Comanche Crossing sounds like a made-up name, but it was real, and it was here, near Strasburg, that the railroad changed Colorado. In the summer of 1870 the last spike of the Kansas Pacific Railway was driven at this spot on the plains, joining the line from Kansas City to Denver, and the event ended the age of stagecoaches and wagon trains across the high plains. A small museum in Strasburg, in an old railway depot, keeps the story, and the long freight trains still rumble along the line.
The land is classic shortgrass prairie, a rolling plain of blue grama and buffalo grass that stretches to a horizon so wide that the curve of the earth seems visible. There are few trees, only the occasional cottonwood along a dry creek, and windmills, stock tanks and fence lines dot the fields. Pronghorn watch from a distance, and coyotes cross the roads at dawn and dusk. Skies here are huge, and thunderstorms build into towering anvils on summer afternoons, with lightning that can be seen for fifty kilometres.
The riding is simple but atmospheric. Roads run straight for miles, with long, gentle rises and falls, and there is little traffic apart from farm trucks. Interstate 70 carries the through traffic, so the back roads are quiet. Wind is the main hazard, blowing hard from the west or south, and gusts can push a bike a lane's width. Wheat harvest in July brings slow combine harvesters and dust. In winter the plains are subject to blizzards, which close roads and strand travellers.
Services are thin. Strasburg, with about two and a half thousand people, has fuel, a couple of cafes and a supermarket, and Byers, a smaller place along the highway, has less. Beyond that, there is little, and the nearest big town is Aurora, to the west. Top up the tank whenever you see a station, and carry water, because the nearest help may be a long way off.
Mobile coverage is generally good along the interstate and patchy elsewhere. Evening is a fine time to ride here, with the low sun turning the grass amber and the sky filling with colour. A dark night away from towns offers stars in extraordinary numbers.