June 24, 2021
Day 43 - Fairplay, CO to Silverthorn, CO
Altitude sickness (the good sick)
We slept through a big storm last night and all the windows in the chu chu were open. Nothing for inside, but it was a soothing sleep and made me appreciate sleeping indoors again. So far it's rained 2 of 3 of the last nights. We decided to sleep in and make a good breakfast since it was a little chilly. We left around 9 am to go to the pass. Hoosier pass is 11600' and we were at 10000' in Fairplay. We rode a bike path to Alma, the last small town before the pass and grabbed some small snacks at the store there.
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Even on the way here, drivers were honking at us even when we were on the bike lane. And not friendly honks. You can usually tell. We heard there was construction on the way up to the pass, so I was pretty nervous. After alma the pass was 4 miles and 1000' up. It turned out that the construction was closing one lane at a time, which was great because there would be oncoming traffic only half the time.
Once we made it to where half the road was closed, the construction guys let us ride in the closed lane. It was like our own personal bike lane for the last 2 miles to the top. The incline wasn't so bad and we just took our time. You could feel it getting colder as we went up and I hoped it wouldn't rain. We lucked out on the rain and made it to the top in less than an hour.
Alex boiled water to have tea and we all hung out for a while.
The descent to breckenridge was pretty mild, especially compared to Kentucky. The headwind was still there and I had to pedal alot during the 1-2% grades. Cars were even more mad because they didn't want to brake anymore. After a few close calls, we all met up at the Breckenridge brewery. Even an order of fries was $7 so we left pretty quick. You have to have a job to stay at these fancy ski towns. We went via bike path to Frisco and then silverthorn, all mostly downhill.
We met up at the silverthorn REI to get some gear. Mary got a new pair of riding shoes and I had chubs (my bike) checked over. Since chubs came from rei, I got a free tune up, but I just had them make sure the bottom bracket was tight. We left rei and went to a pho place across the street to make plans for where to stay tonight. All campsites were booked and we didn't really want to illegally camp, so we split a cheap hotel. It worked out well because it rained again. We are going to send some stuff home tomorrow at USPS and Alex said he wanted to go back to rei for another bike bag. The room we got is probably the nicest one so far.
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Tomorrow we might do another short day to kremmling, where people said there is a good bakery. There is a hostel, but we will see about it. Unfortunately we have to take hwy 9 there, which is what we have been on for the past few days.
Mileage:40
Altitude gain:2000
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https://ridewithgps.com/routes/36559051 -take this route. You will miss this nice hostel in Kremmling - but you'll love the peace of the (good) dirt road. I've taken my recumbent bike on it. You will be fine.
If the mileage is a little short, you can go on to Granby, then Walden.
2 years ago
2 years ago