A Colorado Post Card day to start our trip to Glenwood Springs on the Western Slope of Colorado with temps in the afternoon reaching into the 90’s. Summer is here!
Leaving our home at 8:15 this morning we’re still smiling, not yet fully grasping what we are about to do on this crazy bike ride across the Continental Divide!
The beautiful and iconic Flat Iron Mountains standing over the interesting alternate reality known as Boulder, CO.
About 18 miles into our 46 mile day we make our first stop before we jump off of the secondary roads we’ve been on all morning and onto CO 93, the main and busy connector highway between Boulder and Golden.
In Golden after 32 miles we stop for a lunch at a sidewalk cafe and Angela catches up on her Facebook friends. So far the ride has been pretty typical of Front Range cycling but we’re about to start a steep and constant ascent up Look Out Mountain on our way to Evergreen for the night.
One of my most favorite “little” things in life is to take a nap under a tree on a nice afternoon. Here on the campus of The School of Mines we take a little nap to let our food settle before the big climb ahead of us.
About 2 miles up Look Out Mountain you can see Golden, made famous for the Coors plant on the left, and the quaint college campus of the School of Mines. It’s about 1:30 now and we’re starting to sweat quite a lot due to the heat and the effort.
About 5 miles up we’ve moved onto a cooler climate at around 7,000 ft. elevation, full of evergreen trees separated by the circuitous and steep road we’ve been grinding up for over an hour now.
A quick rest near the top to take in the long views of the Front Range. I’m pretty sure I can see Kansas on the horizon!
The climb was particularly rough on Angela today. Neither she nor I are in our best cycling shape, but she’s almost there! Go Angela!!
This is the elevation profile of our ride today. There weren’t many chances to rest our legs with all of the climbing. You can see where the Look Out Mountain climbing started around mile 32.
Ahhh, along the bike path that follows I-70 we see what we’ve been waiting for, the exit sign for Evergreen, our home for the night.
And conveniently located next to our hotel was the the famous El Rancho restaurant where I found a nice El Rancho brew and we both had a tasty appetizer and dinner. Tomorrow we take on a very long and high elevation journey over Loveland Pass at 11,991 ft. We better get a good nights rest.
