After two fun days in Colorado Springs visiting the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak, it was time to pack up and leave. We really enjoyed our time at Cheyenne Mountain State Park! When we checked in three days ago, Denisa had noticed that they had mountain bikes to loan to Colorado State Park annual pass holders. That would be us! So we borrowed a couple of those sturdy bikes for an early morning bike ride.
We were the first people at the visitor center that morning, and the very helpful ranger loaned us a small bike for Denisa and a large bike for Mark. Denisa had checked out the trail head, and talked Mark into this little ride. When the ranger asked if we had technical biking skills, Denisa couldn’t say “No!” loud enough or fast enough. So she advised us to try the easiest trail in the park—The Sundance Loop.
It didn’t take long to find out that the sun doesn’t always dance on smooth, flat ground like we would have preferred. Much of the Sundance trail was steep up- and down-hill. The picture below is of Denisa walking her mountain bike through a rocky uphill section in the trees.
The good news was the trail afforded us great views of Cheyenne Mountain. We were reminded that we could mountain bike in more of God’s wonders.
We enjoyed the flat sections beside the flowers on the trail.
But we didn’t enjoy the uphill sections filled with tree roots and rocks. The next picture would be Denisa, once again walking her bike through a tough part.
Did we mention that this ride was Denisa’s idea? Mark was such a good sport! But we were both sweating as we got around this three-mile loop.
Even though we didn’t have a lot of fun, we both agreed that it was a good thing to try. We enjoy bike riding, but we never had access to real mountain bikes to see if that would be a good activity for us. After this morning’s ride, we see that we need to stick to the rail-to-trail bike paths that we have found all over the country. They are wide and reasonably flat, and they don’t have big rocks and sharp curves and scary downhills and tree roots and steep uphills and . . . We’ve learned our lesson that mountain biking is not for us.
We had already taken our showers, because we needed to be out of our campsite by noon. But we had to take another shower after that harder-than-usual bike ride on a hotter-than-usual morning. We were out of our campsite by 11:50, and on the road to our next camp site. This day’s drive was straight north up I-25 through the construction and traffic of Colorado Springs, then through the endless urban sprawl that connects it to Denver. Even though we were avoiding rush hour, we still got caught in backed-up traffic and congestion.
We were certainly surprised to see the temperature in Denver was 105! They broke heat records for this July day! So we kept our eyes on our tire and transmission temperatures as we headed north. We were very glad to once again see wheat fields and less traffic as we turned west at Fort Collins, Colorado. The good news was that all the slow traffic through Denver (and a little tail wind) earned us the best gas mileage of the trip—over 19 miles per gallon!
We turned west onto Colorado's Highway 14. We have driven through Colorado many times and on many different roads. We keep track of our RV trips with highlighters noting our routes on state maps. When we consulted our old Colorado map, we found that Highway 14 was a scenic route that we had never driven. So we headed west on this new-to-us highway. Tall rock walls rose on both sides of the canyon, and sometimes a tunnel had to be blasted to make a route for cars.
We discovered that the highway had a few forest service campgrounds as we started into the mountains. We made reservations a couple month ago when we weren’t worried about record-breaking heat in the mountains of Colorado. Stove Prairie Campground felt like someone had left the stove on when we arrived. It was 100 degrees at this no-hook-up forest service campground with no shade.
We have our solar power to run our lights, but it certainly won’t run an air-conditioner. So we did what anyone would do on a hot day—we headed to the water.
Just like the highway was surrounded by rocky walls, so were we.
Stove Prairie Campground was built on a bend of the Poudre River. A national scenic river, it was as cold as the snow melt and springs that fuel it. We discovered that we couldn't stand in the water very long before we turned numb and uncomfortable.
We plopped our camping chairs right in the water and stayed quite cool!
We have no cell phone or television service, so we entertained ourselves by taking pictures of the yellow swallowtail butterflies sipping on the milkweed plants next to our camp site.
It cooled off as the sun set, and we were glad to have our USB-charged fans for a breeze inside the trailer. This will be a good test of our solar power and all the work Mark has done to get us ready for living with nature on our trip across the country!
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