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!!!
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