Thursday, July 30, 2009

Day 45: Aurora, CO to Loveland, CO

Finally back on the road.

We weren't actually sure where we were going to end up today. A few miles north of Pickle and Dave's we'd need to make a decision about if we were going through Boulder or Cheyenne.

Once again we started early, mostly to avoid the traffic on Havana Street. We rode nearly straight north for 4 miles until Havana Street abruptly disappeared. What looked like a big construction project was in our way, forcing us to explore a detour for a while. We added an extra mile looking around, in the rather dim, wet, cold morning.

At mile six, we had to make our decision. Further north would take us to US-85. West would take us along the Sand Creek Greenway and then to Boulder. I still didn't have an opinion, not sure I wanted to ride in the cold so soon. Jillian was sure. She wanted to ride to Boulder, which we'd always heard was awesome.

We turned down the Sand Creek Greenway, which was as advertised: sandy. But it rapidly got better, eventually even turning into pavement. The trails were actually pretty awesome, with wide bridges and lines on the pavement. The only thing they were lacking was any signage at all. It was actually an incredible pain to figure out which turns to make.

We followed the trails of Denver for some time, occasionally stopping and digging out the GPS in order to figure out how which direction to turn. The trails were sometimes on sidewalks, sometimes on dedicated paths, sometimes on the road, at once in a mall parking lot. Just over twenty miles in, we stopped at a McDonalds to warm up and get some food. We also noticed how sore we were, even five days off the bike was enough to make us feel slow.

Just over twenty-six miles in and after crossing the Boulder-Denver turnpike we saw a pretty awesome mixed use development.

We're not usually fans of big developments, but this one almost seemed to have some personality. Bike paths nearby, not far away from the highway, and far enough away from Denver that it didn't feel like the city. A little close to the metropolitan airport. From there we just kept climbing up a long hill. We were a couple hundred feet above the city below when it started raining. We didn't know what to do but ride on, but when we turned and the speed picked up the rain simply started to hurt. The big raindrops felt like hail.

Fortunately, at the bottom of the hill we found a Panera. Soon we had big, warm hot chocolates.

It took a lot of effort, but we were eventually able to drag ourselves back outside and ride the last few miles to Boulder. Boulder had amazing, amazing bike paths.

We navigated to downtown via the Broadway Boogie path, following the Bison signs. The University of Colorado looked awesome, but what really grabbed us was Pearl Street. Pearl Street is Boulder's pedestrian mall, with lots of fun shops and restaurants.

We did a lap, admiring the scenery and the buildings, then walked the length of the mall. We enjoyed the 80s themed free hug group.

It was hard to drag ourselves away from Boulder, but we needed to move a lot farther north before nightfall. We had a fast ride along the Diagonal highway on the way to Longmont, enjoying the ample bike lanes even on a major highway. Due to the wind, we were able to arrive in Longmont faster than originally planned. Longmont was one of the places we thought about spending the night, but we had arrived so early we weren't sure what to do. We decided to stop at a bike shop and see if we could find a new water bottle for Jillian.

Because Jillian's water bottle sits in a velcro strapped cage right between her legs, it's very easy for her legs to scrape against the bottle. If the bottle isn't built just right it can make a very painful ride. We didn't find anything though.

We found US-287 and headed north, having a fairly quiet ride right until dusk to make it to Loveland. In Loveland we found our way to a cluster of hotels. We found the price at the Super 8 a little high and instead opted for a room at the Quality Inn. We had dinner at a little place next door called Three Margaritas. It wasn't too long before we went to bed, rather happy that we'd gotten back on the road at last. As nice as it always feels to sit for a while, forward motion always feels better.

| posted at: 01:20 | permanent link and comments

You can view more entries using the archive links to your left or by looking at our index!