After sadly dropping Alice off at the train station, Bill (our amazing warm showers host) and I rode together for a few miles swapping stories. Bill has done a ton of touring, and may be the most BikeBum of them all because he will often plan his route as he rides!
Bill gave me a great tip on a route through forest roads to avoid the highway – he even rode the first ten miles with me! The ride was steep, but beautiful the whole way. In fact, when I reached the top, I decided it was so nice – and I knew the end of the mountains was coming soon – I decided to pitch my tent early and just spent the whole day enjoying the meadows and watching the weather change.
I made it to the closest campsite to the final pass pretty early, and had enough time to: catch a movie (a quiet place: day 1 – so so plot, but great acting), replace my deteriorating bike shorts at the pearl izumi outlet, fix the leaks in my air mattress, and get in a quick swim/rinse before making dinner and going to bed
The next morning I met a guy doing gravel rides in the area – he’s connecting them all by taking buses! He said he got a bus from Denver to Frisco for like 15 bucks! Also, he lived in Key West, and had worked on the sail boats at the boy scout high adventure base like I had taken when I was in high school!
From Silverthorne to Breckenridge, there is about 20 miles of amazing bike path – beautiful!
Unfortunately, the bike path ends and dumps you onto a pretty unfriendly highway with little to no shoulder and lots of RVs and gravel/dump trucks all the way up to Hoosier pass – it got better as I approached the top, but the beginning was unpleasant to say the least.
A quick note about riding in Colorado: this is a beautiful state with some top-notch opportunities for unforgettable riding and great people, but wow do these highways suck! There is often little to no shoulder, and a ton of traffic – including a huge amount of freight traffic on these tiny backroad highways. What’s worse, the drivers are insane. It’s one thing for me to feel like I’m in danger from a vehicle passing too close, but I have witnessed many times when a driver could not be bothered to wait ten to twenty seconds for a safe opportunity to pass, and instead pulled into the opposing lane and literally ran oncoming vehicles off the road – when after that car the road was clear for half a mile! It’s like their cars have high-voltage electroshock hooked up to their brake pedals. But, whaddyagonnado…
Summiting Hoosier pass – 11,539 feet – was fun. I definitely felt the elevation and was huffing and puffing at the end. The descent was a great rocket-ride too!
I camped behind the bar in Hartsel, where I met a guy named Ed who was riding westbound on an ebike. We spent the whole night swapping stories and yammering about this and that – super cool guy! (To my dismay, I was too early for the Hartsel rendezvous that Mike and I visited in 2004)
The next day I dropped around 4000 feet into canyon City. I had planned to keep going, but I ordered some prescriptions to the pharmacy here (one of the last Walgreens I’ll see for at least a week), but although they were filled in time, it closed early for some unexpected reason. It was hot, i was tired, and there were no obvious camping options, so I checked into a cheap motel, did some laundry, and spent the day chilling out in the A/C.
Bike path into TabernashRiding with Bill and Alice to the AmtrakAlice is the best! We shall ride again!Thanks for the escort Bill!Beautiful meadows aboundMy sweet Rocky Mountain paradiseLounging with my licorice stick – and no one to hear my squeaks!Bike path out of Frisco Victory croissant!Ed and his rig behind the Hartsel barNon-wild buffalo
