Going high in the Rocky Mountains

We reached more than 12,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains National Park on Friday (that's more than 4,000 meters for you metric people...). From the low of -300 feet in Death Valley (-100 meters), that definitively brought our trip to new heights !!! It was cold up there with temperatures near 35 fahrenheit. A hailstorm did not make things any better and the road through Miner Pass is hard and twisty (not as much as Ebbetts Pass near Tahoe, but still). The wind was doing its best to blow the front wheel off the road but we ploughed on and made it. There was no snow except on the peaks above 14,000 feet. Nowhere in Europe, we could ride as high through the mountains and it was quite an experience.
An hour later, it was 70 degrees down in the valley in Estes Park. We then headed south through Colorado and the traffic was heavy (where do all these people go ?) and drivers not exactly bikers friendly contrary to what we have seen along the Pacific coast and in Montana and Washington.
We rode past Black Hawk, a resort 40 miles west of Denver where real estate developers are doing their best to create a Las Vegas of the mountains complete with casinos, fancy hotels and posh restaurants. It's drawing quite a crowd but its fakeness felt a little weird after the loneliness, barreness and majesty of the Rocky Mountains.
We ended up riding into the night ("drive by night" with Humphrey Bogart, is one of my favourite movies) looking for an evasive campsite in Shawnee. The flashing signs along the road warning about the presence of wildlife did not make us feel any safer. We ended up tailgating cars to benefit from their headlights all the way to Fairplay where we finally checked in a motel. Ah, the joys of riding motorcycles are uncomparable !!!