Day 37 : A Picture Perfect Day...

From Fairplay, CO to Middle of Nowhere, CO - 62.9 miles

Story [in numbers]:

Time on bike: 5:22:04
Average speed: 11.7 mph
Maximum speed: 37.8 mph


Story [in words]:

today was by far the best day of the trip...simply amazing!!

we awoke from our beautiful (and as it turns out, free) campsite next to the river and mountains, a little later than normal. as we would soon discover by cycling past the welcome to fairplay sign, we had camped at just slightly less than 10,000 feet above sea level, which made for a rather chilly morning.

we made our way up to a beautiful and quaint coffee shop in the heart of fairplay. turns out that fairplay has become quite famous because it is the town that the show south park has been modeled after (fairplay is in the south part of park county, co). we had some great coffee and even better conversations with the lady that was working in the shop. she was incredibly interested in our trip and was even interested in looking at our maps.

at around 9 am, with all of our warm weather gear on, we headed out towards hoosier pass (the highest point on our route). we were just 12 miles from the top of the pass with about 1500 feet to climb. i wish that i could adequately put into words the beauty that we encountered as we climbed. it was absolutely nothing like climbing in virginia...not in toughness or beauty. first of all toughness, there is simply no comparison between climbing in virginia and climbing here...it is way way tougher in virginia. and in terms of the views, in virginia the majority of the climbing is spent staring at trees, that quite frankly, all seem to look the same. the views while climbing today were completely the opposite. the area around the roads is open, so as we climbed, we spent our time looking at amazing snow-capped peaks, beautiful lush valleys with amazing homes in them, and tons of awesome mountain streams and rivers. there is just not any way to put into words what we saw and experienced as we climbed. the combination of much more gradual climbs and the amazing views, made for what i have got to imagine, was the best climbing possible.

at a little before noon, we arrived at the summit of hoosier pass! it was awesome...what a feeling! the sense of accomplishment was amazing, and the views continued to wow us. we took some pictures with the sign at the summit, ate a little trail mix, and prepared to descend.

just before hopping back on the bikes, we ran into this woman and her amazing dog frankie, who were getting ready to go hiking. the lady is a firefighter in fairplay, which was interesting because we almost stopped at the fire station last night to see if we could camp there. she told us that they host cyclists regularly...nuts, gues maybe we should have stopped. but frankie was even cooler...he was a boxer...but he was the calmest one i have ever seen. she had him right out by the busy road without a leash or anything. she said that he loves to hike, and they when they go on longer hikes, he even has a backpack that he wears so he can carry his own water. too cool!

we finished our conversation with frankie and his owner and got back on our bikes and started our descent into breckenridge. the descent was every bit as beautiful as the ascent...only lots faster. we managed to get into a nice slot with very little traffic, which made the descent all the greater. we pasted lots of beautiful ski places with more beautiful mountain streams running alongside of them. we have both absolutely fallen in love with the idea of mountain streams! they are just so mesmerizing!

we rolled easily into breckenridge, to find things more bustling than we expected. but at the same time, we were both very excited to be there. it is a little touristy and industrialized, but there is such an outdoorsy athletic feel to it and the backdrop is just breathe-taking! we could have easily spent a week just hanging out there. as it turned out, it was bike week there, and so there were tons of cyclists and tons of cycling activities going on.

we parked our bikes and locked them up and headed to find a place to grab some lunch. we found a great sports bar type of a place where we had an amazing taco pizza. from there, we wanted to hit up some sporting clothes types of stores to see if we could each get some sort of a long-sleeved hiking type shirt to keep us warm while we are camping the next couple of weeks. and without too much trouble, we were able to each find what we were looking for at what seemed to be a pretty reasonable price. lastly, we wanted to find a place to get a little blogging down. we grabbed the bikes and cycled up the way a bit, to where we found a nice picnic table outside of a miner's pie stand. we did a little writing and made a few phone calls, and then before long, the lady that owned the stand came out to see what we were up to. we told her about our trip and asked her a little about breckenridge...then, we found out that she used to live in newton county...the same county that cailyn grew up in. so, the two of them shared some great stories. after talking for a little while, she went back into her stand and then came back out with a shepherd's pie miner's pie...free just for us. we sat and enjoyed it as we finished up our tasks. before leaving, we decided that we would just buy a couple more of her pies for our dinner. so we got a couple of pies and then headed for our next destination.

we cycled on an amazingly nice and beautiful bike path that went from breckenridge to the next couple of towns up the way. it was a great path...the only problem was that it seemed to be much more windy than the road that we would have been following...and we also had a little bit of trouble figuring out where we were supposed to get off of the bike path. all in all, it was a beautiful path!

as it turned out, we kind of stayed in breckenridge a little bit longer than we should have, because we ended up in a little bit of a tight spot as far as finding a place to camp for the night. we came on one campground, but it had been closed down at some point in time. then we stopped at a place that rents cabins and asked if we might put out tent up there...they said that we couldn't, but that there was a campground just a half a mile down the road. so, we cycled up another half mile, and sure enough, we found a nice little campground right on a lake with the mountains in the backdrop. a pretty amazing ending location to an incredibly beautiful day!