August 13, Tuesday

 

We rejoined Roger and John at the Creekside restaurant for breakfast. They had an amazing unusual breakfast burrito! Only took one more opportunity to harass the great staff at Orange Peel Bikes.
We passed through the Yampa river trail system, which has a good quality road alongside the river and below some basalt column looking things. This led us to Stagecoach Reservoir and the defunct never launched Stagecoach ski resort. I wonder if someone lost their shirt building homes on speculation, because there are so many homes and a large percentage of them are for sale. The pass was mostly a long gradual climb, we had some urgency, because we were being chased by a thunderstorm.It eventually overtook us and we got wet, but as we pulled out our raincoats it stopped and the sun came out.
At Lynx campground, there was a duct tape note on the the  sign for the hand pump that said "no water", but we didn't even see the pump. On further examination, we found the pump and extracted water, so we can only hypothesize that someone couldn't find the pump.

 

August 12

August 11

  

We drank coffee and chatted with Gretchen and Marc in their kitchen, then went and hung out at the bike shop (Orange Peel), while they worked on John and Roger's bikes and then ate breakfast at the Bamboo food store.  Susan and Kevin were toodling about in that area, so we set up a time and place for dinner together before parting.   

John, Roger, Jamie and I climbed in the Emerald mountain biking area, enjoying real single track mountain biking without panniers and bags.  We got down too late to go tubing, but did laundry and showered instead before dinner.  We stayed at the Bristol, a hotel my partner and I discovered when staying in Steamboat 10 years ago with our kids and my parents.   It is still great.  Roger and John stayed at Rabbit Ears hotel, at the other end of town.  We never made it out of the dinner restaurant in time for the hot springs.  

When I jokingly proposed another rest day in Steamboat, I was rather surprised at how fast everyone in our group agreed, but Susan and Kevin persisted in moving on the next day.

Susan and Kevin had seen Roberta and she told them our next CG is closed (Linx Pass), we we will have to check on that, but it was nice to hear Roberta had continued to find people to travel with.  We parted from Susan and Kevin with hope we will see them in Breckenridge.

Stats:

start odometer 1899

end 1914

total 15 

 

August 10, Saturday

It was again not as cold as I thought is would be this morning.  The sheep dogs were barking up a storm last night, leading Roger and John to believe there were other dogs or coyotes nearby.  The shepherds seem to have 2 types of dogs;  the big white ones seem to mingle and protect and the black and brown ones seem to herd.

Our first task was to tackle the watershed divide, which the route directions indicate a 1.5 mile pusher.  It didn't turn out to be so severe, consisting of a series of very steep pushers connected either by moderate to flat rocky sections.  This was followed by 6 or so miles of steep stoney road on which it was not possible to go over 8MPH.  More dirt on a better road followed and we met a young boy, maybe 10, and his mother mountain biking up our downhill.  He asked questions about the GDMBR and how our maps and theirs were the same/different.

The route popped out onto pavement and we stopped at Clark Store.  10,000 tourists and locals seem to have had the same idea. The store had ice cream and prepared sandwiches and was a popular stop for the many road cyclists.

The end of the day consisted of mostly rolling downhill into Steamboat Springs was quick and enjoyable.  When we stopped at a bike shop, I asked if they knew anyone who would let Jamie and me camp on their lawn (Roger and John had decided to take a hotel) and they hooked us up with Marc and Gretchen, who proceeded to walk through the door. Roger and John changed their minds and camped out there as well.  Jamie and I went for ice cream before pitching our tents on their lawn and we bumped into Susan.  We haven't seen her and Kevin since Pinedale and I thought that was a permanent goodbye, so it was an unexpected pleasure.  She had a broken fork and a badly out of true wheel and she comically illustrated what it was like to ride a bike in that condition.  Wish I had taken a video. 

Jamie, Roger, John and I reconvened at Marc and Bridget's house, where they offered us beer and we got to play with their sweet Australian shepherd, Emmie.  Marc and Bridget have been working on building and maintaining many of the Steamboat Springs Emerald mountain biking trails and in the winter they teach skiing.  We tried to entice them out to the brewery for dinner, our treat, but they stood firm and declined.  We had arranged to meet Susan and Kevin there and so we ended our evening.

Stats:

start odometer 1860

end 1899

total 39

max 36.8

avg 11.8

time 3:04

August 9, Friday

I assumed it would be cold this morning, but it was no colder than most mornings, probably around 50.  About 4 miles down the road, we turned down WY70 and were almost immediately stopped by a flag woman.  She told us we would have to wait for a construction escort, but we let her know we just were headed  for the driveway a little past her, a NF work center. There we found a pit toilet and running water. As a knee reaction to yesterday's low flow, sheep infested stream, we filled all water bottles and bladders.

On our way out of the work center, the pilot vehicle for the construction showed up and offered us a lift through the construction, telling us it was about a mile of almost 10% grade.  Apparently they had just removed the last of the heavy equipment and the paving was now complete. The transport had been mandatory for the cyclist 1/2 hour ahead of us with the BOB trailer (camped near us last night), but not mandatory for us.  We declined, but the pilot vehicle escorted us anyways at 5 MPH.  When she stopped after a steep 1/4 mile, I figured it was just a plateau and she was waiting for us to re-group, but that was the end.  It would have taken us longer to load our bikes into her pickup than to just ride up and I would have been embarrassed to have taken the ride in hind-sight.

The whole thing was in stark contrast to the incident 3 years ago on the Trans Am, when the construction company working on Hosier Pass between Fairplay and Breckenridge not only did not offer a ride, but let the single lane of oncoming traffic come down on us. 

The road to Slater (Post Office only) was mostly downhill, where we lost most of our altitude and will need to mostly regain it again tomorrow. 

Aspens have been pervasive, but only at higher elevations.  As our elevation dropped, sage returned until we climbed back up again.  We passed through a lot of private range land until the Routt NF boundary.  It began to rain and the temperature dropped until we were forced to don our raincoats.  As the road deteriorated and the temperature dropped we looked for a campsite.  A site with a shepherd trailer and truck offered plenty of room and around 7:30 pm two spanish speaking herders showed up .  John and Roger were able to communicate enough with them to gain water and get permission to store our food in their trailer.

Stats:

odo start- 1817

end1860

total 43.66

max 44.5

avg 9.5

time 4:33

August 8, Thursday

We returned to Penny's diner (lunch yesterday) for breakfast to rejoin Roger and John. The path out of Rawlins led us back into sagebrush territory for about 2/3 of the day. The road was dirt, moderately new, about 6 cars wide, seemed to go nowhere specific and carried little traffic unrelated to the construction. All this leads me to believe it was a project to grease palms. At an intersection the road was clearly marked as closed, but when has that stopped us. It turns out they were re-grading it to make it less steep, but again, for who I'm not sure.
We entered Medicine Bow National Forest and the roller coaster climbing and falling became exacerbated by moderate washboard.  The water availability became less and less and the water more commonly trod by sheep, flocks of which we passed and chased on the way to the campsite near Little Sandstone Creek.  We will try to make it down the road a bit with the water we have.  There was an unfamiliar cyclist with a BOB trailer already at the site.  Jamie found the full skeleton of a sheep; the skin had been pulled off and "set" aside.

Stats:
beg odo- 1760
end 1817
total 57
avg 9
time 5:49
max 33.2

August 7, Wednesday

Again we got up at 5 and were out by 7, avoiding the heat of the day later. Even though it was a little cool, we warmed up quickly with a few short climbs. It was back to sand and washboard, but only for about 13 miles before pavement. Jamie said she had missed Sandy Washboard so much! It is funny how all washboard is compared to the downhill from Union Pass now.
There was a headwind or crosswind the whole way to Rawlins; for the most part we took advantage of our group status and drafted off each other.
The first paved road was like something out of Mad Max; it looked like they paved it, then forgot about it. There were cracks with weeds growing out of them. Before oil was being drilled here, the road probably saw little traffic and even now, in about 3 hours we saw only about 5 vehicles. The road over the divide was under serious  construction, but for most of it we were able to travel in a closed lane.
Initially neither Jamie nor I could remember Rawlins from the Trans Am, but eventually I remembered the old downtown.  Unfortunately, urban renewal probably ruined the old downtown and what remains struggles to compete against the spirally.
We went to the Huckleberry Cafe, which I remembered visiting with Bill during our Trans Am trip. Roger and John chose to stay in a hotel on the outskirts of town, while Jamie and I went in search of the KOA. In typical KOA style, the sites were very open, with few, if any trees, but Jamie and I thought we would splurge on a cabin. As we rode up to the office building, a guy in a golf cart drove up and told us we could not lean our bikes up against the building,  but must leave them at the curb. When I explained that they had no kickstands, he told us "that's what the curb is for ". I immediately turned to Jamie and asked her if there weren't two more campgrounds and we left. He must have been more concerned with his tiny strip of perfectly manicured golf course lawn, weedless and all of a uniform height than he was about his business. We wouldn't have even had to cross his lawn.
Jamie used her phone to find a $60 hotel and off we went to the Econolodge.
Not exactly the Ritz, but clean and roomy. The clerk was friendly and seemed amenable to cyclists. They gave us rags to clean our chains and gave us 1.5 rolls of TP- he said no charge, but I gave him $2, for you couldn't buy single rolls in the grocery.
Next was the grocery shopping, then ice cream at Huckleberry Cafe. A big rodeo was going on at the fair grounds, but we were too lazy to go and cleaned our chains and did laundry instead.
Stats:
Start odometer 1693
End 1760
Total 65.49
Avg 12.9
Max 31.7
Time 5:03

August 6, Tuesday

We got up at 5am and were out of camp by 7am. Nancy still beat us out and we didn't see her again until the next campsite at A &M Reservoir, north of Rawlins.
We chugged through the extremely dry region of the Great Divide Basin. It was mixed climbing, flat and downhill, without a continuous lot of any one terrain, but the sun and the 70 miles took its toll. It is difficult to imagine the task it was to cross this in a wagon over a hundred years ago.
Jamie and I left Roger and John at lunch and ended up way ahead of them, because Roger lost something off his bike and went back for it.
The sagebrush rarely grew over 2" and you travel over a hundred miles without a natural source of water on the route. There was a well 12 miles into the ride today and we saw a lake off in the distance, but we had filled all our bottles and reservoirs.
The only signs of civilization were a cow camp,  where we stopped for lunchtime  shade, a couple of oil pumping /collection sites and a few vehicles.
The reservoir was a truly welcome sight. The water was cold and refreshing, so we "swam". Nancy was already there. Since we got there at 3:30, we mostly lay in our tents and drank water.
Stats:
Start 1624
End 1693
Total 70
Max 32.1
Avg 10.3
Time 6:41

August 5, Monday

I had trouble sleeping due to the mice climbing up the sides of my tent and running over the top. It happened twice before I got so worried about them chewing through my tent and into my food bag (in my tent), I finally got up and put the pannier on my bike. Bears were the least of my worries in this spot. If a fox or skunk tried to get into the pannier the bike would fall over as an alarm.

Nancy left before us, though headed for the same end point. We gradually climbed and then followed the divide, with views spanning over 50 miles on either side if the road. More and more antelope appeared,  but not much else.
The size if the sage brush got shorter and shorter until it was no taller than 5 inches. We came out on to pavement to use a rest area and get water, use the restrooms and the pavilion, then it was back to dirt to travel to South Pass City, mostly a museum town.
Both South Pass City and Atlantic City are in depressions geographically, so you dive down into them steeply and climb steeply to get back out. Atlantic City was a tiny, but seemingly vibrant town and we stopped in the mercantile (which was a restaurant /bar, not a grocery)  and had "lunch", brownie sundaes and loads of non-alcoholic drinks before the steep climb out.  Nancy was there whiling away the time so as not to arrive too early at the campground, so we all climbed and rode through some delightful rolling downhill to the Sweetwater River where we camped in a meadow; so beautiful.