Short tour is better than no tour......Day Two

I find many examples in life that reality is often different than looks. It all looked liked a great campsite set up last night. Right across the road are vacation lakeside homes and my luck for this Sunday night was a gathering at one of them. It was not too rowdy until about 1 AM when a group of these young men convened a brainstorming session on all that was amiss in these good old United States. Quite loud and nobody really listening to anybody, just everybody voicing their opinions at the same time. While listening, (without choice!), I am always struck how this generation uses the F-bomb as a casual adjective every other word it seems, especially when alcohol is involved. Everything is effing this and effing that. I am not a prude when it comes to speech but as I have asked my kids to tone it down....it just makes you sound ignorant. Finally after about 45 minutes one of the girlfriends or wife came out of the house and yelled at these knuckleheads to knock it off. I got back to sleep right away.

Up and at them in the morning. It was quite crisp, my bike computer told me 35 degrees. I whipped up some quick oatmeal, ate, got packed up and rolled on out.
Beautiful morning riding alongside Lake Granby.

People do, at least what I think, the oddest things with their property and old equipment

 I connected with US-40 coming out of Granby and right there found a place for 2nd breakfast!! A little bit of western kische on the outside but nice people and good food inside!!

A couple of miles down a super shoulder of 8 ft or so and I turn off onto Colorado 125 that will take me over Willow Creek Pass and on to Walden. If every road had this wide shoulder on US 40, bicycle touring would be so popular. So enjoyable to have the space for cyclist out of the way of cars and trucks! I do not know why, as we rebuild our highways we can not do this all the time.

Anyway, off I go up 125 and the climbing starts right away! I lost my great shoulder but there was very little traffic on this road during the day. Everybody was so polite that they went in the other lane to go around. Good riding on a good road.

This fellow has a nice little mill operation working here. He is milling up wood fence posts and railings. I am sure he has a market for his sawdust, either burns in high efficiency furnaces or particle boards. Four or five trucks passed me during the day with his product heading to market.

Why?? Just to show that it snows a bit up here on this side of the divide. After the plows cover up the bottom number, they can still see the marker for the side of the road.

Do you guys like the mile markers on the road while you ride your bike??? I have a mixed feeling. It is good to know where you are but it is also a constant reminder off how slow you are going. For me, it puts too much importance on the destination instead of the ride at hand. I find myself trying to ignore the mile markers and focus on the nice day I am having and the ride itself. Just another of those silly mind games you can find yourself in as you ride on a tour. Anyway, this mile marker marked the end of a pretty good initial climb and then the road turned into a nice mix of rollers along a river that trended more up than down, but enjoyable riding.

I have seen this geologic feature on many other journals on this route. This part of my ride is on the ACA Trans-Am route. It is striking and so I snap a picture. It is a monolith rock formation that has not eroded like the land around it leaving it protruding. I am sure there is a term and geologist explanation of why this occurred. It is beautiful

The road trended up now as I reached the top of Willow Creek Pass. Before I got to the top I met a nice fellow that had ridden from Chicago and was now going to follow the ACA route down through Colorado to Pueblo and then ride Amtrak home. He said he enjoyed his ride across to here except for southern Wyoming. Hot and windy!!

I lollygagged around a bit at the top of the pass but did not take the time to dig through my bags and make myself something to eat. Dumb! And, something I would regret later on.
The east side of this pass is so much different. After an initial two miles of fun downhill you roll out into what is known as North Park. North Park is known all across the west for its excellent hay production and quality. It was busy in the fields as they were cutting and bailing 2nd cutting. Tens of thousands of acres of North Park Hay getting put up to go to market. The road trended downhill but was basically flat with rollers.

The road leads you to Rand Colorado which has a general store but is only open Thursday-Sunday. I knew this but I had read in journals that he always had a water jug set out for cyclists going by. No jug this time so I would have to make my water stretch. I did eat a banana and some trail mix I had.
Here is a business opportunity if living in Rand, Colorado happens to be a dream of yours!!

This road made me think of Junior High Geometry class and parallel lines.....stretching to infinity, never converging!!

And then it caught up with me, being on the bike all day, not taking care of myself with eating and drinking enough, 90 degrees out, and the quality of the road had turned bad. There were those stress cracks running across the road every 6 feet or so.....bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump.
I knew I was at my end when I got a drink and fumbled my bottle going back into the holder and dropped it. I almost said screw it and rode on, but realized it was the last two inches of water I had left, so I went back a picked it up. Those last eight miles were tough into Walden.

Yes!!! I felt like a caboose coming into town!!

My original plan was to camp in the city park which they allow for all the cyclists on the Trans-Am. There is a public pool where you can get a shower. But, it was a bit after 6 PM when I got there and the pool was closed. I really needed a shower, so, I broke out for a motel room and that was a great feeling to find the shower and a bed.
Tomorrow I will do better for myself to fuel and hydrate the machine driving all of this!!!

Short tour is better than No tour....Day One

I will start this with a shout out and Thank You to my friend Richard Welch for naming this tour for me!

I originally planned this route up last year for a September 2014 ride but family circumstances had me cancel the ride at that time. This year an opportunity arrived that I had a full staff at work and it was the week before Debbie was required back to her teaching job.....so....the short loop tour was revived!!!

The route is a loop west out of Estes Park, up and over Trail Ridge Road in the National Park, down to Grand Lake, Granby, up over Willow Creek Pass to Walden, up over Cameron Pass, down the Poudre River Canyon, to Ft. Collins, Loveland and back up Big Thompson Canyon to home. Four or five days depending how it rides.

Here we GO!! Let's ride bikes!!

Not so fast.
 I was not on the bike fifteen minutes and I broke my chain!! Oh boy....not a good way to start, but, I was not even in the Park yet, so it was a downhill coast back to where I left my truck for Evelyn and Debbie to pick up later that day. Back into the truck, over to the LBS to buy a new chain, back to the garage to install said chain and then back to start the trip. So much for my early start to get a head start on a Sunday traffic day in the Park. I had Debbie and Evelyn drive me up to start at Rainbow curve to put me where I would have been had I just been riding.
As I was installing the new chain I thought about it a bit. I have owned Ogre for almost three years, many dirt road and single track miles plus two trips down the KATY trail. Slaps forehead!!!!!!!!!!! Why didn't I think of that??? Oh well, no blood , no foul. At least it did not happen at the top of Trail Ridge or some where else. Way back when, I used to carry some chain links and the chain tool in my tool kit but last few years took them out because my bikes have been so bomb-proof and reliable. I put them both back in the bag.
This was the first trip I have taken Ogre loaded for a tour. It was also my goal to pack "smart" and not carry a bunch of crap I would not use. I wanted to see how Ogre compared to my old workhorse Long Haul Trucker (LHT). No front rack using a frame bag and the small front platform to carry the sleeping bag. The bike was a bit tail heavy using this system, we will see how the week progresses.

Beautiful day up on the tundra with very light breezes and a mix of cloud cover and sunshine!
Chaquita and Ypsilon fron the south side that I don't see from my normal views

It was a huge flower year this summer with most of them gone now, but a few blooms remain

Ogre pulled over to enjoy the view back east towards Longs Peak!!

When you ride a bike up here you get a much greater appreciation of the surroundings than in a car where you have to focus on not driving off the mountainside!!

As I got up to Rock Cut, a couple passed my by and We all stopped at Rock Cut to chat. The guy was riding an Ogre!! His was set up to be a fast road machine with skinnier road tires and drops. It was sleek and cool looking!! They had been on an amazing ride having started at H bar H ranch that is on the Allenspark side of Lily Lake on Highway 7. They were turning around at Rock Cut which is almost the high point of Trail Ridge. That is them up ahead of the Jeep.

There is a little downhill after Rock Cut where you give back about 500 ft of elevation and then a couple of steep switchbacks to get to the high point.
You can see down on the other side of the mountain, Old Fall River Road climbing up the canyon.

Ogre needs a breather!!

You go by Lava Cliffs before one more push up to the high point

They used to have a sign up here telling you the high point at 12,2 hundred something ...oh hell, huff puff, not enough oxygen up here!!! I think they took it down because people would stop right in the road to shoot a picture.
Great views of the Never Summer Range to the west from here. I will be on the west side of those in a few days.

 And just like that.......
Time to go down, down, DOWN!!

You roll up on Poudre Lake and the headwaters of the Cache La Poudre river. I would re-visit this in a few days as well. Right there is the Continental Divide.

I cruise on down to Grand Lake where I meet Debbie and Evelyn, who had gone on a hike on the west side, for some dinner. They head on home while I head for my campsite at Green Ridge Campground.

Pretty good first day. The chain mishap was a very forgotten memory. I read on my book for about 15 minutes before I was out cold.

Finish up Katy!!

Zipper Orchestra!!
That is what we got to calling the morning routine of all the campers around us. Pretty much 5:15 or so....zzzzziiiippppp. They served breakfast at 6:00 to 7:30 every morning. Our little group never saw the advantage of standing in line at 5:50 waiting. We always rolled into breakfast about 6:30, no line, and it was just as good as what was served at 6:00!!! Funny, the herd mentality that the human race displays sometime!!
After cooling off, I slept real well that night and was ready to go. Today was an in-between ride. 48 miles, which was not 72 but also not one of the half day rides of 36. Off we go!!

Good views of the river today. The bluffs came down to the RR bed and then the river, pretty riding!

This little guy was out sunning himself at our first sag stop

We started the day with some overcast which had the temp a pleasant 79 to start out!!
Great riding with the trail and bridges to cross.

The trail opened up to some pretty farms. These people maintain their properties so nicely!! They love their lawn mowers because they have acres of mowed property!!

Last bridge before we roll into Marthasville, our stop for tonight!!

Yes, no helmet in this picture. It got hot and I was just tired of the bandana and helmet thing. So, I was a total rule-breaking rebel and rode without helmet most of the day. The ladies from Baton Rouge that we rode with the day before rode by and nick-named me "hat-guy"! we all had a LOL at that!!
We set up at Marthasville on the baseball fields. They had a community center that was open to feed us lunch and dinner later on. This was voted by Kyle and I to be our favorite place to camp. We just hung out on shady picnic tables visiting with all our new friends with some cold beers. Stories and laughs as everybody shared their rides so far all week and a little about each other. This is the best thing about this ride. Complete strangers coming together as a tribe for a week and the bonds you share. No other activity I do has this camaraderie and bikes have much to do with it in my opinion!!
Off to bed we went with some wind and lightning popping around and then, the skies opened up!! The Rangers and Sheriff cane out and had everybody move into the community shelter for a severe storm warning. There was no warning about it...it rained hard, sideways for about 30 minutes and then just rained hard all night and into the morning. Kyle and I went back to our tents after the first 30 minutes and found our REI tents to stand up and both dry inside!! REI rules!! Some people were not as lucky and found their tents blown down or flooded and had to try and sleep on the floor of the center.
The next morning I was woken up by a text from the Rangers saying they had cancelled the final day for safety reasons and some flooding on the trail ahead. Bummer, we were only 34 miles short of the finish, but I understood the thinking. Kyle and I were set up with our bikes that could handle some muddy conditions but there are many young and older people with road bikes on the ride that would have had trouble.
Thus began a day of hurry up and wait logistics to get bikes and people bussed to St. Charles and then back on the buses to get back to Clinton.
This is Kyle's not waiting in line, wait pose!!

Turns out if we had ridden east to west we could have ridden because it was nice in Clinton when we got there. All in all after two years I liked the east to west ride a little better. Yes we had a slight headwind everyday last year but we did two of the days this year. I liked the long day to be the first day better and I overall I liked the camp places better last year except Marthasville this year. Boonville and Sedalia are the same. Either way it is a great fun time and ride.
I'll probably skip next year looking for something new to try.
Richard is trying the Mickleson trail this fall and even though the timing did not work for me, some other members of our Eons cycling group are talking about that trail next spring. Out there for me is a ride on the C&O towpath connecting with the Great Allegheny trail. My sister lives on the C&O and is a good starting point. We will see!!

Thank you everybody for following along!!

Happy Trails!!
Jim