It’s not that it’s hard ..

Day 5 sept 9

When someone says this is going to be hard, what does that really mean? ‘Hard’ is such a relative term.

Today was the hardest day of the whole Continental Divide We went over three mountain passes including the highest, Indiana Pass where we just scratched 12,000 ft elevation.

We were following a little dirt road that was in pretty good shape. The trees were a mix of pine and elm. Unfortunately, 30% of the pine trees were suffering from some sort of pest. I made a note that camping here on a windy night would be quite risky.

Everyone here loves to drive around in ATV’s and pickup trucks. There’s no old jeeps that I saw except for the one that doubles as a fire truck. Maybe Colorado was hard on Jeeps too.

The weather reluctantly cooperated with us as the morning was not as chilly as we expected and the rain only sprinkled just enough to tease out the rain coat. Then the rain stopped and so did we to put the coats back into our packs.

Usually after a big summit, there’s a long downhill coaster. After the summit of 12,000 ft we kept bouncing up and down around 11,000 ft. Finally after the third summit, we had a nice downhill coast to a sign that said the road was closed. Not a good song to see when you’re on a bicycle. Any detour (especially back uphill) could be very costly. Fortunately, they had built a bypass bridge while they repaired the existing bridge over a babbling creek.

We pedaled over three summits today and into a tiny town called Platoro, Colorado. We haven’t had hot showers for all five days of riding. Every evening when we could’ve taken a bird bath, the air temperature was too cold.

All we wanted to find was a place to camp and maybe a hot shower. There was a cabin rental place that had a sign. The sign also in small letters said RV Park. We rolled in and finally found someone. We could get a shower for 15$ or a cabin with a shower for $75. Since there were five of us, it was an easy decision. Cabin and shower!

Oh! Hot showers are such a wonderful luxury!

Shaved and clean, we found out that they would cook us some dinner. The cook was Amish. Very friendly, always smiling. Oh and wonderful homemade sourdough bread!

Five days done. And we are only twenty miles behind planned.

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