We woke up pretty early and were excited because we knew we were going to have blueberry pancakes, and boy were they yummy! We each took a nice hot shower and prepared ourselves to go back out in the cold. Once we were all packed and had all our warm gear on, we said our goodbyes to Eddy and got on our way again. It was so nice and warm inside that we could have easily stayed there for another day, but we knew we had to keep moving. After about 7 miles of riding, we met a cyclist who was out for a ride. He was nice enough to take our picture with the mountains in the background for us since my tripod was broken. I had emailed the gorillapod company yesterday about the broken tripod since I knew there was some kind of warranty on it, and they had already emailed me back. It was great because the guy who e-mailed had done a tour in the 70s and understood how we would need to have a replacement mailed general delivery somewhere along our route. I was so relieved that a new one would be on it's way soon. When we made it to the town of Granby there was a couple walking down the sidewalk who stopped to ask us about our trip. It is always so nice when people are interested in what we are doing! They offered for us to stay at their place, which we would have gladly taken the offer had we not just started and only had 11 miles. As we continued on there was a nice picnic area not to far out of Granby. Although it was a little early miles wise to stop to eat we opted to stop because we didn't know if there would be anything like this in the next town. After cooking up some of the Ramen that Eddy had bought for us at the store yesterday we continued on. Although it was chilly, it was sunny, so the ride wasn't bad. For most of the ride we were riding up and down rolling hills. In Hot Sulphur Springs, we stopped at the visitor center/museum to use the bathroom and Joe found out that there are 56 mountains over 14,000 feet just in CO, which I thought was pretty neat! After riding in a bit of a head wind for most of the day, we made it to Kremmling. We filled up on water at Subway and then decided to eat before leaving town. It was still pretty chilly outside which made us not want to cook, so we ended up having some chicken and potato logs from the deli at the grocery store. It sure was tasty! Since we knew we had a lot of climbing to do tomorrow, we decided to go a little further. About 6 miles out of town there was a recreation area/campground, which worked out perfect because like it SD, there was fencing all along the road again, which would have made it hard to camp. We found a nice camp spot that had fence that helped block the wind. There were bathrooms with the vault toilets again and working electric, just no running water because it might have been too early in the season. Once the tent was all set up we enjoyed the cookies that were given to us at subway yesterday. Since we already had dinner we went to bed pretty early, probably around 8. I fell right asleep because I was still feeling really tired, probably from the elevation. We rode 47.40 miles today and were still at an elevation of around 7,300 feet.
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It rained for a good portion of the night, and we were kind of excited to wake up to it snowing, since that was the first snow we had seen since before we left on our trip. We made some oatmeal and ate in our tent to stay warmer. Since it had rained quite a bit last night, there were a couple puddles in the corners of our tent, which also happened to be where Joey's cycling shoes were. They were soaked. So, after we got everything packed as quickly as we could, since it was pretty chilly, we went to the little bathroom they had and got out our stove to try to dry, or at least warm up his shoes. Luckily it worked pretty well, at least his shoes weren't super soppy with water anymore. I don't know what we would have done if it didn't work because his feet would have completely froze. We were on the road at 9:35 and almost immediately began to climb Berthoud Pass. Even though we were already at 10,000 feet, we still had to stop frequently for breaks because of the elevation. I was pretty dizzy again today and Joe had a slight head ache, but the main thing we noticed is that it was really hard to push ourselves to "go fast." At almost every switchback we stopped for a quick break, climbing at this elevation is definitely exhausting, even if the grade wasn't as steep as other mountains we had climbed. It was snowing almost the entire time we were climbing the pass, some spots more than others. I've decided that I didn't mind riding in the snow since I could still take my camera out to get pictures without ruining it, wouldn't have been able to do that if it was raining. Even though it was cold enough for snow, we were both very comfortable while we were climbing, not too hot and not too cold. We finally made it to the top of the pass about an hour and 45 minutes later (we definitely wouldn't have made it to Winter Park last night!). At the top it was snowing even harder. There was a hiking cabin building with vault bathrooms at the top so we had a chance to go inside and get out of the weather for a little bit. We snacked on the rest of the cookies that we had and then ventured outside again to push our bikes through the snowbank to get a picture by the elevation/continental divide sign. This is the first time we've crossed the continental divide, but as we go on, we will cross it a bunch more times. The elevation that we climbed to at the pass was 11,307 feet, again, a new record for elevation for the trip. While I was getting ready to take the picture, on of the legs on my gorillapod (bendy tripod) snapped off, which could have been a result of the cold. This worried me because we use that at every state sign or anytime we need a picture together. Luckily there was a pile of snow on top of a rock that I could stick the tripod in to keep it from falling over. Once we had our picture we prepared for the scary part: the descent. Although we were warm on the way up we knew it would be a really cold ride down. To make matters worse, it was snowing harder on the other side of the mountain, some sections were even white outs. As we began the descent we could definitely feel the cold. Somehow my gloves had gotten a little wet while taking pictures so my fingers were really cold. Part way down the mountain we stopped and I was able to get my fingers warmed up. Both of our toes on the other hand had no chance since the roads were wet and therefore our shoes got wet too. By the time we made it through all of the switchbacks, our toes were numb. The rest of the ride into Winter Park was downhill, but we still weren't able to go that fast and had to peddle because of a fairly strong headwind. Although it took us almost 2 hours to get to the top, it only took about 45 minutes to get down the other side. When we rolled into Winter Park, we went straight to McDonald's to warm up. There were hand dryers in the bathrooms that were very helpful in getting our booties and shoes a little drier and warming up our toes. We hopped on the free wi-fi for a little bit before deciding that it was too cold to cook outside. We went across the street to Subway to get a late lunch. We were both so hungry that we decided to each get a full sub instead of our normal splitting one. Luckily it was really warm in Subway, even warmer that at McDonalds. We finally were warming up after the freezing descent. One of the sandwich artists was nice enough to give us a coffee cup so we have some coffee to warm up too. Our nice hot subs and the coffee definitely helped warm us up. Since there was internet at this Subway, we ended up being able to take the survey to get our free cookie too. When I went to redeem my free cookie, the man gave me 4 cookies so we would have "fuel for the road"! I was so excited! Before we left town, we stopped at a sporting goods store to get Joe a new pair of socks, because his had holes all the way through them, which wasn't helping him keep his feet warm. While there, the lady gave me a few toe warmer packets because they were expired and she couldn't sell them because of it. This was amazing because we used a packet of hand warmers that we already had for the ride today and it definitely saved our hands (and one of the packages was expired and they still worked great). Our next thing was to figure out where we were going to stay/camp tonight. While we were at McDonald's a man mentioned to us about a YMCA campground about 15 miles down the road while another lady mentioned there was also a hostel about 4 miles down the road. Another option was to possibly camp at Eddy's house. Before we left the campground back in Idaho Springs, Chris gave us Eddy's number in case we needed a place to stay when we got to Winter Park. We checked out the hostel because we hadn't been able to get in contact with Eddy yet, and it was just as expensive as a hotel. Luckily, we were able to get in contact with Eddy and found out that he lived about 8 miles outside of Winter Park in the direction we were going which was perfect! He was more than happy to accommodate us for the night. As we were riding towards his house, he came and found us and led us right to his house so we wouldn't get lost which was nice. When we arrived there was a nice warm fire place to sit next to which made my day. We even found out that we would get to sleep in a bed inside, not have to camp in his yard like we had thought. After doing a small load of laundry, we went with Eddy to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner and breakfast. When we got home, Eddy made us amazing cheeseburgers on the grill. Later we also got to have some ice cream! We went to bed pretty late, but time flies when you are having fun. We couldn't be more happy to be inside on a night like tonight and to have a warm comfy bed to sleep in. It was still snowing and we could hear the wind whistling outside. We rode 27.38 miles today. It is hard to get a high amount of miles done while in the mountains, of course we knew that was going to happen before we even got to the mountains.
For some reason we didn't wake up too good this morning. We didn't end up getting moving until around 7:30. After having some oatmeal we packed up and and then headed over to the main building to take a shower. The shower was so refreshing and definitely helped me wake up a little since I wasn't feeling to energized this morning. Before heading out of town, we stopped at the Post Office to mail some stuff home that we no longer needed, like all of the maps from the states we've already ridden through. When we were leaving Idaho Springs we saw a sign that said the elevation of the town was 7,650 ft, which is the highest we've ever camped. Not too far out of Idaho Springs we passed a few old gold mines which was pretty cool. After we'd ridden about 10 miles, we made it to the little town of Dumont where we stopped for a quick break. Joe also realized that his crank was really wiggly and so we went to Starbucks to find where the closest bike shop was since we knew the crank wouldn't last long the way it was. To our surprise we found out that there was one about a mile away. The bike shop was called A Culture of Speed and they were so helpful. Not only did they put new ball bearings in Joe's bike, but they fixed the jumping gears on my bike (apparently there were no ball bearings at all in one of the "pully wheels" on my derailer) which also stopped my gears from squeaking; and the fixed us up with all new brakes so we were set for the mountains. Santiago, the mechanic, was amazing. He also gave me some pointers on breaking, which is great because I do that a lot when I go downhill! Harry, the owner, was also super helpful because he suggested and explained how we might go about getting sponsors! We had a great time while we were waiting for our bikes to be spruced up, and there was even a really cute puppy named Uno to play with. A big thank you to the bike shop for giving us such a great deal! Also another big thanks goes to Jake Adams for the donation towards bicycle maintenance, it was SO helpful in getting our bikes equipped for more miles! After spending a couple hours at the bike shop, we headed towards Empire. It was amazing, riding my bike was almost like riding a new one. The gears were so smooth and there wasn't any drag like there was before. When we made it to Empire, we figured we should probably have lunch since it was already almost 3pm. There was a little bar in town that again had some tables out front, so we went in to ask if we could use their tables. While there, we saw some mountain goats on the top of the mountain behind the bar which was kind of funny because they were almost like statues because they barely moved. We decided to get a drink so that we felt better about using the tables and bathroom, and plus we were thirsty anyway. Joe got a beer and I got a soda, even though neither of those are great for keeping us hydrated, they were a nice treat. While we were making our mac and cheese it started to pour. We could see that it was snowing up on the top of the mountains too. But, by the time our food was ready, the clouds had gone and it was sunny again. For the rest of the ride we continued to climb. When we left the bike shop, we were unsure if we would be able to make it to Winter Spring since we knew we had some huge climbing ahead of us and it was still about 30 miles away. As we kept riding and it got later and later, we knew that we probably wouldn't make it because we figured it would be another 2 hours for us to get over the pass. For part of the ride it began to rain again, right around 5:30. At that point we were pretty sure we wouldn't make it to Winter Spring like we had planned. There wasn't a whole ton of daylight left and we were both feeling funny because of the elevation. Joe said he had a headache and I was feeling a little dizzy while riding even though we had been drinking plenty of water. It was still raining when we decided to take camp instead of continue to climb. Right before the first switchback there was a picnic area that even had an outhouse. We quickly set up our tent and got everything in the tent. We decided to hang our food for the first time just to be safe, so we worked on finding a good place for that too. While I was setting up everything in the tent, it stopped raining and again the sun came out. It is incredible how fast the weather changes in the mountains! Since it was sunny, we explored a little around the picnic area. Our tent is right near a cliff that had a waterfall below. The whole area was beautiful. Joe talked to some family and found out that we were at an elevation of about 10,000 feet!! As we go higher into the mountains we are always reaching new elevations that I have never been at before, or camped at for that matter. Not long after we had the tent set up the sun came out again, so we decided to have a little dinner. We cooked up some baked beans and snacked on crackers with pb. After everything was cleaned up and the food was hung, we got back in our tent, just in time for it to start to rain again. We only rode 22.79 miles, but we both know that we wouldn't have made it up and over the pass to Winter Park before dark, so it was good that we stopped when we did.
We woke up pretty early after another great nights sleep. While I packed everything up, Joe used the single speed again to run to the grocery store to get some milk and mac and cheese. We had the rest of our cereal along with toast with pb to use up the last bit of our bread from sandwiches yesterday. Once we were all packed we were heading out of town around 9am. It is so nice there are so many bike paths for us to follow to stay out of the traffic, at least until we made it out of the city. For most of the ride towards Golden, where we would turn to start to go into the mountains, there was a pretty good shoulder and the traffic was pretty good. There were a few miles where there was no shoulder and every once in a while a car or truck would wiz by without giving much room, but for the most part it wasn't bad. As we got closer to Golden, there were a couple nice views of Denver, the best one being of a lake in the foreground and the skyscrapers in the background (but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this because we were screaming downhill and it would have been unsafe to stop because of the traffic). When we made it to Golden, we stopped to fill up on water at Subway and then continued on. After about 25 miles we stopped for lunch at a gas station that had a table out front. The lady working was more than happy to let us use the table to make our Ramen. At the time, there was no water pressure, so the bathrooms didn't work and there was no way to fill our h2o bottles unless we bought water. However, while we were cooking, the lady came out and said that she had forgotten that a cyclist came in yesterday and bought a gallon of water, filled up his h2o bottle, and then left the rest of it. So, she gave us almost a whole gallon of spring water, which was very helpful. The ride from Boulder was mainly uphill all day and once we left after lunch it became even more mountainous. Riding down rt 40 was pretty neat because the I-70 was right next to us, except there were 3 tiers of road: eastbound on the 70, westbound on the 70, and then the 40; it was pretty neat to look at because there were mountains on both sides of the road. For about 2 miles we did have to ride on the I-70 because there was no other road through that area. Luckily, that part of the ride was mostly downhill and had a huge shoulder which made it so it wasn't as scary. Once we got of the 70, we were surprised to see a Wal-Mart in a little town called El Rancho. Since our first can of camp fuel was running pretty low, we figured we should probably get some more since we didn't know the next time we would see a Wally-world. While we were there we also got another package of cookies and a box of zebra cakes, one of our other favorite snacks. We had a couple zebra cakes before continuing on. For a few miles we had a downhill, but that soon changed and we were going up again. Part of our ride today was on a bike path we had to take because the only road was the I-70 which had a tunnel that we weren't allowed to go through. The bike path went right around the tunnel and then turned into a road that took us right into Idaho Springs. There we found a Starbucks with some tables outside where we made some mac and cheese for dinner. We had a couple more zebra cakes and used the internet for a few. After dinner we stopped at the fire hall to ask if there were any places we would be allowed to camp and were informed of a campground that was just a couple blocks away. Although we normally don't stay at campgrounds because we can usually camp for free, we figured we should since we were told we would get kicked out of anywhere else in town. The campground was also a hot spring; however we didn't go in because we heard the one in Steamboat Springs was way better and cheaper. While we were setting up our tent, we met a couple guys, Chris and Eddy, who were sitting across the stream by their RV. They ended up inviting us to join them when they went to the Buffalo Restaurant & Bar for all you can eat Gumbo and Rice for 3 bucks. So, we went with them and enjoyed some nice hot Gumbo, and it had a little kick to it I might add, but it was so delicious. After we had our fill of gumbo and split a pitcher of beer, we headed back to the campground. We were pretty tired, so we decided to take a shower in the morning instead. We rode 48.20 miles today and it took us over 7 hours because we spent most of the day climbing. We are definitely in the mountains now, which is SO much better than being in the flat prairies with the 30mph wind!!!
After having some cereal for breakfast, we got on the single speed bikes we've been using and headed towards the trails to go on a hike. The ride to the trail head was mainly uphill and for some reason when we got to the top, we both felt dizzy. We took a quick rest and then found a bike stand to lock our bikes to. There were so many trails that we could have taken and I'm sure they all would have been great. The route we ended up taking was probably about a mile and a half to two miles up and the same back. The trail was pretty steep for most of the climb and very rocky. At one point there was what Joey called a "rock garden" that was just a huge pile of rocks on the side of the hill. It looked pretty cool and once we got to the top of that area was a little frightening because looking down it was really steep with a ton of jagged rocks. Eventually we made it to a little place to look out to the SE and we were able to see Denver off in the distance which I was not expecting. The view of Boulder was incredible too. Although we couldn't climb to the very top of what were called the flatirons, we still climbed to an elevation of about 8,000 ft. After climbing for an hour and a half to get to the top, we started our decent, which to me is always a lot more challenging that climbing up. When we made it back to Ed's it was around 1pm. We had a left over piece of pizza each, a package of Ramen, and some brownies (Joey had a little of the ice cream we bought yesterday too). Once we were full and knew we would be tided over until we got back from the speech, we got our things together and headed to Colorado University. When we got to the campus all of the roads around the event center were blocked off with police and signs that said if you crossed that point you would be arrested. We found a good spot to lock up the bike and then made our way to the line. By the time that we had gotten there, the line was already pretty long, past where we initially got in line yesterday to get our tickets. Although it was only around 2:30 when we got there, the line quickly grew longer and longer. By 4pm, when the doors were supposed to open, the line had doubled back around campus. We finally made it into the event center around 5:30 and found pretty good seats. The university band was playing for a while, as well as a band that I think may travel with the president. Other than that, nothing really happened until around 7pm. It was pretty neat hearing the president discuss the issues surrounding the possibility of interest rates doubling for student loans and what they need to do so that doesn't happen. His speech revolved around the idea of "An america built to last," which kind of sounds like a ford commercial. There was a restaurant in town that our Warm Showers host suggested we visit, and it turns out that Obama had lunch their sometime today. Although we didn't go to the restaurant because we figured it would be packed, it was a pretty neat coincidence. When we got back to Ed's, we made some mac and cheese and Ed helped us plan out our route for tomorrow. We've decided that since we spent an extra day in Boulder that we wouldn't go as far south as Denver and cut into the mountains a little sooner. Our hope was to see a Colorado Rockies game, but the timing isn't right since the next home game won't be until this weekend. I am so glad that we were able to get tickets to see the President speak and that our Warm Showers host let us stay an extra day. Today was another fantastic day.
We woke up around 8:30 and had some cereal and an english muffin with pb for breakfast. Since we were in desperate need of doing laundry we took some time to do that this morning while we planned out our day. Once the laundry was all finished we jumped on the one speeds Ed was letting us use and headed towards the Verizon store to switch over Joey's phone. Jesse, our Warm Showers host from Fort Collins was nice enough to give Joe his old "tough" flip phone since he had moved to a smart phone. This was a life saver because Joey's phone hasn't worked all that great in a while and would turn off whenever it felt like it and not hold a charge very well. This got even worse after the sprinkler incident in Kimball, since his phone was in the pocket hanging from the ceiling of the tent (it got soaked like everything else). After Joe had the phone all switched over we went to the grocery store to get some lunch meet and bread for lunch along with some more Ramen, some yogurt, and a carton of Thin Mint ice cream! We headed back to Ed's and enjoyed our lunch. While we were eating, I was looking at the newspaper and saw that Obama was coming to Colorado University to speak tomorrow and they were giving free tickets out to the public today. When we looked up the information, we found they had just started giving them out at noon and it was only 1pm. We decided to give it a shot and ride over to the college to see if we could get a ticket. Sure enough after about a 45 minute wait we were one of the last 30 people to get a ticket! So we are going to see Obama speak tomorrow, what an interesting story to add to our tour! We ended up being in a video from the local newspaper too, which we found out thanks to Grammy (you can see us walking away with bicycles around 14seconds... here is the link: http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_20461453/members-public-wait-hours-tickets-see-obama-at?source). We almost couldn't believe that we ended up being able to get tickets since it was such a spur of the moment thing. Before we knew about the Obama tickets, we were planning on going to another brewery called Avery Brewing Co. So after we had our tickets, we rode over so we could take another tour. We called family to share our excitement for tomorrow and then each got a glass of beer before the tour. Even though I am not a beer drinker, the glass I had had was good, it had a little fruity tint to it. It was interesting to be able to make comparisons between this brewery and one of a much larger size such as New Belgium Brewery that we went on the other day. After the tour we rode back to Ed's to figure out what to do for dinner. We decided to go out for pizza at a pizza place in downtown Boulder, right near the walking mall. We had some amazing pizza and then went for a walk around the Pearl Street walking mall. Since I had a box of brownie mix left because it was buy one get one free the other day, I made some brownies when we got back to Ed's. We went in his amazing hot tub before bed which definitely helped sooth any sore muscles I had. Tomorrow morning we plan to go on the hike that we ended up not doing today because of deciding to try for Obama tickets. It should be another fun filled day tomorrow. We rode quite a bit around town on the single speeds, probably around 10 miles or so total.
Joe woke up early to get started on fixing up my bike with the new rack and repairing the flat. He left the door open a little and Lauren's dog, Mr. Jones, came to cuddle for a little, it was so cute. After breakfast I worked on uploading pictures. Jesse was nice enough to true Joe's wheel. I took an shower and we were all packed by about 10:30. We were a little sad to leave Fort Collins since we liked it so much, but we were excited to get to Boulder too. The ride towards Boulder was fun, especially the first 15 mile or so because there were a ton of cyclists who passed us while they were on their ride. The first town we came to out of Fort Collins was Loveland. There were some kids who had a lemonade/koolaid stand, so we decided to stop and have a refreshing glass of koolaid. This area was pretty amazing for having such a stand because the kids said they had only been there about 10-15 minutes and already had 3-4 customers. I remember when we used to sell lemonade and I'm pretty sure we didn't have that many customers in such a short time. After we rode into town a little further, we decided we had better stop for lunch since it was already lunch time. We stopped at a bench outside of a grocery store to cook up some mac and cheese. There was a Starbucks nearby, so I was able to connect to the internet for a few to send the blogs I was behind on. Today was another perfect day for riding. While it is in the 40s back at home and supposed to snow, it is 75 and sunny here. When we made it to Boulder, we found there were a ton of bike paths everywhere. We stayed with a Warm Showers host who lived right near downtown. After a nice shower, Ed took us out to dinner to a Mexican Restaurant where we had the best Margaritas and yummiest tacos I think I've ever had. Ed let us ride a couple of his single speeds so we didn't have to unload everything. We had a great night, and plan to explore Boulder a little tomorrow. Ed set us up with bicycle maps of town and a hiking map in case we decided to go on a hike. We went to bed pretty early since we were all pretty tired, especially Ed because he just ran a trail marathon yesterday! We rode 50.94 miles (+a mile or two on the single speeds) today.
Well since Fort Collins was so neat, we decided to take an extra day here. We had an awesome nights sleep and woke up ready to explore Fort Collins. After having some cereal for breakfast, Jesse took us on a hike up Horsetooth Mtn. trail. The area was so beautiful and we had a great time hiking up to the top of the mountain. It was 2 and a half miles up and 2 and a half miles back. When we reached the top, we were at an elevation of 7, 256 ft. which is the highest point we've been on so far on the trip, and the highest point I have ever been at, but I'm sure that number will be changing shortly. While standing at the top of the Horsetooth Mtn if you looked to the east you could see for what seemed like hundreds of miles across the prairie. To the west you could see the snowy topped mountains, one of which was 1400ft high, twice the height of where we standing. There were a lot of people hiking on the trail today, and many of them brought their dogs with them too. After our hike, we stopped at REI and bought some new shoes for Joey because his water shoes were falling apart so bad. We also saw a crack in my rear rack and were worried it might break like Joe's did on day 1 so we bought a sturdier rack for my bike too. Since we noticed that my back tire was flat again this morning, we decided that it would be easier if we rode a couple of Jesse's bikes around town so we didn't have to fix the flat/unload all of the bags. There is a brewery in town called The New Belgium Brewery that Jesse really wanted to make sure we saw before we left, so that was our first stop. It was kind of a busy day, so we got our names on the list for a tour and then went out to lunch in town. Jesse took us to the first place he was taken to eat when he was on his tour. The food was delicioius! Joe had pulled pork and I had southern fried chicken (and this was no kfc, it was so moist and delicious I can't even explain). After our tasty meal we rode back over to the brewery in perfect time to go on the tour. This brewery was something else. It was founded by a guy who rode his bike around Belgium to learn about how they make their beer over there. He brought back his knowledge and began the brewery. Everything in the brewery is bike related; the employees get a different custom made cruiser bike for each year of employment, all of the decorations are made of bicycle parts, and their beer is even bicycle related with names like Spokes and fat tire just as examples. We had so much fun on the tour. Fort Collins is definitely a place any bicycle enthusiast should visit! This town is so bicycle friendly. At one point there were more bicycles at a stop light than cars, which was hard to believe for me. After we rode back to Jesse's we got ready to go to the drive-in, which I was particularly excited about since I had never been to one before. Jesse and Lauren went to the store to pick up some snacks for the movie and then we headed over. There was an incredible amount of cars in line, apparently everyone was pretty excited it was warm enough for the drive in. When we finally got in and found a spot, we snacked on some cheese and crackers, cashews and gummy bears. The movie that we saw was The Hunger Games and it was pretty good. Since it was already pretty late and we were all pretty whooped, we opted to head home instead of watching the second movie. What an incredible day it was! It was so nice having our own tour guide to show us some of the exciting things to see in Fort Collins. We rode about 10 miles around town throughout the day. It is so easy getting around town on a bike, I don't know why you would even take a car.
We slept in a little this morning since we knew we had a shorter ride than normal. We made oatmeal, packed up and were on the road by 9:15. As we were riding we could see the mountains off in the distance, so we were pretty excited about that. About 7 miles into our ride, I got a flat tire on my back wheel. After riding for about 24 miles we arrived in Ault, where we planned to stop for lunch and patch a tube. We planned on having mac and cheese, but surprisingly there was a Subway, so we decided to go there instead. After a tasty lunch we headed out towards Fort Collins. The traffic had picked up significantly since leaving Ault, but the ride still wasn't bad. When we made it to Fort Collins, we rode around for a little and were just amazed at how bicycle friendly the city was. There were cyclists everywhere you looked and almost every street had a bike lane. It was incredible. We found the library and looked up to see where a bike shop was because we needed to get some more tubes. There was this awesome bike shop called "Crank and Stein" that was a bike shop, bar and coffee shop. We had never seen anything like it. People could ride their bikes in through the open garage door and park their bikes inside and go grab a drink or snack. We found the size tubes we needed and decided to get a drink of some sort. We were able to buy 3 tubes, a beer, and a hot chocolate all on the same bill, it was really cool! I had a hot chocolate, the the server made a bicycle wheel in with chocolate syrup, and Joey had a beer called a "chocolate yetti." There were so many people in the city who asked us about our travels it was almost like we were celebrities. It is amazing because there are so many people around here who understand what we are doing and can relate to it, where that isn't the case in most places. At one point the street we were following to find our Warm Showers host was closed for a concert/party. We walked our bikes through the small crowd and 4-5 different people asked where we were going, etc. Everyone was so excited to see us, it was so neat. Since I had been craving brownies for a few days, we found a supermarket to buy a box of brownie mix at in hopes that I would be able to make them at our Warm Showers hosts house. We arrived at Jesse and Lauren's house at about 6:15 and were greeted by their dog Mr. Jones and their friend's dog Captain Pickles. After a great shower we enjoyed sharing with and hearing stories of adventures Jesse had been on. We had some amazing chicken tacos for dinner. I had a chance to make my brownies and we enjoyed some time by the campfire in the back yard. We got to enjoy our first S'mores on the tour thus far along with brownies in the same night, it couldn't get any better than that! After another wonderful day, we got to sleep in a really comfy bed. We've decided to spend an extra day in Fort Collins so can explore it a litte more; it's a pretty neat place! We rode 47.44 miles today.
We woke up nice and early and packed up our camp spot. It was good that we were under the pavilion last night because it rained off and on for a while, this time we were dry under our pavilion though! We rode across the street to the store to get another 1/2 gallon of milk because we had extra cereal left in our 2lb bag from lunch yesterday. It was a little chilly in the morning, but it didn't take long to warm up again. Thank goodness we waited a day because we were flying down the road heading towards CO; the wind was pushing us right along for the first 46 miles of our ride today. Since we were only about 17 miles from the border when we were in Kimball, it didn't take us too long to arrive in CO. We took our traditional picture by the sign and then continued on. When we came to the T intersection where we were to turn west again, there was an itty bitty little town where we stopped to make lunch. There were two churches, a post office, dirt roads through the town and a handful of houses. There was a garage and a cafe that was closed that we decided to stop at because there were a couple people outside. I asked the man there if there was a bathroom anywhere around, since we hadn't seen one in 46 miles, and he let me use the one in the old cafe that he owned. We chit chatted with him for a little before we made Ramen noodles for lunch. It turns out that he had been to Buffalo numerous times and that when he was in the service back in the 60s, he helped to build part of the Al-Can highway (Alaskan Highway). When it was time to get back on the road the wind was at our sides, but didn't slow us down too much since we were able to keep normal touring speed. There were a few times when the wind would get really strong for a couple minutes, but then it would return to normal. For the last 15 miles of our ride it rained off and on and was really cold. Eventually we made it to the small town of Briggsdale. We knew there was a park to camp in because we had looked at the area while at the library yesterdaady, but we took a quick ride around town anyway. There were two paved roads and the rest, even the main street, were dirt. Still the town was bigger than the one we stopped at to make lunch. When we rode into the National Grassland Park, we found a really nice shelter to camp under, which was great because it was still raining and had started to thunder. This shelter had 3 walls, a roof, lights and a place to make a fire in the middle (oh and more outlets to plug things into that we knew what to do with!). It was great to be out of the wind and the rain. We put up our tent and then made some rice with cream of mushroom soup and tuna for dinner. We made a fire in the fire pit to warm the shelter area up and snacked on our cookies and crackers with peanut butter. We played a game of cards with the cards the Sisters in Mitchell, SD gave us and talked with family for a bit. Tomorrow we are going to a Warm Showers host in Fort Collins, which is only about 40 miles away, so we will have a lighter day tomorrow. We had a great day today and are glad we waited so we didn't have to ride in that strong head wind. It took us 7 hours to ride 83.70 miles today.
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