Day 45 - Kremmling, CO to Walden, CO - Can('t) Hurt Me

June 26, 2021

Day 45 - Kremmling, CO to Walden, CO

Cold showers

After a tossing and turning sleep, we packed up and chatted to some other travelers from Iowa. We stopped at a bakery that a guy from rei referred us to. We finally hit the road out of kremmling and into the mountains again.

Mark said this looks like a hidden valley ranch commercial

We had to go up to willow creek pass, through hot sulfur springs. There are hot springs in hot sulfur springs but they are privately owned. We were going through a crazy canyon about half a mile before hot sulfur and got rained on hard. We made it into town and found mark and Alex under the awning of a motel.

We waited out the storm and hit the road again. The wind Wes picking up, blowing from the north as we passed through some burned areas. The fire must have hit last year. Alot of homes were only the foundation left and most residents were living in RVs while building. It still smelled like smoke in the air.

We stopped under a tree for another rain storm and a dude on an e bike flew up and talked to us for a while. He gave us some good beta on a church to stay at in Saratoga. We cruised on, getting rain off and on and mostly strong headwinds. It was quite cold and everything hurt as we got a few miles from the top.

Somehow we finally made it and we started making tea and wraps. We should have known, bit it started raining really hard while we were just finishing up. Everything got wet while we packed up. I was shivering and shoving things into my boxes. It must have been around 40 degrees. We couldn't stay at the top, so we started down the pass in the rain. I was only wearing shorts and a rain jacket so I could barely hold the bars on the way down. After a few miles of this, it finally stopped raining and we made it to a town called rand. We stopped at a weird bar there to warm up and ordered some fries. It rained again while we were there and we decided to make a run for it after it stopped. We had about 20 miles left and it was about 3 pm. On the way to Walden, we were in the valley and the wind was the worst it had been. We watched a storm come over and it hailed on us. The wind made it pretty painful. I was close to giving up at this point. We were 5 miles away and I could see the city.

This is the valley about 10 miles from town. You could see rain from pretty far off. Nothing you can do about it though

The only thing keeping me going was a hot shower. We got to town and found out that the city closed the showers, even though we called ahead. Too bad we weren't getting to Saratoga,WY today because they have public hot springs. We got to the park and set up the tent before the rain came again. We tried to eat in town, but there is a rodeo in town tomorrow, so we couldn't sit anywhere. Mary and I went to the family dollar and got cereal to eat. We cooked some emergency ramen and got to bed around 9. Another cyclist pulled up and joined our group too. Izso was crossing the country alone and we were the first other cyclists she had seen. I wasn't really interested in talking so after I brushed my teeth I went to bed. The rest of the group set up under a gazebo, but there wasn't enough room so mark, izso and us were out on the other side of the park.

I'm just looking forward to tomorrows hot springs and maybe a day off! Also, it is supposed to get to 37 tonight and we are still around 7600' elevation. For reference, the pass today was around 9600'.

Note: I'll try to add our picture from the pass, I didn't take any photos in the rain, but Alex did..

Also, Colorado maintains their lead for worst drivers and worst road quality, but top marks for views!

Mileage:80
Altitude gain:3800

Today's ride: 80 miles (129 km)
Total: 2,461 miles (3,961 km)

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