Colorado calling

‘Over there!’ Harrison said excitedly, as he pointed to a large clearing in the otherwise all-consuming woodland that had been guarding the narrow road from the mountains that loomed behind.

Only a few kilometres earlier, during our impromptu lunch stop, a man dressed in full camouflage and with a tanned, weathered face and unkempt beard had unexpectedly approached us with a word of warning, before quietly disappearing into the trees.

‘There is,’ he said, ‘a moose in the area, and it will cause a great deal of damage to your motorhome if you hit it.’

Reading between the lines, we assumed that he meant we should drive carefully. But given the way the road had been snaking through the forest as it made its way to the foot of one of America’s most notorious mountain passes, that is exactly what we’d been doing.

Now our senses were heightened even more, especially Kim’s and Harrison’s, who only had eyes for one thing: the moose. Mine, however, were firmly locked on a road that left no room for error.

‘Before this trip, I had never been above 3000m on my bike, so the prospect of riding to an altitude of over 4300m was, in all honesty, fairly daunting’

American adventure

Suddenly every shadow, every dark rock in the distance took on the shape of the animal we had hoped would emerge from the undergrowth.

There had already been several false alarms, so when Harrison once again claimed to have seen something, our initial reaction was one of scepticism. His words came just as we rounded another tight corner and the thicket of trees gave way to a