A park ranger had suggested visiting Craters of the Moon NP in Idaho as she felt it was quite special. She was right. It has a range of volcanic features all within a small area: cinder cones, lava tubes (caves), lava fields and so on. I was reminded of our trip to Hawaii. An early start had breakfast down the hatch plus a five mile hike all before 9am.  Only one other hiker, so peaceful. 

Close by Arco is the Idaho National Laboratory, a bug chunk of land devoted to nuclear research.  No mushroom clouds, but reactor design and testing. The world's first nuclear power plant EBR-1 (1951) is open to the public. Very exciting if you're the nerdy physics student type. The tour was excellent. We got to stand on top of the reactor core while our presentor showed what fuel rods are and explained how the reaction was controlled. 

This little cutie loved playing Homer Simpson with all the buttons and switches in the control room. 

Two tour participants stood out by not speaking funny; these mullet wearing youngsters were from Perth.  They were on a month long bike trip, riding new BMW GSs. I guess they could be in the mining game, based on their questions and later when we chatted bike touring, their perceptions of value. Where I seek public land camping ($zero/night), they thought $200/night hotels were reasonable. Funny blokes though, with some great stories, e.g. blasting down a Los Angeles highway at 100mph, sharing a joint with a stoned local lady driver they'd met playing pool in a dive bar.

Many areas have oil and gas wells dotted around, reminiscent of the gas well heads up the Strzelecki Track near Moomba in outback South Australia. And rightly so - some of us need to charge around the countryside, burning all those dirty hydrocarbons. 

I became conscious of days slipping away quickly, with a long held commitment to attend the Pikes Peak hillclimb coming up soon. This was a bit of a bummer, just taking the edge off that feeling of freedom that comes with an open ended journey. I found myself riding between points of interest without properly soaking them up. So I blew off a couple of planned destinations, sorry Yellowstone I'll catch you another time.

All the same, those brief visits were still entertaining. For example, Fossil Butte NP with it's fossils on display in the visitors center was great. Even the dunny had a wall of fossilised scat. Nice humour.

To put back some fun, I took in a section of the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route.  The BDRs are a set of touring routes for the off road adventure motorcycle fraternity.  What a blast from Clear Lake to Silverton, over Cinnamon Pass. The track got trickier as it rose towards the 12,600' pass, becoming full of lumpy rocks, with snow melt running across, mixed with tight switchbacks. Good technical riding, challenging on a fully loaded bush pig. All went well until I dropped the bastard. Lesson (re)learnt: keep the momentum up, even going downhill on gnarly ground. 

Once back at "home" in Durango, the bike got some love. A service, replace a dodgy ignition switch with an inexpensive ebay knock off, put a solid box on the back for stuff I want to access frequently, blah blah. 

Come time to set off for Pikes Peak, it wouldn't start. Hmmm ... wonder if it's that ignition switch? Unload luggage, remove side covers, seat, tank, plug ... and sure enough, no spark. Seems it was not only inexpensive, but cheap as well. So more bits off, revert to original Suzuki part. At least it was a familiar job.

Warning: Excessive motorsport raving coming.

Reader discretion advised.

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Wow.

Mind blowing. 

This was the 102nd running, having started in 1916. It ascends 4,720' over the 12.42 mile length with 156 turns. The finish is at 14,115'. It's one of those "bucket list" events for the car nut. I've worn out YouTube watching Climb Dance. If you haven't seen that film, do yourself a favour and watch it.

I chose to spectate at the start area, as being up the hill would mean camping overnight and staying all of raceday at that altitude, regardless of weather.  Starts snowing? Bad luck, get back in your tent. Also, the start area allows punters to get up close to the cars and teams. As always with motorsports, folk love to crap on about their machines. 

The obvious favourite for this little black duck was Duncan Cowper's Dax Rush - an English Lotus 7 replica - powered by a turbocharged Hayabusa motor. He did it in 9:57 last year (see that run here), as an awfully quick rookie. I watched him go through turn two, a somewhat tight left hander following a flat out sweeper. The fatter, non aero cars (think new Mustang, Nissan GTR) tended to back off for T2. Not so our little clubman. Foot down. He placed 9th out 53 entrants this year.  Impressive. 

The winner was Romain Dumas in an electric Ford F150. Well, that was the description in the entry list, even though it wasn't anything like a normal F150. When I took this shot, the car had shut down unexpectedly; he had to reboot it and was stationary for about twenty seconds, plus slowing beforehand and having to regain speed.  Despite this, he still took FTD by 7 seconds. See his run here.

The start procedure fascinates me.  The car sits in the pits, its tyres covered in warmers. It gets cranked up, the team push it to a staging area, they wait a few minutes, it's pushed to the starting area, the starter shakes the driver's hand, they wait again, he signals one minute, he waves the green flags. By now with cooler tyres, the car screams away around the bend, passing the timing start point a hundred odd metres down the road.  Officials and spectators (behind a flimsy fence) line the start area. I'm surprised no one power oversteers on not-yet-fully-hot tyres then goes charging into the crowd.

Each driver gets ONE run. Muck it up? Bust a vital part? There's always next year.

This car was being driven by some church minister. He sure seems to have a knack for self promotion, billing himself as the "fastest pastor". He also has a way of projecting his voice that's unmissable. 

Our clubman driving bloke Duncan is a builder by trade back in England.  As a piss take, he calls himself the "fastest plasterer". It's likely lost on the Septics - they call plaster "drywall".

Fellow spectators were in good moods, so it was easy finding folk to chat with. Many viewed from deckchairs in the forest up to turn two, keeping themselves well hydrated on a hot, sunny day. 

Not everyone was excited.

This chap caught lots of attention with his 1943 box camera. It takes sheet film, each shot needing him to slide the sheet frame into the camera, then pull a tab to remove a covering piece, before finally pressing a button via a cable to take the photo.  Seeing him trying to capture a racecar at full noise going under the start banner was hilarious. 

Come the next morning, the mountain was reopened for the general public. If you are ever anywhere close by, you MUST go up it. It was a blast. Probably the single best thing I've done so far. Okay, I'd built up the antici...pation for some time, had watched videos of it for years, was on hallowed ground, had absorbed the buzz on raceday and my dad had driven up last year while at a Viper club  get together. 

Passing the timing start, I checked the time. 8:40am.

At the top, checked again. 9:01am

I reckon 21 minutes is okay for an old banger, particularly as the racecars didn't need to pass civilians doing a walking pace on turns and 20mph in between. Be assured that I wasn't racing - after all, motorcycles have been excluded from the hillclimb since 2019 after a fatality. 

It must be crazy driving full blast up this road. It has few guard rails. On many stretches there is nothing next to the tar. No kerb. No armco. No shoulder. Just oblivion, a squillion feet till the first tree to catch you.

The tar also has whoopsies. Not tight corrugations, but long wavy sections. It must play havoc on the cars with low ground clearance and aero.

There are also the visuals. My golly, they're stunning. Once at the top, one can walk around a perimeter path and gaze at the remnant snow, craggy rocks and Colorado Springs way down on the flat. 

Descending was fun, where surprise surprise our civilian drivers were going even slower. A gaggle of performance cars were in a procession following a van. Look through upcoming bends, no one arriving soon, so twist the wrist and overtake all in one fell swoop. Love my bike.

There is a mandatory stop part way, where an official checks brake temperatures with an infrared gun. Too hot? Wait here a moment please sir.

Recommendation: Get to the entry booth at 7:30am when it opens. By noon, there was a traffic jam of tourists that was literally a mile long, waiting to pay their $15.

So ah yes, Pikes Peak was alright.