Monday August 4, 2014 Amarillo to Cheyenne

Today’s travels would take me through four states.  I started out at Amarillo, Texas with a goal of reaching Denver, Colorado by the end of the day.  After having breakfast I headed out.  Even though I got up earlier, I only made it on the road at about 9:45 AM.  Most of the travel was on US highways and not the Interstates, although I ended up on I25 toward the end.
The scenery was still fairly green, but getting drier as the day progressed.  Although mostly flat, there was a mountain pass going through Trinidad, Colorado (I think).  Although many of the roads were divided highways, there was one state road that was just two lanes with just the yellow dotted line between them.  This being Texas, the speed limit was 75 mph.
Long story short, I did make it to Denver.  I was in good enough shape that I decided to press on to Cheyenne, Wyoming (about and additional 100 miles).  The I25 goes right through Denver and in late afternoon traffic was pretty bad.  Shortly after deciding to continue, traffic slowed to a crawl.  It turns out that a car had stalled in the middle of one of the lanes.  Shortly after that another stalled car was off the side of the road, again causing a slowdown.  It ate up about 30 miles to get clear of the Denver traffic.  The rest of the way was uneventful and I made it to the I25/I80 intersection and pulled off to look for a hotel.  Since I didn’t have any reservations this turned out to be harder than I expected.  The first was only taking reserved guests.  The second that I tried only had suites available.  Even though I tried for something different, I ended up with Motel 6 as usual.  After I was in a room, I heard in the news that bikers were all over the area because of the rally in Sturges, ND which started today.  Hilarious.