Day 43, Riverside, WY to Walden, CO

Miles – 50

Miles From Start/To Finish – 1,831/2,397

Ave Riding Speed – 5-24 mph

Hours Start to Finish – 6

Weather – Mostly Sunny and 82

I added some new daily mileage details for tracking purposes. The TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, per Wikipedia, is 4,228 miles. Our mileage ridden will be a little off as we’re including miles per our bike odometer/speedometer. The halfway point of this adventure is Eads, CO, and will be part of our southeasterly exit of Colorado next week, if everything goes accordingly. Now that I said that I expect I should put on my flexibility hat and say it will happen when it happens.

I was up at 5am, when I saw the light coming in between the motel room curtain. Thinking Kim was sleeping, I sat up in be and tried my darndest to go back to sleep. I nodded off finally and Kim and I finally got up at 7:30am. Come to find out Kim was awake at 5am also. We figured the next time someone gets up early that person will open the curtains so we can get up and start the daily route earlier.

We trounced around the room packing, making coffee from the Keurig machine and rechecking our route and elevations for the day. Overall, we expected a 49-mile day and a general continuous climb of about 900 feet. We rolled out of the Lazy Acres at 9:15am, after dropping off the room key. We rode to the next-door lodging place, as they had a little convenience store, for some water and snack. This leg of the trip we would not be riding through any town with any services. We bought 4 bottles of water, yogurt, jerky, gummies and granola bars. We stood outside the little store and ate out yogurt and packed the rest for snacks along the way.

Starting out of Walden, population of around 625, we headed south on Hwy 128 and it had a decent shoulder to ride on. The rolling open sagebrush prairie and cattle grazing land was on both side of us. We were on a gradual climb of 200 feet for about 8 miles and then we came to the only major hump for the day. For the next 3 miles we climbed about 600 feet. We did a good job or riding it with about a ¼ mile of walking. There was a slight headwind. The first 12 miles took us 2 hours.

Along those 600 feet of climb we met some bikers heading east on the TransAm and chatted with a couple of them. They were a group of five younger individuals from all over the country, that answered an ad one of them posted to ride the TransAm, but with some companions. One of the girls said she quit her job to do this, and will find another job when she’s completed the task. Got to love that! The group is on day 47 of their adventure, so they’re about a week ahead of us.

At mile 27 we hit the Wyoming/Colorado border and took a picture at the Colorado welcome sign. The road changed over to Hwy 125 at the border and we lost our riding shoulder. Traffic was pretty light and the drivers were pretty good about giving us some room. 5-miles up we came to what looked like the unofficial entrance to Colorado. Giant natural stone pillar rock formations stood to both side of our 2-lane, no shoulder highway about 1/3 up the 300 feet elevation climb. We felt like we were entering a kingdom. Once we reached the top of the climb, we had a step downhill that dropped into an upper mountain valley, surrounded on all sides be shadowy mountains way off in the distance. The mountains were hazy and dark as if they were a mirage.

From our high-up vantage point coming into the valley everything, including the road in the valley looked flat. Once we descended to the bottom, we could see that our route, for many miles had a large amount of steep descents and steep climbs, albeit they were mostly 50-100 feet.

The funny thing about these wide-open spaces and piecemeal views of the road up ahead, is that you keep thinking, “when am I going to get there?” We had 14 miles to go for the day, all in this valley and could generally see the finish line the entire time. This last stretch went well and we had about a bike-lane sized shoulder.

We rolled into Walden at 3:45pm and spotted a couple of folks sitting on a bench, next to their bicycles, enjoying some ice cream. We stopped and asked which way they were going. They said west and are a day behind some folks they met earlier in their tour. Just so happens they were talking about Mark and Pat, the peeps we met yesterday in Walden. We introduced ourselves to Jens and Shelly and chatted about their trip so far. Kim has been enjoying meeting more women along the way then earlier in our adventure and making her feel more comfortable about her abilities and sometimes pyschological state of mind during some of harder days.

We rode on down the street to our motel, The North Pak Inn. Our room is on the second floor and we carried our gear and bikes up the steps. We dropped everything and walked back through the small town and settled in at the River Rock Café. I ordered the open face turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy and Kim ordered a cheese burger and loaded mashed potatoes. We both had a side-salad and a pitcher of water. The food was great!

We walked back through town and ran into Jens at the corner gas station/convenience store. He was picking up breakfast and we were getting some Gatorade to drink with our one remaining bag of microwave popcorn.

We’re staying in Walden because it’s the closet town with any accommodations nearest to Willow Creek Pass. Walden is at an elevation of 8,099 feet and 32 miles down the road and 1,522 feet up is Willow Creek Pass. After that it’s about 29 miles down, with a few humps, to Hot Sulphur Springs, our destination goal for tomorrow.

I was commenting with my kids, via text, cause we’re hipper now, after the Kare 11 story about our fundraiser adventure last night, and reminded them, and it reminds me too, that sometimes the smallest of acts can make a big difference. I even shed a couple tears when I heard it was a pretty cool news story. The simple act of my daughter writing to a couple news station about our LBCA fundraiser adventure ended up turning into a story and viewed by thousands of people. Pretty cool. I have no doubt whatsoever, that her one small act will save some person’s life, likely more, that we may never know, because they will now be aware, or will become informed through it, or hear about it from a friend or family member.  That’s the main idea of this fundraiser, it’s about real people, like my wife Kim, and raising awareness about lobular breast cancer.