The night in Pine Cove was a chilly one! We left our rain fly off so we could see the brilliant moon and stars when we go to pee in the night (how romantic), but it was pretty cold, into the 30s I think, and Andy and I pulled our sleeping bags as tight as possible.
We made another fire in the morn to warm us up, although the very dry wood didn't cooroperate as much and I ended up ripping out the "book group and discussion guide" section from my current NYTimes Bestseller to help get her started. Dead weight anyway.
After breakfast (oatmeal and coffee for A and more Melba for me), we set off on the leg of our next journey.
The picture taking fever continued to have hold of us and as I was still feeling rather pooly, just not able to eat a sufficiency of calories at all, we stopped often as we circled the Dillon reservoir via about a 7 mile bike route.
In Silverthorn, another sort of scary tourist place with outlet malls and vibrant colored buildings, we stopped at the 7-11 for some bananas and toast, which ended up being two croissants, which in turn ended up being a mistake. (I was to learn to not eat very much at all). We were again amazed at how little a person can know about their town when we asked the girls in the shop about the 2 major roads right outside the shop. And we talked to a Napoleonic old fellow on a BMW motorbike from Roanoke VA who gave us the thumbs up in a very backwards sort of manner.
Enough of that. This day was hard, for both of us. I think Andy was spent lifting my spirits (and maybe trying to fight off sickness himself), and we tried desperately to enjoy the views and to smile at all the friendly local bikers flying by the other way, but it was difficult. At some point we turned off Rt. 9 to take a sort of frontage road around a lake and have a town stop. This choice we later regretted as the town's services were all closed, the road was quite damaged, and hillier than the main route. But who knows, maybe we would have gone splat had we taken that route. In any case, I think the only thing that kept us going for this leg was that we were looking forward to meeting our friend (A's longtime buddy) Brian and his friend (and hopefully ours too) Bob in Kremmling, CO. Bob was out visiting Brian in Denver and had kindly offered his rental car to come look at the Rockies and track on down on the trail.
As it turned out, B&B probably would have passed us on route 9 if we hadn't turned off, but as fate would have it, they got to explore further down the route before our paths crossed.
Route 9 was also sort of horrible (very little to no shoulder), so when we pulled into Kremmling, we were quite happy to do so. Over the course of the last 40 miles the drop in elevation had already started to change the landscape significantly to a rockier and more desert-like scene.
In Kremmling, we headed straight for the library, to discover that there were 2 other fully loaded bicycles already out front. They belonged to the lovely Catie and Dave of Portland, OR, who were heading as far as they could East until Dave's brothers wedding takes them off route. We exchanged some tips, laughs, and gross sickness stories. They both had just had boughts of the stomach flu, as well as another French touring bicyclist named Pierre who walked in too. So apparently it is not something I had eaten afterall, but the plague of the TransAm (reading others biking blogs we have found that they too have gotten sick- yuck!). They also new Asta from previous Portland biking fun (it's a small world). We hope to see them when we get there. Dave is going to grad school at Lewis and Clark in the fall and Catie teaches 4th and 5th graders and loves it. She was wearing a dress and leggings. We were impressed. In any case, we didn't get much blogging done before Brian and Bob walked in and we began to have a joyous time. I think A really needed this boy time, so we chatted for a good bit, they had driven all the way to Hot Sulphur and back before B's cellphone alerted him that there was a vmail message. Brian had also brought us fruit and goldfish and a turkey sandwich, which kept us fed for the next day. We ate at the town's very dark saloon while a windy sandy storm encircled us. It was so good to see these too. Bob lives in brooklyn, but is the original Georgia Southern Gentleman and Brian is always full of grand tales.
After a few pics and some hugs, we set off into the darkened skies heading for a campground just before Hot Sulphur Springs. We felt a little more invigorated after our meetings of friends, and the ride didn't seem to bad. We stopped at this little general store in a town called Parshall, where a tiny little elderly woman rung us up for 7up and shredded wheat (my toast) and let us use the bathroom in her connecting house. It was then only 2 1/2 miles to our campsite, but just as we were turning in, a local cyclists, whose name was Shawn, turned out and told us we had to make it 2.5 more flat miles through Byers Canyon to the Hot Sulphur Springs to camp. He rolled with us a bit and sealed the deal for talking us into it, then took off to go up and over the mountains we were sort of dodging between, and said maybe we'd see him later at the springs.
We got to camp easily after keeping our heads up to stare at the gorgeousness and creepiness of the canyon. The camping was free, which was awesome, although quite buggy, and we ended up staking out tent town with railroad stakes because they were the only things A could successfully drive into the ground.
On our short walk to the springs, we had to cross a railroad track and a train was coming, Andy thought we should run for it, but I thought we should wait. So wait we did, and of course, the train got stuck.
After a few minutes of deliberating, we lost our patience and stupidly, but successfully, climbed up between the cars and over to freedom and restoration. The springs were $11 after 8pm so we got a good discount and then treated ourself to some of their 24 different pools. Our favorite was the natural one with the waterfall that you could drink from and get massaged by, yum. We ran into Shawn again in the "cooker" pool 112 degrees, and he told us about himself, sells insurance, has 3 girls, raises horses, bikes, the usual for CO I guess.
At 10, the springs closed and we reluctantly but very peacefully meandered back to camp and softly went to bed.
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