Rovereto - Trentino-Alto Adige - May 17

Today the goal was to head south a bit, so I could head into Brescia early Sunday morning. I mapped out a ride stringing together paths through the farm lands or Suedtirol, a couple of passes and then coming down off the high plateaus into Rovereto. It was a nice easy pace. After the Dolomites, what passes for a pass in that area are mere bumps (1300m). After a really nice road with sweeping turns through the forest, my progress was summarily arrested. Whoops -

So I was saying earlier about the advisory road closings. This was not one of them. The boulder in the middle of the road signifies they mean business - none shall pass. For a pass to be re-opened in the spring, it's not enough that the snow melts. The roadways take a serious beating. Trees, rocks, boulders, avalanches come down. Often the guard rail is bent or crushed, sometimes the edge of the road is missing in action, sometimes a bit more. I'm encountering lots of construction, as well as tree removal. It's a big job to get the roads back into shape, but they're used to it and they do it well. Overall, the road conditions are excellent. Much better than say NY. There were a couple of spots on one pass in the Dolomites where the asphalt was summarily missing and there were a few heaves several inches high. On my big Enduro, that didn't bother me much, but I shudder to think what a Ferrari suspension would have to say about that. Speaking of the bike, it really is built for this stuff. Comfy, handles well, oodles of torque for all those tight bends - the front wheel comes up very nicely when you grab a handful of throttle in first or second.
Anyway, time to reroute. There was a pretty stream next to the closed road and since I was stopped anyway, I snapped a pic.

The thing with closed pass roads is that there usually is not a quick way around. So this put me on regular roads for an hour until I could reconnect to the second half of my ride. Towards the end I found a really fantastic motorcycling road. Clearly not a secret - tons of bikes around. About a 10km stretch of open sweepers, good road surface, little traffic. Got to do it both ways, since the GPS decided that was the most efficient way to the Hotel. Fine by me.
Rovereto is a medium sized town, picturesque, like they all seem to be. Much lower than I had been in the last few days. The town is at 200m. The night before, at close to 1100m, I walked to dinner in my winter jacket, now I was out in a t-shirt. Used Yelp to find a nice Osteria and had a good meal, which was way too big. Grilled polenta squares with snails, a white wine soup with cinnamon flavored croutons (awesome) and potatoes with meatballs - and strudel at the end. No more menu complettos!!!

GPS:
Rovereto - 45.8833, 11.05