Aspen, Trespassing

Cate and I arrived in Aspen just at the start of the Food and Wine Classic--a beautiful event for people with more money to invest in eating and drinking than we have. We arrived, dirty, wet, and snowed-on, and went to a bar where I changed into my new orange long underwear. As I washed my hands in the bathroom, a tipsy woman rushes in, locks herself in her stall, and yells from the stall, "Are you wearing orange PANTS!!!" Giggling, I said yes, and she said, "Oh my god you're totally ROCKING those!" I had to rush out of the bathroom before she saw how dirty I was. Aspen is a fan of my pants.

Cate and I also met a pair of men from the hills of western Virginia, who won an Anheiser-Busch sweepstakes to go to the Food and Wine Classic. They spoke with strong twangs, and said, "We don't drink wine."

We spent Saturday roaming around town, enjoying the ridiculous crowds. We got to test drive a couple pedal-assist bikes, which were SO MUCH FUN! They go 20 miles an hour uphill! If only Cate and I had motors on our bikes. Afterwards, we gravitated to our natural habitat, the Aspen Brewery, where they have a dog and never charge us for all the beer we drink.


Bike shoes (and red pants?) win us discounts at the Aspen Brewery.

On Sunday, we went rafting on The Slaughterhouse, class IV rapids. This was a lot of fun!


Cool booties.

Anyways we finally left Aspen, again, and Cate and I continued on our roundabout route. We followed a bike path for 35 miles, but then got tired and decided to camp on the bike path. This was a strange experience, since the bike path is extremely well-traveled, and it was kind of obvious what we were up to.


Why have such a convenient picnic table if you don't want us to camp here?

Between the ranch manager keeping a close eye on us and the millions of bicyclists going by, we couldn't set up our tent until after 9pm. In the morning, many cyclists were jealous of our pancakes.

The next day we went over Cottonwood Pass to Gypsum, CO--a very beautiful ride up a verdant canyon, though we had to watch out for a missing goose.




Where did it go?

About 10 miles before the top of the pass, the road changed to dirt. Sadly a road crew was enthusiastically watering the road in front of us, and we got VERY muddy.


No we have not showered since then.

Out of Gypsum, we started up a rough, rutted, one lane dirt road over BLM land. After about 5 miles of steep up, the road crossed a private ranch. The owner of this ranch believes that the county road is his private property, and he drove over to us to inform us we were trespassing. He managed to confuse us into thinking that the road had actually gone around his property, and we had missed the turnoff. We almost turned around to go find the road--which did not exist--when he sighed and told us we could continue. "Oh this road does go through?" we asked. We were still confused. Thanks, buddy.

Around 5:30 that evening, we were still biking because the BLM land we thought we could camp on was dry, dusty desert, though it had a great view of the green and beautiful private ranches by the Colorado River. We stopped to fix a flat tire, and one car passed us, stopped, and the driver said, "Do you need a place to camp? You can go right there, I don't mind," and pointed at the lush, treed ranch right in front of us. Thank you ranch man. You are a man of few but important words.


What a beautiful place to camp.

Sadly this man left out the words, "Be careful of the sprinklers that will emerge and drench everything at 4:30 in the morning." These would have been useful words.

The next day, we biked through the Colorado River Canyon for about 25 miles, which was fantastic. Finally we climbed out of the canyon for about 10 miles, and rejoined our route after 11 days of detouring!


Biking next to the Colorado river.

Since we rejoined the route, we have noticed a bunch of Great Divide racers headed in the opposite direction. These riders carry next to nothing, and go about 100 miles a day, following our same route.


We offered a granola bar to this British gentleman, who stopped to chat for a small second, but he couldn't possibly take it. Race rules.

Finally we arrived in Steamboat Springs. We had been looking forward to Steamboat for awhile now, because of the hot springs! So we stopped for dinner in town, and then rode about five miles, climbing over a thousand feet of elevation, to the hot springs. It would be worth it to get to hot springs, we told ourselves! It was worth it, especially after it got dark and we could surreptitiously eat cookies and take our clothes off.


Riding back down to Steamboat in the morning. This is first time we have ridden behind cars that were actually slowing us down.