CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
240 km from Cortez to Blanding, about 4 h 30 of riding. The stops in between: Mesa Verde and Hovenweep. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 46 km this is Trail of the Ancients, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Cortez lies in the far south-west corner of Colorado, on a high, dry plateau between the La Plata Mountains and the red rock country of Utah, and it is the gateway to some of the most important archaeological landscape in North America. Mesa Verde National Park, about ten miles east, preserves cliff dwellings built into rock alcoves by Ancestral Puebloan people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with stone towers, kivas and rooms stacked in sandstone overhangs. The people who lived there left around 1300, and their descendants today include the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico and Arizona.
Read the complete Cortez Colorado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cortez Colorado is where the day begins. Next is Mesa Verde.
The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde sit in the folds of a high green tableland south of Cortez, and the first thing that surprises you is how far you still have to ride after the entrance gate. The park road climbs onto the mesa top and then keeps going for a good while, twisting along the canyon rims at a speed limit that will feel slow and turns out to be right, because the edges are close and the deer are careless. Treat it as a gentle, scenic hour rather than a spirited one.
Read the complete Mesa Verde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mesa Verde comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hovenweep.
Hovenweep is the kind of place you reach by deciding to, because nothing else lies along the way. The monument sits on the Utah and Colorado line out on a quiet, dry plateau, and the nearest settlement of any size on the Colorado side is Towaoc, thirty-odd kilometres off. The road in rolls over sage flats and slickrock edges with almost no traffic, and in the late afternoon you can ride for a long time without seeing another vehicle. That emptiness is half the charm and also the warning: fill up before you leave Cortez or Blanding, carry water, and assume your phone will have given up.
Read the complete Hovenweep write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 166 km into the recorded legs you reach Hovenweep. Next is Blanding.
Blanding is a quiet town of under four thousand people in the far southeast of Utah, at around 1,800 metres, and it serves as a gateway to some of the least visited and most extraordinary country in the American Southwest. It was settled by Mormon pioneers in the early twentieth century, and it still feels like a ranching and farming town, with wide streets, neat houses and mesas on the horizon. For travellers, it is a base for exploring the canyons and ruins of Cedar Mesa and the Bears Ears region.
Read the complete Blanding write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Blanding closes the day.
Cortez Colorado → Mesa Verde is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mesa Verde → Hovenweep is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hovenweep → Blanding is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.