Today will be the second-longest ride of our 2018 Rocky Mountain Rib Rally: 283 miles, and nearly six hours in the saddle.

We begin by riding west out of Durango on US-160, through Hesperus and then Mancos, a Montezuma County town known as the “Gateway to Mesa Verde.” Mesa Verde, of course, is the National Park that protects the largest cliff dwellings in North America, more than 600 of them. It’s the largest archaeological preserve in the US.

In Mancos, we turn west on CO-184 for 17 miles, then veer east in the town of Dolores on CO-145. Dolores is Spanish for “sorrows,” and is named for the river on which it sits. It’s original name: “Rio de Nuestra Senora de las Dolores” (The River of Our Lady of Sorrows).

We are riding the San Juan Skyway Scenic Byway, which will take us to the ski resort town of Telluride, and on to Ouray County’s only stoplight in Ridgway (yet again), before turning home toward Carbondale.

From Dolores, we’ll continue on CO-145 for 68 miles until we arrive in Telluride, a former silver mining camp, founded in 1879 as “Columbia.” But due to confusion with a California town of the same name, it was renamed Telluride in 1887, for the gold telluride minerals found in other parts of Colorado.  A telluride mineral has the telluride anion as a main component.

Mining was Telluride’s only industry until 1972, when the first ski lift was installed. Telluride has been rated the #1 ski resort in North America by Conde Nast readers several times in recent years. It’s considered a playground for the rich and famous. Just like Aspen. Only slightly less rich and a hair less famous.

In Telluride, it’s time for the annual Bluegrass Festival, which has taken over the town for the weekend. Despite the huge crowds, we’re able to find parking spots for the Harleys. We even managed to take in some bluegrass music on a small stage in town.

Telluride’s main street has some world-class shopping and eating, and flower boxes in the middle of the street.

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We leave Telluride and head west on CO-145 toward Placerville. Placerville is named after the placer gold mines found along the San Miguel River and Leopard Creek. By 1919, there were at least five mines in Placerville that produced 30 percent of the world’s vanadium. Placerville mines produced more than three million pounds of vanadium through 1940.

Vanadium’s symbol is V and Atomic Number is 23. Because of its beautiful colors, vanadium was named for the Norse goddess of beauty, Vanadis. According to WebMD, vanadium has medical uses that include treatment for pre-diabetes and diabetes, low blood sugar, high cholesterol, and even syphilis.

As this is not a medical blog, we’ll move on and continue our journey home. In Placerville, we turn east on CO-62, eventually coming to a stop at Ouray County’s only stoplight, in Ridgway. Again.

In Ridgway, we turn north, and ride some familiar territory – through Olathe, Delta, Hotchkiss and up the mountain to McClure Pass.

By now, you know the rest. Down the steep grade toward Redstone, along the Crystal River, and home to Carbondale, where we’ll have some locally smoked ribs tonight.

We’re eating at The Pig, an apt name for a BBQ restaurant. Hoping it’s good, cuz the place is just 2.1 miles from our front door, and we could walk there, or ride our bikes.

The Pig is our fifth rib restaurant in five days. Very disappointingly, ribs at The Pig were not very good. Nothing at all special. It’s disappointing because great ribs are always the goal, but especially so when the restaurant is a hop, skip and a jump from our home. Despite the mediocre ribs, the sides were very good. Maybe next time we’ll just go and have sides, and skip the main meal?

So, after our fifth rib meal in five days, here are the updated standings: #1, Slow Groovin (Marble); #2, Serious Texas BBQ (Durango); #3, Smoke Modern BBQ (Basalt); #4, Rib City Grill (Grand Junction); #5, The Pig (Carbondale).

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Day Five Summary: Hanging with the rich and famous in Telluride, fun with vanadium.

Click here to see today’s complete route from Durango to Carbondale.

Glad you’re along for the ride.

Vroom, vroom.

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Today’s Colorado Fun Fact: The 13th step of the State Capitol Building in Denver is exactly 5,280 feet above sea level, lending the city its nickname of “the Mile High City.” The building’s interiors used up the planet’s entire known reserves of rose marble (different from the Yule Marble that’s quarried near Marble).

Today’s Rocky Mountain Rib Rally Fun Fact: The Dolores River, which we rode along today, is a 241-mile-long tributary of the Colorado River. Dolores is also the name of the 1982 VW Westfalia Vanagon that our construction superintendent, George Nettles, drove from Colorado to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina — at the southern tip of South America. It’s the southernmost city in the world. The journey took George and his wife Rachel two years to complete. Turns out that Dolores, the van, was not named for the Dolores River; the van was named instead for the mystery woman Jerry Seinfeld was dating in his comedy show in the 1990s. Seinfeld couldn’t remember her name; he just knew it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy. For Seinfeld fanatics: it was the 20^thepisode of season four, airing on March 18, 1993.

Today’s Colorado Food Fun Fact:Colorado breweries produce more barrels of beer annually than any other state. Much of that could be due to the Coors brewery in Golden, said to be the world’s largest brewery. The Coors brewery in Golden has a capacity of 22 million barrels of beer. That’s roughly the equivalent of seven billion beers a year. You do the math.