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Paonia, Colorado BMW Rally & Backcountry Tour - 2004

This tour originally started as a ride to the Top O' The Rockies BMW motorcycle rally in Paonia, Colorado.  The rally is put on by the Colorado Beemers.  I had been to the rally a couple of years earlier, before I even owned a BMW, and had a blast-- even though I'm definitely not the "rally-type".  The purpose of this trip was to expose my wife to the motorcycle rally scene.  I planned a dual sport route to Paonia, Colorado from Salt Lake City, Utah on several backcountry and 4x4 roads.

Like usual, plans never go accordingly and we left town late riding two-up with camping gear for 3-days on my BMW GS Adventure.  We stayed on pavement all the way to Moab, Utah for the sake of making up time.  We arrived in Moab around 8 that night and went to a small pizza joint on the main drag.  As we were waiting to be seated, my wife overhead a couple in front of us speaking German, so she tried to converse with them since she knew a limited (very limited) amount of German.  It turns out that the couple were on trip visiting most of the southwest United States.  We ended up getting a table together and spend a few hours trying to break the language barrier.  Luckily their English was much better than my wife's German, so we were able to have a very interesting discussion and learn a lot about each other.  At one point I found it funny that I was telling them about the "Strip" in Las Vegas, which they at first took literally as "stripping" and became slightly uncomfortable.  After I realized this and explained that the Las Vegas Strip referred to the main street through Vegas, everything was okay!  Soon it was dark, and we had not yet staked out a camping spot, so we decided it was time to part ways with our new friends.  As we said our goodbyes, I showed them my German-made BMW (which is about the only German I speak).  In an odd kind of way, it made me realize how small the world is since they lived near the factory where my bike was made.  They extended an invitation to come visit them someday, which we may take them up on- especially if touring Germany on motorcycle is at all possible.

As we left the pizza place, it was pitch black with not even a glimmer of moon light.  I knew there were a lot of camping spots on the river road (Highway 128) north of Moab, so we headed in that direction.  I turned in the first campground I found, which like most of them had tent sites scattered through the willows on the bank of the Colorado River.  It was now around 11PM, and there was know one even slightly awake in the campground.  After we found a site, I realized that the headlamps had not made it into the gear, so we ended up setting the tent up using only a mini-Mag light.  Finally, after a lot of swearing, the tent was up and we finally settled in for the night.  As is typical in Moab, it was around 80 degrees at 11PM, so we just laid on top of our sleeping pads and listened to quiet rippling of the Colorado River only 20 feet away.

The next morning revealed the splendor of the area surrounding our campsite.  Even though I had ridden this stretch of canyon several times, there was something definitely mystical about waking up here.   There was a cool breeze blowing through canyon, which felt great after a rather warm night.  We had a lot of ground to cover, so wasted little time packing and strapping everything back onto the bike.  We then headed for the nearest (and only) Denny's restaurant in Moab to get some food in our stomachs.

After a delightful breakfast, we hit the road towards the La Sal Loop road south of Moab.  I had original planned on taking a road east out of Castle Valley, across the northern flanks of the La Sals.  Instead, a last minute qualm took us up Geyser Pass Road to the top of the La Sals.  The map showed this road dropping down the east side of the La Sals, where we could eventually meet our planned route through Gateway, Colorado.  What the map didn't show was that this is supposedly private property.  There was no gate and we didn't feel like backtracking, so opted for the "just play stupid" plan and proceeded down the east side of the La Sals.

The road up until this point had been easy graded gravel.  After passing the summit, the road became a little

Descending into John Brown Canyon

 more interesting with washouts, loose rocks, and mud.  A solo rider would have no problem on this section of road, but riding two-up with gear made it fairly interesting.  About halfway down we encountered a pickup truck coming the opposite direction.  I was fully expecting a trigger-happy redneck rancher, just looking for an excuse to shoot someone, so I started to practice my story on how we made onto this road without seeing any private property signs-- a total lie, but usually effective.  As it turned out, there were three Hispanics in the truck who didn't speak a word of English.  I asked them where this road came out and basically got the equivalent answer of, "Down there" as they pointed down the road.  I used this situation as proof to my wife why men are absolutely correct in never asking for directions.

The road eventually turned into a graded dirt road and we started heading northeast towards John Brown canyon.  The road skirted the east side of the La Sals, with beautiful terrain, and a lot of cows.  At one point, we had to wait for about ten minutes as a massive bull decided to park it right in the middle of the road.  Being that he literally took up the entire width of the road, and had much larger balls then me (literally), I figured I would accommodate his schedule.  Periodically we passed groups of mountain bikers, even though we were hours out of Moab.  The road continued through low rolling hills, with occasional stretches of sand, until we started dropping into John Brown Canyon.

This area was once bustling with Uranium mines, which is the primary reason many of the roads exist in this area.  The road we were interested in dropped straight down John Brown Canyon to Gateway, Colorado on the Dolores River.  The decent into the canyon was on an amazingly steep, but well graded road.  The canyon itself was beautiful, with interesting rock formations and juniper forests giving way to tall cottonwoods in the base of the narrow canyon.  Luckily it was a very dry day, which appeared to be a very good thing as we passed large diameter culvert pipes wrapped around the trunks of cottonwood trees about 15 to 20 feet above the roadway.  Likewise the steepness of the road might prove challenging with a slick layer of mud on it, especially since the road "shoulder" was typically a few hundred feet lower than the road!

John Brown Canyon east of the La Sals

We emerged from John Brown Canyon in the town of Gateway, Colorado.  Other

Rest stop in Unaweep Canyon, Highway 141, Colorado

 then serving as a potential fuel spot, this town does not have much to offer.  However, Highway 141, which passes through Gateway, is possibly one of the best stretches of motorcycle asphalt in the western United States.   Beautiful scenery combined with long sweepers make this road an absolute blast to ride.  At Whitewater, Colorado we turned south on Highway 50 to Delta, Colorado.  This stretch of road is pretty boring.  A four-lane road with scenery lacking in comparison from where we had just come.  At Delta, we turned east towards Paonia, Colorado and shortly thereafter arrived at the rally.

The rally turned out to be a far cry from what it was a couple of years prior.  The coolest thing about the Paonia rally is that it is held in the City Park.  Riders setup tents among the trees in the Park and line the surrounding roads with their bikes.  This year the rally

The Palisade (as shown from the bottom of John Brown Canyon) towers over the small town of Gateway, Colorado

seemed to be lacking vendors, which in years past were one of the main attractions.  After the solitude of the Colorado River valley, and the remoteness of the La Sals and old uranium roads we had been on earlier that morning, Paonia seemed like an overpopulated cesspool (which is obviously a biased opinion based on our experiences that day).  We opted to each lunch at a small pizza joint on the main drag and then continue our journey to Crested Butte, Colorado.

After lunch, we continued east towards Marble Pass., turning southeast onto a small road long before the summit.  This road, which is only open during the summer months, starts out pavement and eventually turns to maintained dirt, as it passes over Kebler Pass (9,980 ft) on its way to Crested, Butte.  It was quite refreshing to get away from the stench of the outhouses and the hordes of people at the rally, and get back into the high country.  Granted this road isn't necessarily remote, but it is dirt, which by definition keeps 80% of the population away due to the fact that their new SUVs have only four inches of ground clearance, and God forbid they might actually get a rock chip on their shiny "4x4"- but that is another very opinioned story.

The scenery just kept getting better and better as we neared the top of the pass.  We only saw about three other

Peak on Kebler Pass between Paonia and Crested Butte, Colorado

 vehicles, and no motorcycles, which was surprising being that we were only about 20 miles from the rally.  Soon we arrived in Crested Butte, which is an awesome town in the summer.  I had been there a few times in the winter as well, which is a totally different scene when the town is overrun by skiers.  In summer, the only people there are the ones who live there, or go to be there when the skiers aren't.  In either case, it is a much more pleasant crowd.  We stayed in a hotel right at the base of the ski mountain.  The desk clerk let me park my GS in the fire lane beneath the entryway awning, which makes this a six-star hotel in my book.  That night we took a free shuttle into the older (original) downtown area and had an excellent dinner.

The next morning we rode south out of Crested Butte on Highway 135 towards Gunnison and Highway 50.  These 

Blue Mesa Reservoir

are all quaint two lane roads that pass through incredible scenery.  At Gunnison, we headed west and quickly came upon the Blue Mesa Reservoir.  The recent drought had definitely taken its toll on the reservoir, but it was beautiful all the same.  Highway 50 started to lend itself more to motorcycles at this point as well, as it started to twist and turn through canyons and climb over a few small passes.

In Montrose, Colorado, I had planned to take "Highway 90" west to Naturita.  Finding this highway seemed to be a little bit of a challenge, mainly because I broke the golden rule of never asking for directions, and asked a local for directions.  I ended up going in a big loop through the farm lands west of Montrose.  Finally I placed a waypoint in my GPS that was near the road I was looking for and the pieced together several roads that went in that general direction.   

Descending the Uncompahgre Plateau

Finally reaching/ finding Highway 90, which is actually more of a forest service road than a highway, we headed west to Naturita.  This road ranged from firm dirt to deep/ loose gravel, but was overall very easy to ride - even riding two-up.  The road crosses the Uncompahgre Plateau, and thus has some spectacular scenery and ample camping spots.  At Naturita, we hit pavement once more and headed north, back through Moab, and then on to Salt Lake City.

There is obviously some incredible country and some great motorcycle riding in this area, but unfortunately I'm finally finishing this description 3-years after having ridden this tour, so you'll just have to wait until I ride down to this area again to get a detailed description - or better yet, ride down there yourself!

Overall this was an awesome ride that I definitely plan on doing again, and would highly recommend to anyone with a dual sport motorcycle.

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