Day 2: Into the Rockies

We stayed the previous night at the Amarillo KOA, which was a first for both of us. I don't know if all KOAs are the same, but this was a pretty fancy place to stay as far as campgrounds go. Although we didn't take advantage of them, there was a pool and laundry facilities, and the restrooms were the cleanest public ones I've ever used.

After riding over 500mi the previous day and still being in Texas, we were looking forward to finally hitting up some other states. We crossed the border into New Mexico around noon and made it into Colorado about 3 hours later.

Here's a photo of Paul and I with our bikes and the Rockies in the background. Funny note: since my bike sits pretty straight up and the side of the road was fairly tilted, I couldn't get off my bike without it falling over.


We had been planning on camping in the Arapaho National Forest, but when we called in the afternoon we got a recording that said all the camp sites were not yet open for the season - oops! We called around and checked maps and finally found a campground in Estes Park, CO. It was further than we had planned on going that day, but we decided to push on. In retrospect this was a pretty bad idea. We were driving through twisty mountain roads in the pitch black, exhausted at the end of a very long day. Unfortunately there was nowhere to pull over or stay, so we had to push on until we finally made the campground. Did I mention it was raining a bit and extremely cold? We also decided to forgo dinner and just hit the sack as soon as possible. Despite being exhausted, I don't think Paul or I slept very well due to the cold, but it was good to get off the bikes for a while.