As you ride through Grand Junction you will notice the roads have peculiar names…..25 ½ Road or 33 ¾ Road. Turns out, these road names are indicative of how far they are from the Utah border. So as we ride around Grand Junction we are staring at a hard truth, “you are 25 ½ miles from Utah….or 25 ½ miles from finishing your first state”. Yikes! Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday we were still in Boulder packing panniers and weighing food.
So it seems fitting now to recap everything we have learned from our pit stops in Colorado.
Rocky Mountain National Park
“Lulu City is not an actual city” - Jenny
The headwaters of the Colorado River
“10,000 feet is always cold”
“Everyone can be manipulated with stickers”-
Grand Lake
“Beer is expensive there”- Molly
“If you want to make friends, hang out at public libraries”- Rebecca
Granby
“People are quite connected to their water. When working with the Girl Scouts in Granby I noticed that the kids could share how close the Colorado River was to them and name different bodies of water that they recreated in.” - Kate
Penelope loving the armpit
“We met Penelope the cat, who loves stinky armpits” - Jenny
“Relish the climbs” - Leah and Claire
Kremmling
“The perfect place to celebrate one's 15th wedding anniversary. The Pizza Hut was super classy" - Rebecca
“5 in a tent is way warmer”- Leah
“Double check the stove burners. You can easily break your hosts $100 baking sheet” - Kate
State Bridge
“Google maps does not record elevation changes for gravel roads”- Kate
“Google maps suck”- Jenny
“Half a mile to get to a camp site is a long way on a dirt road after 10 hours of biking.”- Molly
Eagle County
“You CAN have too much of a good thing. We had so much support that it was sometimes overwhelming. We started to miss camping”- Kate
“Kids love us. We are good at what we do. The more you teach the better you get at it”- Leah
“There is always more wine in the basement”-Jenny
“Tool is the best band ever”- Rebecca
“Leslie paved the way for women’s soccer”- Claire
“I CAN bike up the hill without pushing...once I got lower gears”- Rebecca
Glenwood Springs
“Playing whales, while fun, is also very dangerous. Don’t play whales unsupervised”- Leah
“Communication is hard but important” -Jenny
“Mudslides can change the entire course of a river”- Jenny
“We saw rafters, fishers, a ranch, the train, a hydroelectric dam, and the highway. In one hour we saw all the pressures on the river.”- Claire
“None of those above things would be there if it wasn’t for the river, but yet the river seems like a backdrop to everything.”- Molly
Rifle:
“Bike shoes go on specific pedals because there is a left pedal and a right. If you mix them up you will be stuck at a garage sale” Kate
“Be careful who you talk to”
We were able to watch the storm come in over the resevoir
“The reservoir is at its lowest levels”- Leah
A long slog up a medium hill is worse than a short climb up a steep hill”- Claire
“You can see storms coming for miles”- Jenny
“The storm will pass quickly and then come again. And again”- Leah
Palisade
“Highway drivers are actually quite respectful. We only crashed into each other” - Kate
“See Rebecca’s post”- Molly
“White wine pairs well with cheez-its” - Claire
“Palisade started as wineries, but switched over to fruit during prohibition”
It was a great time Colorado! Here is to Utah!