eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

 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 33 August 1st

Eads, CO to Pueblo, CO

Today we did 113 miles, the most mileage we’ve done so far and it will definitely be the highest daily mileage for the whole trip.  We were super lucky to have a cross/tail wind.  Our continental breakfast at the Econo Lodge is best described as unsettling.  We were on the road at 7:30 and pulled into Pueblo at 4:30.  We met Bill in “Boone” about 25 miles east of Pueblo.  Bill rides a bike and really enjoys helping out cyclists that come through.  He gave us some tips about some places to be sure we see on our ride trough Colorado.  

We were relieved to arrive in Pueblo, so relieved that we immediately hit the pool and hot tub.  Tomorrow we have the day off and will be spending it with my sister in law Niki.  She’s coming down from Colorado Springs for the day to do some tubing in the Arkansas River.  Niki will be joining us for a few days later in the trip when we go to the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park.  We can see the Rockies in the distance and are mentally preparing ourselves for the grueling days ahead, we start our climb over them Thursday the 4th..    

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

July 28th – Day 29

Small Town America

After having our fill of Oscar from the day before, we were ready to move on from Newton, KS. Even after a full night together and our attempt to bribe him with a couple of doggie treats, the little guy did not warm up to us, which we were not too heartbroken over.

Our final destination for the day was Sterling, KS, though along the way came across a group of Kansans enjoying themselves with a friendly matchs of mud-volleyball in Nickerson, KS. Despite their invitation to join their mudfest, we decided to keep it clean and keep on biking.

Another odd sight from the day was finding a farm full of camels, in Kansas.  We don’t quite know why they were there, but judging by the heat, they should have felt right at home from their native Arabia.  

Once we finally did arrive in Sterling, we found the town to be a very idyllic place in the heart of America. When we both thought of small town America, this pretty much came to mind. The people were all very friendly, all knew each other (only about 2500 people there), and everything was situated on their very central Main St.. We camped at the city park, which was next to the city pool and town lake. One other aspect of the town that really fit in with the whole small town America was the high school kids gathering in the park on a Saturday night, all night, revving their truck engines to impress the girls, which made for a super night’s sleep.

-Brent

July 27 – Day 28

Oscar!!!

After an excellent sweaty nights sleep in humid Toronto Lake State park, we got off to an early start to get some breakfast at the bustling town of Toronto. Basically there is only one place to get any food in town, which is the convenience store, where we filled up on honey buns, six packs of powdered donuts, and coffee; all the nutrition we needed for a full day of biking. A common theme of all the breakfast joints we end up going to is all of the farmers gather early in the morning and sit around a table or chairs to get their day started. One of the farmers that we met this morning was Clay Payne, who at 90 years old is still managing his farm with 80 head of cattle. Pretty amazing and we can only hope to still be around and not drooling on ourselves by that point, let alone working. He gave us his address so we can send him a picture of when we reach San Francisco.

As for the biking, the towns are starting to become more spread out with very little in between. The hills are becoming fewer and further between, longer with much milder inclines and this will very quickly lead to the flat as a pancake Kansas that we have heard about and think we look forward to.

We ended up going slightly over 100 miles to get to Newton and meet with Liz who works at the Prairie Harvest Health Store downtown. We had heard from the East bounder, Mike, a few days prior that Liz was putting cyclists up in her place for the summer. She had completed the trip last year and was nice enough to put us up for the night as a fellow Trans-American cyclist. She said that having the bikers stay with her this summer was similar to her experience last year on the trail, meeting all these people, but without the actual biking part. Liz was actually house-sitting for a few weeks and gave us the address of the place, but would not be able to meet us there until she got out of work at 10. The one catch was that this family’s dog, Oscar, was there and was not too fond of males so she said to let him out in the backyard if he was causing any problems. Once we get to the house, Lee walks into the house while I am fiddling with the bike trying to find a parking space for it. Immediately I hear a yappy little bark going to town, with a muffled, “heeeeyyyy Oscar, why don’t you go outside”. That is just what Oscar did, but not the door that Lee was holding open to the backyard. I see this little black blur shoot out of the house and run to driveway, pause, look at me for a split second with a knowing glance of, ‘your going to regret this sucker…’. He then bolts towards neighborhoods that we are both obviously very unfamiliar with. We immediately run out and start chasing this little guy, but our 100+ mile biking legs are no match for the little black flash that has been cooped up in the house all day. We start scouring the neighborhoods on foot and a terrible realization starts to come set in after 15 minutes of not seeing a trace of this guy, ‘a couple of strangers may have just lost a family’s’ beloved dog that was being house-sat by a trusted friend’. We run back to the house to grab the bikes without the trailers to comb the neighborhood better. Very angry Oscar chants were being shouted around the neighborhood with us chasing down anything that resembled a bark. We asked anyone we saw if they had seen a little black dog on the loose. I asked one man playing catch with his son about the dog and he took my information in case he turned up. After about 40 minutes of searching and our fear that we lost this family’s dog getting stronger, we really lucked out. The man playing catch with his son, who turned out to be a vet, had gotten in his car and joined the search. He had spotted the dog a couple of blocks away and we followed him there. We spotted Oscar, who immediately spotted us and turned the other way and ran as fast as his little legs would take him, which also turned out to be about as fast as our bikes would go. We started a Dukes of Hazard style chase of this dog through the neighborhood, front yards, sidewalks, and a little park. Fortunately for us, little Oscar did not have too much gas in the tank and petered out almost right back where we started. We put the little guy in the FENCED IN backyard and breathed a sigh of relief, then started cussing the little guy out for putting us through his chase.

We spent some time with Liz once she returned from work and thanked her again for the place to stay. We told her about our chase of Oscar, which she found very humorous and who she thinks is the cutest little dog ever. From our experience with Oscar, we have to disagree…

-Brent