Stove Prairie School and Horsetooth Reservoir

Hey KZR,

This past Thursday, 4/14/16, Pops and I were able to get in a absolutely brilliant ride! Started off in Johnstown, CO at 11am riding away heading west into the Loveland and Fort Collins, CO area. Went the back way into the foothills in front of Carter Lake and connected to US Hwy 34 for a short time until we turned North and headed into Masonville which is a local small town biker spot with leather shops and some restaurants. At that point we turned west and headed up into the hills and started climbing until we made it to one of the oldest continuously running schools in Colorado, Stove Prairie at over 7000 ft elevation, which was founded and started operating in 1896 as an elementary school and still is in use as an elementary school today! In fact, school was in session when we drove by it on Thursday hahaha.

From there we continued to head north up/down Rist Canyon Rd and it was EMPTY!!! One of the absolute best technical stretches of road I have ever seen in Colorado and we had it completely to ourselves!!!! HOT DOGGIE :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Not only was the road completely devoid of any other motorists other than ourselves but there was lots less sh!t on the roads than I was expecting as well. Not to say that there were no hazards there, that would be a lie, but when we saw the sand, or dirt or gravel etc it wasn't mid-corner or anything like that and was easily avoided without severely impacting our lines throughout the turns. The road itself though, man oh man what a road! Rest Canyon Rd has everything an aggressive canyon carver would want, increasing radius turns, decreasing radius turns, blind turns, big fast high speed sweepers, banked corners, rises into tight hairpins and all sorts of other fantastic goodies! For someone like myself that is an aggressive rider by nature and someone who is trying to challenge themselves and improve their riding ability and body positioning it was just tits!

Anyways, once we ate up all of Rist Canyon Rd it dead ends into Poudre Canyon where we took a left and headed West up the canyon even further. A really gorgeous ride with spectacular scenery, gorgeous white water rivers and rapids, cliffs and craggy mountains and the sun shining like it just wouldn't quit Eventually though we hit some construction and decided to turn around and not deal with it. Went back down Poudre Canyon a few miles and pulled off on the side of the road at a campground location and broke for lunch. Had some slow roasted home made carnitas courtesy of Momma’s home cooking that Pops packed and some crackers, buffalo and venison jerky, cheese, tuna salad and starbucks doubleshot to wake us back up. The weather and river and scenery were so outstanding that we decided to take a bit of extra time and have a shorter robust sized cigar. I lit of a La Aurora 1495 cameroon wrapper stick that was very very nice, while Pops has a Don Pepin’ Garcia blend robo too. Here are some pics of our scenery at lunch:

Continued......

Once those were done we geared back up and went back up the way we came and gave Rist Canyon Rd another go around and had a blast once again, though we did get stuck behind a school bus for a bit but eventually got around it. Once again got back up to Stove Prairie Elementary School and this time started to make our way out of the mountains and get back to home in the next hour or two. Here is a pic of County Road with our backs to Stove Prairie School about 75 feet behind us:

Headed East on North Country Road 27 which was about as treacherous as you could imagine. Unlike Rist Canyon Rd, this one was covered in loose sand, gravel and all sorts of other nastiness that made for a rather cheek tightening ride down haha! Much steeper grade and at the apex of every single turn was covered in sand and gravel and grit and all other sorts of dangers and even had the back tire kick out on me once or twice mid turn on a 7% grade that was a bit of a challenge to control. Luckily I was able to keep everything on the straight and narrow so nothing went sideways there, woot!

Once we were down that treacherous road it dropped us into the back side of Horsetooth Reservoir so we followed the road that went across the top of all of the bridges and dams along side of Horsetooth pulling off now and then to take a peek at the scenery and the reservoir.

That was just about the end of our ride, we went through Masonville again and in front of Carter Lake with some really nice rolling hills and high speed sweepers and I made my way back home to Longmont while Pops went back towards Johnstown area. Started at 11am and I arrived back at the house at 3:30pm…. it was a truly epic day, great ride and wouldn't have wanted to share it with anyone else but Pops

I took a look at my rear tire when I got back home and saw just how far over the wear patterns were showing up and saw just how much progress I have been making with body positioning, lean angle and overall bike control and saw that the wear was nearly to the very edge of the sidewall!

So I guess I have finally been making some progress since I am now hanging off the bike mid-turn enough that I’m within a few inches of scraping the ground. Not going to be going any further though since I will either start bouncing off the foot pegs or grinding down my riding jeans lol. All the same a lot of fun and much better progress and unity with my bike Saya!

It was a fantastic day, Amazing to me things don't look as green or the rocks as bright red in the pics as they do in real life. Much like a coral reef, the pics don't do reality (or what ever our brains do to reality) justice. It was a special day.

ajsfirehawk wrote: It was a fantastic day, Amazing to me things don't look as green or the rocks as bright red in the pics as they do in real life. Much like a coral reef, the pics don't do reality (or what ever our brains do to reality) justice. It was a special day.

You should've given the camera some SHROOMS, I remember back in the day shrooms made everything more colorful, :laugh: :laugh:
Pete

HAHAHAHAHAHA :laugh: :laugh:

That tire's done.

All the makings of an excellent day
Thanks for sharing
JD

Thanks for sharing Irish, looks like you had a fantastic ride.

Yeah, great. And what are you doing today with the rest of us frozen Denverites this weekend !??

zukdave wrote: That tire's done.

How so Dave? :huh:

No cracking or sidewall splitting, not squared off and lots of tread left, what caught your eye that looked dangerous?

Thanks man,
Brett

Thanks Jon and JD, really appreciate the kind words and glad that you guys enjoyed the read it was a fantastic day and a long ride at a bit over 3 hrs on the scooter, backside and knees were starting to get a bit sore by the end of it hahahaha :laugh: :laugh:

Brett

missionkz wrote: Yeah, great. And what are you doing today with the rest of us frozen Denverites this weekend !??

Hahah Hey Bruce stay warm man its unpleasant down here in Longmont too! Have the day off from work so going to be spending it with the Mrs. Irish and Mini-Me Irish having some fun today, maybe head out to do a bit of running around at a mall so Mini-Me can burn some energy and have fun plus give the Mrs. Irish a chance to spend more of my money

What are you up to man?

Brett