Day 35 : God is an Amazing Artist...

From Pueblo, CO to Royal Gorge (area), CO - 59.1 miles

Story [in numbers]:

Time on bike: 5:58:34
Average speed: 9.9 mph
Max Speed: 36 mph


Story [in words]:

the title for today really sums things up...we spent the day cycling up to and into God's beautiful masterpiece! and it was awesome and awe inspiring!

we started the morning cycling out of pueblo on relatively flat terrain, and before too long the ground began to roll. our legs were definitely climbing (and therefore pedaling) in a way they hadn't in probably ten days or more. then a little over 20 miles into our ride, we hit what i would consider the first real climb of the rockies.

we had been gradually coming up on a ridge that seemed to be just in front of the much larger mountains. and it had finally become time to climb up, and as it turned out, onto the ridge. it was not a terribly difficult climb...just slow and steady. if that is indicative of what the next days of climbing are going to be like, i think we will be just fine...especially when the trade off is these amazing views. so, after 30 or 40 minutes of fairly slow climbing we made it to the top of the ridge. and we both thought that what we discovered was rather interesting.

it had appeared that just over this ridge were lots of much larger mountains. and there were...however, in between, there was a very large plateau. we cycled on top of this plateau for what must have been at least 10 miles...and interestingly went down for must of those miles. also interesting, was the fact that when we looked back towards where we had come from, there was no indication at all that we had just come up a substantial climb.

we continued on towards and through the mountains. by afternoon time, we were definitely surrounded by the mountains...and they were breathe taking to say the least. we cycled into a beautiful, old town with tons of little antique shops. if we were just on a leisurely vacation, it would have been a great place to just hang out. (aunt bonnie...you would have been in heaven)

we finally made it into canon city at about 2, where we stopped at a subway to grab a late lunch. after consulting the maps and trying to decide what our plan was going to be for the next couple of days (especially with hoosier pass in the near future), we decided that we would go just 10 more miles to the royal gorge area where there were about 5 different camps grounds listed. we finished our food and pedaled over to the royal gorge information center to see if we could get some info on camping. they had a sheet with phone numbers and locations for the same 5 campsites that the maps listed. we decided that before we left town, we would call all 5 and where we could find the best deal. we were able to get ahold of 4 of the 5...finding that the best price was going to be $19.95. (not the most expensive camping we have paid for on this trip, but also far from the cheapest)

so we headed out to conquer the last few miles. as we crested a fairly large hill that we had been climbing, we saw a campground on our left. i quickly pulled on the sheet from the information center to confirm that it was the one campground that we had not gotten an answer from. we figured that it would be worth just stopping in and seeing what the cost would be. and man are we glad that we did...

it appeared that they were already closed...which wasn't too surprising considering that it is a sunday and the fourth of july. as we got close to the door, however, a gentlemen came up to us and asked if he could help us. cailyn told him that we were hoping to get a campsite. to which he replied, "how about i make you a deal...what if i give you a little cabin for $20". to which we said, "sure, sounds great". knowing that the price was the same as the best camping price that we had found.

he opened up the office and got us all set up. we ended up having some great conversation with he and his wife...and in the process, they discovered that we didn't have any food with us. so, they told us that they would fix us some blt's or something. they told us to shower up and to come up to the cafe at about 6:15. we wheeled our bikes back to our cabin, settled in, got cleaned up and headed up to the outside patio of the cafe to meet sid and kim. they had a number of things they could offer to cook us, but we said that blt's and chips sounded great. they quickly cooked us up some sandwiches and we sat and ate some food and shared some great conversations. they had some amazing stories about taking their horses and herding cattle on some 35,000 acre farms in the area. sounded like an amazing time. they were just wonderful people who we thoroughly enjoyed sharing the fourth of july evening with.

oh, and i almost forgot. i am sitting, writing this post on the deck of our little cabin, and the view is amazing to say the least. mountains, mountains, and more mountains...some of them even snow covered. (it is the first of the pictures posted above) sid and kim told us that the country that we are about to go into is some of the prettiest anywhere...and i believe them.


a slight sidenote on our upcoming schedule: we have decided that we will not go up and over hoosier pass tomorrow. we plan to cycle as close to the pass as we can...probably fairplay, co...and then we will get up and go over hoosier pass first thing on tuesday morning.