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.
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