Day 35 August 4th

 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

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