Thursday July 16
Left camp at 8:30 am and headed to find a print place to print out my GS Giants packet for a type of scavenger hunt to get points towards prizes.
Drove to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, the first national park I stopped at so far this trip. It is a rather amazing canyon that I have never heard of. It’s really deep, incredibly steep and beautiful. The temperature was 68, really pleasant to ride in, but when I hiked around the park, I was sweating in all my gear, but cooled back down when riding. I went around the top of the canyon and right before you leave, there is a road down to the river. It is a 16 degree sloped twisting route, not meant for anything larger than a car, and I was the only vehicle going down. Here are some shots from the top and at the bottom. Well worth the visit. After leaving the park, I decided to go to Fort Collins via Breckenridge and then the Rocky Mountain National Park, not the shortest or most direct route, but something I needed to see. The road to Breckenridge went through more beautiful mountains and often it got cold, the was still some snow at the told of some. More of what I hoped riding in Colorado would be like, and it didn’t disappoint. There were almost no straight roads until late in the day, and often I raced around turns with the excitement I had built up in the days leading up to these mountains.

At the bottom of Black Canyon

At one point, I raised my visor as I rode and within a minute, a bug exploded inside my helmet on my sunglasses and I could feel it’s cold guts on my cheek. Lesson learned, keep visor down. The next time I stopped to clean my glasses, I noticed a scratch, deep in the lense. Great something else to replace. I got to Breckenridge, decided to shop for a postcard to send my girlfriend and stopped in a sunglass shop. I must have tried on 25 pairs putting on my helmet, test fitting and so on, only to find none I would buy. There was one pair I liked, for $400, made of carbon fiber, insane. My snug helmet had also rubbed near the top of my cheeks so much from all the test fitting, that I gave up trying anymore on.As I went to leave town, a man and his son approached me and told me they have been watching “The Long Way Down”, and wanted to know about my trip, seeing that I was packed a bit more than most riders. We had a great conversion and the excitement they had talking about it reassured my mission of just traveling for its own sake. So I left town and headed toward the Rockies National Park, which was about 100 miles away. As I realized quickly, it was between 4 and 5 pm, it was already cooling down in the mountains, and maybe the Rockies is not the best place to drive at night, so with great sadness, I abandoned that thought and jumped on the freeway to speed up getting to see my friend Tom in Fort Collins. 2 hours later, at 8:30 pm I arrived to a house with no one home. He was playing volleyball and wouldn’t be home for a while, but I was hungry so I went downtown to Copperhouse Brewery where he later met me. When we got back to his house, we had more beer and some tequila. Finally went to bed at 2 or 3 am.
Days travel = 369 miles