Thursday, July 23, 2009
Day 38: Colorado Springs, CO to Aurora, CO
Like all good days, we started with a delicious hot breakfast at La Quinta. We had some time to reflect. Today we'd finally be reaching Denver. Denver was a huge goal for us, and an important milestone. Denver was the last major airport on our route before Portland, making it the last place to quit. It was also Pickle and Dave's house, who were willing to grant us a place to crash for as long as we needed. We'd been thinking about Denver non stop all the way across the mid west, and believe us when we say there isn't much else to think about across the mid west.
We loaded the bike up in the back of the hotel and set off for a nearby park with a Front Range Trail-head. We hadn't originally planned on this route, but once we were on the trail, we were sure we'd made the right decision.
The trail seemed to work its way right through downtown, following the creek that runs through town. The bike path was wide, with big bridges to carry us over the creek when necessary. There were bathrooms at regular intervals. There was shade! It was awesome. Eventually we found ourselves at the same park we'd gotten lost at the night before. We arrived just in time to watch park services workers turn on the fountain, causing it to slowly rotate.
While we were at the park, we stopped to use the bathroom at what might be the most depressing bathroom in the world. No doors, just stainless steel, cold, cold fixtures. It was a nice park, though.
We left, following clearly marked bike paths north, intending to follow the Front Range trail most of the way to Denver. On our way out of the park, we ran into a detour. Impressively, it was clearly marked with signs. We were starting to fall in love with Colorado.
When we got to the north side of town, we found a bike shop and stopped in to grab tubes and investigate the wares. Colorado Springs is the headquarters of USA Cycling, and we wanted to see a bike shop in a town that loves cycling. It was a pretty awesome bike shop.
In the front of the store, they had a tv playing replays of the Tour de France from last night. A woman watching the tv was kind enough to ruin the outcome for both of us, though separately. Unfortunately, they had no tubes for us, but we enjoyed awesome cycling themed toilet paper, met a recumbent tour rider, and ate a few yummy Clif Bars.
North of town, the trail switched back to dirt. We weren't very happy about getting back on dirt, but we were willing to do it if we knew we were going to be on well taken care of trails instead of the awful road we'd been on yesterday. When we reached the Air Force Academy campus, things got even worse.
The Air Force Academy does not maintain their paths to the same extent the city of Colorado Springs does. The paths started to feel like mountain biking paths, with erosion control logs across the paths and steep hills. It was probably a mistake to take a fully loaded tandem with trailer down the path, but we just barely made it.
This path had some beautiful views on it, but we were mostly excited by the bathroom we found just past campus. The path was empty, and we had a nice view ahead of us. But we couldn't take advantage of it. The sudden dirt path slowed us down considerably. We took a short break before hopping back on and trying to ride to Monument.
Monument was a small town, but it had a McDonalds, providing us with a chance to get some food. Somehow the people at the Monument McDonalds were the rudest people we'd ever met. The air conditioning was broken and there was some flooding on the floor. Every patron there was flipping out and complaining. We ate and left in a hurry, since these people were unlike all the other Colorado people we'd met.
North of Monument we came to Palmer Lake, where the trail ended abruptly. Here we realized just how far up we'd come. Our current elevation was over 7000 feet, whereas our elevation in Colorado Springs had been 6000, and we'd been at only 4600 in Pueblo. We tried to use the bathrooms at the park here, but found both the port a potty and the park bathrooms were overflowing. The houses that overlooked the lake were beautiful. Aside from the bathroom situation, the park was awesome.
We were able to get back on Spruce Mountain Rd, which was fortunately paved. We took that all the way to the town of Lakespur. The ride felt awesome, with long sweeping hills with mountain views and no traffic. The only thing that took away from it was the tremendous homes going up all over.
At Lakespur we found a little gas station where we could get some root beer floats and cool down. While items were ridiculously overpriced, the floats were good and we were able to get a bit of rest. We chatted with patrons for a while, before deciding we had to get moving again.
From here we had two choices. We could either turn uphill, or we could go down and try to hop on the highway. According to the maps we had, the road we were traveling would end at the highway. Still preferring to not ride the highway, we turned up hill. After about fifty yards, we turned around and rode downhill toward the highway. After looking at the amount of traffic, we spun around again and climbed the hill, passing the Colorado Renaissance Fairgrounds.
After passing through a nice neighborhood, with houses tucked into the trees, as well as a golf course, we rode along a frontage road to Castle Rock.
After waiting for a train to pass (I was counting cars), we rode into Castle Rock and stopped for more cold drinks. It wasn't long before we noticed how late it was getting. We had some trouble getting out of town, getting just a little bit lost. We climbed a few hundred feet on a terrible road with almost no shoulders at all.
In Franktown, we turned north onto CO-83. As we got further on 83, we had to make a decision about getting back on to trails. We'd seen maps that said there were trails running most of the way to Pickle and Dave's. But we also hadn't forgotten the trails in Colorado Springs. Since it was getting dark, we decided to stay on the road. We were promptly assaulted by bugs. Jillian covered her face, I just held my lips tightly closed and tried not to breathe.
Further on we saw a fantastic sunset.
This was also the last light we saw. Just as the road changed to four lanes, the sun dipped below the horizon. We turned into a Best Buy in Parker to buy some batteries. While there, not surprisingly, we flatted. I also purchased the wrong batteries, making us go in again and wasting precious time.
Parker seemed like a fun little town, but we had no chance to explore. Further on, we reached I-225 and realized we suddenly needed to deal with a six lane highway. After a mad, crazy sprint across a bridge we got off the highway and dead reckoned across some sidewalks. After a little bit of help from the Garmin, we got back on course. Perhaps by luck, we were suddenly in quiet neighborhoods and able to navigate to Pickle and Dave's in Aurora.
Since we were quite late, Dave and Pickle were rather happy to see us. They served us piles of spaghetti and meatballs. Despite being exhausted, I stayed up for a quite a while, catching up with Pickle. Jillian went to bed in a hurry.
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| posted at: 01:19 |
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