Day 45: Medicine Bow NF to Steamboat Lake

Ride time: 6:19

Average:  9.1 mph

Distance: 57.77 mi

Dew was everywhere this morning--our stuff was soaked.  We packed up quickly, though, because we have a big day today.  We're doing the Columbine Alternate instead of the regular route.  We filtered water out of some creek that had a gigantic herd of sheep waltzing through.  I now know what sheep poop looks like...

Nate riding through Aspen Alley

Our ride was incredibly beautiful with aspen trees quaking as the wind blew, green shrubs everywhere and tall mountains all around us.  It's such a nice change of scenery.  We rode through Aspen Alley after filtering, and then rode along a creek for awhile as the sun heated up the air.  We wanted so badly to jump in the water, but the ranch fences went right up to the bridges, so it was impossible to get access to the water.

Heading into Colorado

Today ended up being very tough terrain--lots of rollers in some pretty intense heat.  We opted to do the Columbine Alternate instead of sticking to the main route.  It turned out to be up and then down, up and then down, repeat.  We were incredibly parched and ran out of water along today's ride. Brain yelled out, "Water?!!?" to an oncoming car, and they stopped and gave us a couple of water bottles. Nice peeps. Near the end, it was all up, up, up to Columbine where we bought ice cream and Brain treated us to Mountain Dews.  After that, it was a quick 5 miles to Steamboat Lake.  We ended up camping with two of the Bobs, so we split the campsite three ways.

View from Steamboat Lake Campground

I need to start researching how to clean a down sleeping bag--Nate's sleeping bag currently smells like a wet dog that rolled in a pile of Nacho Cheese Doritos.  Mine, of course, smells like roses and vanilla frosting.  Speaking of, bummer to hear about that grizzly bear attack outside of Yellowstone that happened this past week.