In the following days you can follow here my recent trip with my parents to the Wild West and California.
In medias res;
After a nearly 10 hours long flight from London, arrived in Denver at 6 p.m. local time and had still 100 miles of driving ahead to arrive in Colorado Springs, where we spent the first night.
Flying over Greenland
I was quite excited about the rental car, since I booked a Dodge Charger. Just before the departure I ve got a mail telling me I am not entitled for that category but for some Japanese brand. After some discussions I was offered a Dodge Challenger with 300 horses under the hood...:) Just fine to climb the mountains of the Rockies and hit the straight roads of New Mexico.
Dodge Challenger with 300 horses
It is always nice to have a road trip in the US, specially with an American car... This is going to be my 7th stay in the US since 1998 and drove already approx. 25000km. Still there is a lot more to see, without substantial repetition. It is just a great country...
As I said we spent night in Colorado Springs and in the early morning we were set to climb one of the most famous mountain of the States. Climbing it of course by car... Pikes Peak is 4304 meters high and you can drive all the way up to the peak. Seems a lot, but you start from 2000m already, since the city itself is situated that high. Still it is a nice challenge both for humans and cars.
It is home to one of the most challenging rally s of its kind. They call it "The race to the clouds". The track measures 12.42 miles (19.99 km) over 156 turns, climbing
4,720 ft (1,440 m) from the start at Mile 7 on Pikes Peak Highway, to
the finish at 14,110 ft, on grades averaging 7%. The best time(8min.22sec.) that far was made by Sebastian Loeb in a Red Bull Peugot specially built for the thin air you have on the peak.
My time was somewhere around 20-25 minutes. See the videos of on-board cameras next
A Szaip in a Dodge Challenger:
Since it was late spring only we could not drive all the way up, because of the snow conditions. Still it was a nice and scenic drive.
Just 100 miles further south, we wanted to visit on the same day the The Royal Gorge Bridge. As I was preparing the trip it found it quite promising based on the internet. It is an impressive 956 Feet high from the Bridge deck to the Arkansas River below, thereby being the highest suspension bridge in North America. By chance there was a Royal Gorge Fire on June 11, 2013 and you can not go closer than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment