After a nice stay in Estes Park, we got an early start off to climb up the highest continuous paved road in the US: trail ridge road in Rocky Mountain natl park.
First viewpoint
Getting close!
Happy we now have only downhill to go. Smiling from 12,183 ft!
Chris dodging a deer
Then we ended in Tabernash for the night with our awesome host Bill who gave us some tacos and fresh veggies from his garden.
Next Day: to Idaho springs
We ran into an art and food market in Winter Park.
View from the top of Berthoud pass. It was a pretty rough climb after yesterday's push.
Then it was downhill to Idaho springs and spent the night with our awesome host Nate in his van. He was only a few years older than us and now is a white water rafting guide.
Next Day: rest day = biking up Mt. Evans
Today we bike up the hill a bit to the top of Mt Evans, the highest paved road in North America at 14,130 ft! What a rest day. Had to get an early start to avoid the storm at the top.
Echo lake, about halfway and little did we know it was also the last of the nicer road.
Above the tree line; it's getting hard to breathe.
Summit lake, were close! (And this is reaaaaaal pretty) we can see the peak!
Just keep climbing.
We made it! Some friends we made a few days ago took the picture for us. One of them did the Evans race last year: life goal.
Went up a bit late, so we hit some hail and freezing rain on the way down, our feet have never been that cold on the bike before.
We got back down to Nate's at around 1 and next thing we know Nate invites us to a white water rafting trip for free!! SCORE
Next Day: To Breckinridge
We say a sad goodbye to Nate and his girlfriend Lizzie and off we go to climb over Loveland pass, our biggest climb for the day.
Just some of the views along the way up.
Made it!
Met a guy at the top who was a tattoo artist doing a bike tour across the States and stopping in different cities and basically giving tattoos on tour. All his proceeds go to St. Jude's chrilden hospital.
Lake near Frisco
Breck:
Stayed in this hostel the first night (Bivvi hostel).
Chris has been battling a dying shifter for the past few weeks and it finally gave out on the way to Breck. Along the ride we stopped at multiple bike shops and they confirmed that the shifter was done for. Unfortunately the shops we stopped at did not have any replacements. We called every bike shop within 50 miles with no luck either. However Ken and Nancy (Chris's uncle and aunt) who live near Colorado Springs came to the rescue. They went to a bike shop, dealt with an annoying process to buy new shifters, got a discount, and then drove several hours to meet us in Breck to have dinner and deliver the desperately needed parts. Thank you so much!
We spent that night in a cute little hostel run by a very nice, old English couple.
Next Day: to buena vista
We are headed to a bike shop to have the new shifters installed and then we are back on the road.
