Brian planned an awesome motorcycle trip over Labor Day weekend that took us south along the backside of the front range in Colorado, over to Four Corners, and back north through Eastern Colorado.

We ended up riding 1,348 miles across 5 states – visiting 3 national parks – and happily the weather cooperated the majority of our trip!

One of the easier riding days was our first day – we rode from Cheyenne, Wyoming, through Rocky Mountain National Park to Kremmling, Colorado. We’ve been in and through the park before, stopping to hike in some of the areas near Estes Park, but this was my first time going through the park on my motorcycle.

We reserved our entrance times in advance and had no issues getting into the park. It wasn’t that busy, and we had a smooth ride up to the Alpine Visitor Center, stopping at a couple overlooks along the way.

We decided to get out of our gear and hike the short trail from the visitor center to the highest point at 12,005 feet. A couple different guys at the visitor center and along the trail took our picture, which rarely happens – we usually exclusively end up with a bunch of selfies!

We had turned around at the visitor center on our previous trip so I enjoyed riding the rest of the way through the national park to Kremmling, where Brian booked us a stay in the John Denver room of the Hotel Eastin.

Usually we have quite a few wildlife sightings near the park but this trip we only saw one deer near the entrance.

The major wildlife encounter occurred as we were driving to the park – we were winding along some back roads near Horsetooth Reservoir and a large wild turkey darted out in front of my bike. I was yelling and slamming on the brakes – the turkey was sprinting across the road, neck stretched way out ahead of its body – and Brian was laughing hysterically over our helmet speakers. It’s only funny now since I didn’t actually hit it, but that turkey looked like something out of Loony Tunes. After that experience, I was actually fine not seeing any other wildlife that day!

It was a great first day of our trip, and I’m glad I finally got to experience this national park via motorcycle.