An Excellent Adventure

Day 48 In the morning we had breakfast with our gracious host Richard then headed down the road to catch the 8:30am worship service at Steamboat Christian Center, a church on the south side of Steamboat Springs. It was so great worshipping with brothers and sisters in Christ here in Steamboat before we left, and it was cool seeing how this church loves its town. After the service, we rode out of town along U.S. 40 and began a long climb up towards Rabbit Ears Pass, breaking with the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route for the last time and beginning our paved highway trek toward Denver. It was a mentally and physically difficult climb along a busy highway (with good shoulders, thankfully), and we could not talk with each other to pass the time, because the highway was so loud -- we could only yell back and forth, which was not so nice. It made us appreciate how quiet most of the roads on the Great Divide route were (and made us wish we were on our tandem bike that we left at home). ...

Day 45 We left our Rawlins motel late in the morning after working out a lot of trip-finishing logistics and rode on into the what would now be our last three days on the official Great Divide route. As soon as we rolled out of our motel, we were hit by a relentless cross wind that stuck with us for the next seven hours as we climbed away from Rawlins, out of the desert and toward the continental divide. We took off our classy DaBrim helmet brims to prevent our heads from being blown sideways all day. I was amazed that the wind never let up for a single minute the whole time we were on the Rawlins side of the divide. On the plus side, the riding was beautiful. ...despite the long, grueling divide crossing. (It was bigger and longer up close). That night, after crossing out of the BLM lands and into the Medicine Bow National Forest, we arrived around dusk to our dispensed campsite by the Little Sandstone Creek. Ian and Tommy were camping there, too, and as we were arr...

Day 41 We left the RV park in Boulder and followed a road out of town and down into the desert. We had already stocked up on food and increased our water carrying capacity, because we would be spending the next four days crossing part of Wyoming's Red Desert, including crossing part of the Great Divide Basin. We crossed the Big Sandy River then turned onto Lander Cutoff Road, which roughly follows the Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail. This cutoff provided a shorter route for Oregon Trail travelers and was the first federally funded road project. We had lunch by the Little Sandy Creek, one of the precious few flowing water sources we passed during the day. Of course, we refilled on water here. We pitched a tarp for shade while we ate. Lunch on the Oregon Trail See those wagon tracks to the left of the tarp? Remember that educational computer game about crossing America by wagon train? We're on that Oregon Trail. Only we have it much better than those folks...