For a long time we’ve talked about cycling in Colorado. But it seemed too big a place to cover on a point-to-point bike-packing trip as we’ve been doing for a few years now. AND we were concerned with going from sea level to the high altitudes. We figured out that driving there and riding a few places along the way could address both concerns. Fortunately our friends who lent us their camper van 4 years ago (when we did a Southern Utah commercial tour with other tandems) were open to our borrowing it again for this trip. Hence this vacation was conceived. After much planning we set out on Thursday September 11 for a short 200 mile drive to see family in the Tri-Cities. The next day we drove to Boise. We headed downtown for dinner and a walk about after all that sitting. We had another spot in mind but Dharma called out to us. Loved all the murals.
Sat Sept 13 – 49 miles in Boise
As I write this in the camper on the way from Boise to Ogden, there’s an intense thunder storm we’re driving through. It makes me extra grateful that yesterday was a perfect day. We rode 49 miles with 1632 feet of climbing. We both felt strong, making it a successful first day of acclimation to altitude. YAY.
While we have done a week-long supported tour in Idaho, we’ve never actually done a ride in Boise. Over the years we’ve missed at least two NW Tandem Rally events here. So we were delighted when we researched routes in Boise to stumble on one by Deedee Rixe who we know from our tandem club. It turned out to be one of the NWTR routes!
The weather was sunny, windy and temperate. Our Warmshowers host, Elizabeth, lives close to a bike trail into town. Once we got through the construction through downtown, we did a well-known loop through the countryside. It was fun with all the ups and down. The longest hill climb was Pierce Park Road Climb with 2.6 miles of climbing and gaining of 561’. The route was mostly devoid of pit stops. We deviated from the course and found a cider event with facilities in Hidden Springs. On the return through town we rode the Boise River Trail which was lovely. Boise has an excellent bike infrastructure.
Elizabeth treated us to dinner at the vegan High Note Cafe. We explored the area and we treated her to yummy ice cream for dessert. We had stimulating conversations and even took a little time in the public art structure that had 2-person swings. We enjoyed our time in the City of Trees.
Mon Sept 15 – 40.6 miles in Ogden
Tuesday Sept 16 – Driving Ogden to Palisade
We finally made it to Colorado. Yesterday we drove roughly 350 miles from Ogden to Palisade, through Salt Lake City then into the mountains and over. We take turns, though Spencer tends to take the longer and/or more challenging pulls. We were getting close to the border and could see a storm on the horizon and the wind picked up. I was driving and it was getting hard to control Maxi (the camper van). There was nowhere to pull over except at the state line where Spencer took over again. The last leg was an exquisite sunset. We are again with a Warmshowers host. This time a couple closer to our age and they ride a tandem! We’ll ride with them this morning. They have sweet kitties.
Wednesday Sept 17 – 49.6 miles Palisade Fruit Loop & Grand Junction
First day of riding in Colorado with blue skies and lots of sunshine. We headed out at 9 to ride what they call the Fruit Loop. We rode up some hills into the orchards and vineyards with a great view of of Mt. Garfield. Apparently this area is known for peaches and wine in particular. Randy & Nancy turned around at 10 miles and we carried on to Grand Junction. We were told not to miss meeting Chris Brown of Brown Cycles. His shop is literally a bike museum with so many unique old bikes and tons of great stories. We were there for an hour. We rode the same Colorado Riverside trail back with a short detour to stop at the pie shop…amazingly good. We got home with 49.6 miles and 1142 ft of gain.
Thursday Sept 18 – 37.6 miles Colorado National Monument
Today is Spencer’s 73 birthday. We celebrated all day including riding the magnificent Colorado National Monument located in Fruita. It’s hard to do it justice while moving on a tandem. The National Park Service website has a video of the splendor. We rode with Randy, our Warmshowers host. It was a 37.6 mile ride with 2600 ft of gain and three tunnels. For those of you cyclists who know RAMROD it’s even more climbing per miles to do this loop! Our top speed was an impressive 52.8 MPH! After we got back to the car we drove to Grand Junction and had Thai food for a celebratory late lunch. Then I surprised Spencer with a chocolate funnel cake that was on the menu. And finally we stopped at a nearby Great Harvest for a loaf of bread. They sent me out with a Palisade Peach loaf as a birthday present.
Friday Sept 19 – Driving Rifle to Woodland Park
We don’t talk much about the driving time between the cycling days. Last night we decided to get a head start on today’s driving so we drove to a sweet Rest Stop in Rifle. It’s the first night we haven’t been with a Warmshowers host. They had these lovely paintings I wanted to share. You can see Maxi our borrowed camper van in the distance. We were surprised by how much colder it is here in the mountains. We pulled out our tights, sweatshirts and jackets until the sun comes up. We took time to walk around the small lake where we chatted briefly with a local fisherman before heading out to start driving again.
We drove about 200 miles today. A lot of it was scenic. The road followed a river often with rafters and fishman. We noticed there was a bike trail between the river and the highway. We looked it up: The trail was built in conjunction with I-70 and completed in 1992, and stands as one of the most impressive highway engineering feats in the world through this narrow, steep canyon. This is a 15 minute Go-Pro video of the trail found on YouTube. Our final destination was Jeff & Lauren’s in Woodland Park. The photo captions tell the rest of our arrival story.
Saturday Sept 20 – Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs
Today we enjoyed another leisurely morning, knowing that the later we started the more likely we’d get hit by the impending thunderstorm. As it turned out we only got a few sprinkles. We decided to quit while we were ahead (a mere 20 miles with lots of visiting and picture taking). Just as we got both bikes back into the camper the skies opened up! Good choice to cut it short. We mostly rode the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, a city park loop. We spent some time at The Buffalo Lodge & Bicycle Resort in Colorado Springs for a quick look that ended up being a long stop. Fascinating concept and a fun mural and sign over the entry. We enjoyed the day immensely and had a lovely visit exchanging stories with Jeff. He’s been here a long time and is a wealth of stories about the area. Check out the Manitou Springs Incline which we only saw from a distance.
Sunday Sept 21 – Woodland Park – Dirt, Gravel, Hills, Rain, Hail
Today’s ride was unique for us. Colorado is quite into mountain biking, including both dirt and gravel. We’ve never done that since Tess is a road bike. The 20 mile route Jeff selected begins just below his home and has some stretches of both. We were game. We drove down the steep gravel road and parked to begin the mostly uphill ride. We were doing fine until at about 10 miles when the threatening clouds decided it’d be fun to hail on us! They were small, hard pellets which hurt. The temperature dropped significantly. This was not forecasted. I was the only one with tights. Jeff & I both had jackets. Spencer had neither. In the pix you’ll see we traded back and forth. Jeff spotted a place to take cover though the trees were not generous in their ability to shelter. Once the bikes were cleaned and we were back home, we took the car and we all went to a nearby spot with a vista of Pikes Peak.
Monday Sept 22 – Pikes Peak
What a wonderful transition day. Lauren took a sunrise shot of Maxi. She fixed pancakes for breakfast, always a favorite. Jeff read to Lucy and Gertie & Chewy napped together. We borrowed their car and drove up to Pikes Peak. At 14,115 ft it was quite the adventure with endless switchbacks and pullouts for viewing the breathtaking scenery. We only experienced some slight effects of the altitude for the last few miles. It was in the 30s at the top so we donned serious cold-weather jackets. We saw plenty of yellow aspens the first part of the drive, then the scenery shifted to evergreens, then only rock formations. If you’re ever in the area this is a must-see National Forest.
Loved this sweatshirt message. I really identified as we felt a bit breathless ourselves. I saw it earlier in the day but when I saw her the second time I asked for the photo.
Finally we drove Maxi to our next destination, Littleton, through a massive thunder storm! As we prepare for sleep it’s the first night it’ll be to the sound of rain.
PS: the rains continued into Tuesday, so no riding for us today.
Wednesday Sept 24 – Littleton/Denver 3 Trails & Todd
You may’ve noticed there was no post yesterday. That’s because it rained overnight AND all day yesterday. In fact it was so cold we turned on Maxi’s heater for the first time. We didn’t choose to ride in the rain. Instead we spent the day visiting with our host and chillaxing. We toured Highline Crossing Cohousing which has 40 homes and is right on one of the many bike trails and played Qwirkle with Wendy and David. Today’s forecast was for sunny and dry. The plan was to leave by 8:30 so we could catch Todd, the brains behind da Vinci Tandems. So when we departed it was still pretty cold, gray and drizzly. We wore many layers including my puff coat. But by the time we got to Todd’s it was sunny and dry. Today we rode 60 miles, covering parts of three different trails. Due to yesterday’s rain we encountered some wet spots. We made it home in time to shower before joining Wendy at Littleton’s Longer Table event. They had an entire mile of downtown setup for folks to connect over a meal.
Thursday/Friday Sept 25-26 – Boulder Foothills ride- 43 miles
Yesterday was planned to be a driving and visiting day. When we met with Todd we agreed to bring Tess back for some work this morning. He estimated it’ll only take a couple of hours to make the improvements. We figured we’d go for a walk, read, etc. It turned out to be much more challenging than he’d anticipated, given Tess is ten years old with dated technology. By 4 PM he wasn’t done and the bike was not in one piece. So we drove to Boulder without Tess. Todd’s goal was to have it ready for pickup by 9AM today. And true to his word, it was! After a 2.5 mile test ride with Todd, we drove the 35 miles back to Boulder. We were geared up and ready to ride by 12:30. It was already 80 degrees. We had a gorgeous ride through expansive country with views of the foothills. And with the improvements Todd made Spencer found we used less battery AND rode faster. We averaged 15.5 MPH for 43 miles.
For the bike geeks among you, here’s what Todd did. Basically, he changed our bike from having 3 main drive rings to choose from to only 2. This was too difficult for Spencer to control, so we had shut down the auto-shift option. But when we only had 2 front chainrings on the bike, we found we could leave it on auto-shift and never get stuck in the wrong gear at the wrong time. And we rode faster and easier, as well.
Saturday Sept 27 – Uphill to Ward & back 32 miles, 3300 ft.
Today began with a cohousing Marimba Brunch. It’s an annual event typically with Bluegrass. It was a lovely day for it, ten degrees cooler than yesterday. Afterwards we’d charted a challenging 60 mile final ride for this trip. We chopped 10 miles off when we drove to the start. With no time to warm up we began the relentless climb which lasted 15 miles and 3300 ft of gain, maxing out at 8888 ft. We followed babbling waterways for quite a ways up. The higher we went the more yellow Aspens we saw. Upper reaches of the climb were so cold we donned wind jackets and eventually tights and socks. When we got to the Ward Mountain Exchange we chatted with local cyclists. We decided to enjoy the downhill run back to where we parked instead of the planned route through Lyon. That would’ve entailed too much time riding on Highway 36. The 15 mile climb up took us more than two hours. We were pretty tuckered out when we reached the top. One local who took our photo at the top said it’s the best fall color he’s seen in years because there hadn’t been any rain or wind that typically knocks the leaves off. That explains all the cars.
After our showers we again borrowed Karin’s Leaf and checked out Pearl Street, the heart of downtown. It was preparing for tomorrow’s big Boulderthon Marathon. We were excited to visit the home of Liberty Puzzles. We rounded out the evening with an excellent Thai dinner at Aloy,
Sunday Sept 28 – Beginning the 5-day drive home
Today marks the beginning of our five day drive home. Without the kind generosity of our friends we would not have been able to even make this journey. Borrowing Maxi allowed us to acclimate gradually to the altitude which made it possible to do all the 327 miles of cycling we did with no signs of altitude sickness!
Monday – Sept 29
Not surprisingly, once we left Boulder with no more cycling on the horizon we both developed a bad case of Barn Fever. We lengthened our driving days in order to get home by Wednesday instead of Thursday. Despite our revised plans, we ended up stopping earlier than intended, mostly thanks to a kind fellow who informed us that going further west would be a waste of time. Apparently a semi had overturned in a construction area and there was a miles-long backup of semi trucks. So we hunkered down in another rain storm at Love’s Truck Stop for the night. That meant that on Tuesday we had one very long day. We got up at 5AM and made it to Boise. It took 8 hours to drive 545 miles! Only two photos, one a sign that someone actually thought we could read on the freeway while driving 75 mph! The other Maxi, with Utah’s gorgeous red rocks. We took a leisurely lunch break there. We experienced a lot of road work and some intensely heavy and sudden downpours. Spencer drove nearly twice as many hours as I did, but I got caught in the worst rain!
Wednesday October 1 – HOME!
Tuesday morning we rushed toward Kennewick to be there by 1PM for a school choir performance that Cole was part of. It was lovely to hear all the different offerings. The rest of the visit we enjoyed conversations and Qwirkle with Ryan & Tanya and their kids. We left early enough to be home in the middle of the day Wednesday, where we devoted ourselves to grounding. Spencer went off to wash and vacuum Maxi, while Sheila worked on doing two loads of laundry, food shopping and of course unpacking. It was lovely to attend our first community meal since the program took a hiatus over the summer. We brought our own salad for dinner as we were craving lots of greens. We cycled a total of 327 miles and drove 2880 miles. It was an adventure to cherish. One friend called it EPIC!
We are “locals” Desert Sothwest and would like to connect with you. We ride a Da Vinci Tailwinds tandem.
Love it since we have been aging and still riding.
Sounds like a fantastic trip. We spent lots of time in that state climbing 14,000-ers. I was impressed by the “verts” you did on the bike!
What a fun trip. It’s made for a fun read. I can’t wait to read about the next tandem trip.