eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

August 5th – Day 36

Monarch Pass!

After looking at this pass for the past week on the map, we were fully prepared to kick it in the butt. We were expecting the worst and it actually turned out to be fairly easy. Yes, it was high and long, but it really was not too steep. So we just had our bikes in a low gear and methodically cranked it out while really only taking one break for the entire morning. We both thought that the climbs in the Smokey’s were much tougher. It could be because we think that they are graded higher or it could be that we have been biking now straight for over a month. Most likely it is a combination of both. Regardless, we made it up to the top when this jeep could not. We were passed by a huge number of motorcycles on our way up, which at our one stop for the day came to find out was the BMW club having their annual 100,000 ft of climbing ride. There were 330 bikes that would do over 350 miles of riding and 100,000 ft of ascent and descent in just one day. Oh, it must be nice to have a motorized vehicle.

Unfortunately the traffic camera on top of the mountain did not quite work out like we had planned. We were not smarter than the camera, and it did not update every 10 minutes like we had thought, but pretty much whenever it felt like it. We have heard from several people that there was a sighting of our bikes and trailers there, but not us. What also didn’t help was that there was no cell phone coverage for either of us up there. Trust us, we did make it up and hopefully this picture can support our claim.

Our weather for the climb up was great, which helped to make it easier, though was a completely different story on the way down. After about two minutes of flying down the other side of the mountain, it decided to hail on us, which made for an extremely cold ride down. This weather pattern was not limited to just our descent, but turned out to be a continual rain for the next 40 miles…awesome. Despite our best efforts to stay dry, we were both soaked and didn’t really feel like setting up our tents in the rain. Once we rolled into our final town of the day, Gunnison, we decided to spring for a motel room to try and dry up all of our gear. We quickly realized that Gunnison was booming this night and not one room was available in the whole town, which included about 15 hotels/motels. What reason could possibly explain such a shortage of rooms? The monster truck rally was in town….

Anyway, while we were trying to decide what to do for the night in the check in of the Super 8 Motel, we were fortunate enough to run into Dan. Dan worked at the motel and offered for us to stay at his place for the night if nothing turned up. He worked at the motel part time and also in Crested Butte, where he is able to get in 100 days of skiing a year. His flexible schedule allows him to do what he really enjoys, which is spend time in the outdoors. After only a few days in Colorado, we are both really blown away by the relaxed attitudes and passion Coloradoans have for the outdoors. We have both been to the state before, but never quite experienced it like this.

Dan is a very intense back country hiker and has already climbed 32 of the 54 14ers in Colorado in just two and a half years, which is very impressive. He turned out to be a very nice, laid back guy, who was nice enough to offer us a place to stay for the night in his trailer.

We roamed around Gunnison, had a great dinner at Katie's Kookery with live music, and enjoyed some beverages at a local bar. Gunnison quickly rose to be one of our favorite places so far on the trip. It is a great little mountain town.

 Day 35 – August 4th

After enough messing around with relaxation, it was time to conquer these Rockies. The flatness was over and we began our ascent by visiting the Royal Gorge. We quickly remembered what it felt like to climb and put some strain back on the legs, but we were ready to buck whatever came our way. The Royal Gorge Bridge is the highest suspension bridge in the world, which is over 1000 ft above the Arkansas River. It is also almost like a high country Disneyland with all of the tourist activities they had there. The only thing they were missing was a giant walking gorge mascot to greet everyone in the park. To us the park really just seemed like a very high, expensive, toll bridge. We were not about to not pay for it and have to double back a whole lot of miles that we didn’t have to.

It was tempting to drop a fishing line down below and see what was biting, but they specifically prohibited it. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge gorge cut out from this river and all of these mini mountains in the distance after so long of seeing nothingness.

After the gorge we were determined to make it to a town fairly close to the base of Monarch Pass so we could get right into it in the morning without too much messing around. What we didn’t realize was how beautiful the ride to this town would be. We rode through Bighorn Sheep Canyon and had huge steep mountains on each side of us with the Arkansas River flowing right next to us. It really was one of the prettiest stretches that we have done up to this point and made for such a great ride.

One thing we didn’t really realize was how unpredictable the weather was going to be in the mountains. It seemed like the storms change their mind every other minute and will dump on you whenever they please. After a quick lunch we found ourselves racing away/towards/into/behind, well who knows, but close to a storm that was pretty hairy. We didn’t want to stop since we didn’t know what it was doing, plus we didn’t know where we would go if we stopped, plus we had to make it to Howard, which was our campsite for the night. After very frantic we-don’t-want-to-die riding and several close, I mean make you jump out of your seat close, lighting bolts we finally made it to the campsite , and set up our tents just in the nick of time before the serious rain started. Nothing like the sound of rain on the outside of your tent to help you get a good nights rest for a morning full of intense climbing…

-Brent

This is the dog we chased around.

Day 34 - August 2nd

Tubing!

One thing that kept us motivated to haul it to Pueblo was knowing that we were going to be seeing Lee’s sister in law, Niki, having a rest day, and go tubing down the Arkansas River. All three of our motivations turned out to be worth the 113 mile day. Niki drove down from Colorado Springs to spend the day with us and had a really great day.

Niki has the river tubing down to a science now and we met her, set up our take out point, inflated the tubes, iced the drinks, and were in the water in no time. We floated down the river for a few hours and had a very relaxing afternoon. The river was flowing fairly swiftly and it was nice to be moving without having to move our legs and using any energy, a welcome switch.

Of course we could not have a rest day without stopping at a bike shop, so we went and picked up a new tire for Lee’s bike since he had worn a hole in it already, well after 1800 miles.

The rest of the day was spent seeing The Simpson's Movie and eating steaks at the Texas Roadhouse…need that protein for the Rockies. As we rolled into Pueblo, we were able to see the silhouette of the Rockies and they are impressive. I guess John Denver wasn’t lying. It is a bit intimidating since they are all around you, tower above the plains, and there really isn’t a way around them. Even if there was, we couldn’t do that, we are going straight through them.  

34 days of biking has hopefully made our legs think that these are simply molehills. We will find out starting tomorrow, Doh!

Tomorrow, Saturday August 4th we will be going over Monarch Pass elevation 11,312 Ft. and this will be the highest point of our entire trip.  

There is a "Weather, Live Traffic Cam" at the top, see it here or click the photo above, the camera takes a shot about every 10 minutes. 

We plan on being there tomorrow around 1:00PM Mountain Time (3:00PM Eastern Standard Time).  If someone out there in cyberspace has the time and could take a screen shot, save it as a Jpeg on their computer and email it to lee@elifelist.com we would really appreciate it.

TO MAKE A SCREEN CAPTURE WITH A PC (Instructions from another website):

Press PrtScn (in the upper right had of your keyboard) When you press the PrtScn button an image of your screen is placed on your clipboard. Now, rather than printing it, you can do something with it.

Like email it to a friend.

First we need to make a file out of it. After you've pressed PrtScn, fire up your favorite image editor or use the Paint program that comes with Windows by pressing Start, All Programs, Accessories and then Paint. Now in Paint (or your equivalent), hit Edit, Paste and you should now have a image of your screen within the image editing program.

Now save this image to a file. Typically that means File, Save As.... Give it a filename you'll remember (MonarchPass.jpeg). I'd also suggest selecting either a JPEG or PNG file format instead of the default bitmap; they're smaller in file size.

TO TAKE A SCREEN CAPTURE WITH A MAC HIT: Shift, The Apple Command Key and the number 3 all at the same time and it will take a shot. 

Day 32 July 31st

Leoti, KS to Eads, CO

After a restful night’s sleep in the “Hi-Plains Inn” which had the coolest TV.  Thank God we had a tail wind again, we entered mountain time zone about 20 miles from the Colorado border which made it seem like we started our day really early.  It was nice to have an extra hour of sleep the day before we were planning a 110 mile day to Pueblo, CO.  

The Colorado border sign was ridiculously more impressive than the Kansas sign.  I have to say I was glad to be out of Kansas, there were numerous times I started to go kind of batty from the monotony, not to mention Kansas is huge!  We met Paul and Mike at the border, they were headed East just for a week long ride, finishing up in Newton, Kansas.  Mike and Paul had just met each other two days earlier at an Adventure Cycling meeting.  

Immediately the surroundings became more beautiful in Colorado.  The roads were flat just like Kansas but it just felt different.  I’ve been looking forward to Colorado since we left Lexington, Kentucky, can’t wait for all the sights.  We had a section of road between Tribune, KS and Eads, CO that we heard was 60 miles without any water or services, but there turned out to be an auto parts store in Sheridan Lake, CO that let us fill up on water and eat inside.  We met Kirby whose father owns the shop.  Kirby is fifteen years old and is working on fixing up his father’s 1957 Dodge truck for his sixteenth birthday on March 2nd.  He’s almost done rebuilding the engine and then he will move on to painting (he doesn’t know the color he wants yet.)  Keep up the work Kirby, seven months is plenty of time.  

Day 31 – July 30th

There is not too much to report here, but one thing that is really, really, surprising; Kansas is still flat. Since we are really lucking out with the weather and the wind(2nd straight day of a tailwind, hooray) we decided to put in another big day. We might as well take advantage of it while we can and blaze a quick trail out of Kansas.

We left the Derrick Inn Motel which from the outside reminded us of a correctional facility, but was pretty unique on the inside. All the rooms were surrounding the pool, hot tub, and mini working oil rig, that think helped to finance the building.

Ever since Farmington, MO I had been riding without sunglasses since I had managed to lose them at a gas station. My eyes couldn’t take anymore sun so today I splurged at the Dollar Store and found some real winners which may have been made for someone that hasn’t reached the double digit age demographic, but they do the job and think they will either make people laugh or think I am a complete idiot, oh well.

-Brent