me over a number of passes, some quite high and some cold.  The wind was quite strong and from the west, so I was either facing it or having it from my left.  At lower elevations the temperature was fine, but as I rose, the snow line crept down until I was above it.  At one time there was over 4 feet of snow on the sides of the road, but the road itself was always bare and dry.  At times  I got nervous as bikes and ice or snow is a bad combination, but there were always bikes coming toward me from the other direction.  It did get cold, but never so cold that I needed to put the liners into my rain pants.
It is now my opinion that Colorado bikers are like those in Alaska and northern BC, as soon as the roads are dry and likely to stay that way, it is time to ride, no matter how much snow is piled up on the sides.
Some parts of the ride were a lot of fun.  It would be great to take the road a little later in the year and without towing a trailer.  The twisty sections were nice, not too many long straight boring parts and lots of nice views.  Gas stations were scattered nicely, and as always the ones tucked out of the way were the priciest.  I did not take many pictures this time around.  It always seemed the wrong time to pull over for most of the view points.  At least the roads were not busy.  I think during the summer it would be a popular place for campers, and going by the number of ski resorts, during ski season it would also be humming with traffic.
There seemed to be a large number of roadkill animals along the route, but that could be a result of a lack of removal of the remains.  I saw a few the had obviously been there quite some time.  I only saw one muledeer, and he was going away from the road, but it did reinforce the need to be aware of animals and their chance of entering traffic.
But, at the very beginning of the day, I went to the Manitou Cliff Dwelling Site.  This partially undid the disappointment from not getting to see the Gila Cliff site in some ways, but also put in the itch to see the Gila site just to compare....
Anyway, here are a few pictures from the Manitou site, and following is a picture of the snow covered pass I traversed later the same day.