Day 20 Sea 2 Shining Sea

Today, we left Glenwood Springs riding the most beautiful bike path that I’ve ever been on. We rode down Glenwood Canyon with I70 on our left and the Colorado River on our right with tall canyon walls all around us and railroad tracks hugging the canyon walls. The path weaved in and out, up and down thru tunnels and bridges under I70. The river was crystal clean when calm and raging roaring white capped rapids when the canyon walls came in tighter. Most of the time you completely forgot the highway was even near you at all. Simply spectacular, picture perfect day, taking in all the wonderful scenes around us. It was 20 miles of the most peaceful riding one could ever be on.  

The rest of the day was a gentle steady up hill to Vail. Nothing too hard at all, just a long day in the saddle. Because tomorrows ride to Denver is scheduled for two mountain passes and over 125 miles, it was decided to tackle the first mountain pass after we arrived in Vail today. Very good choice.

The 16 mile ride up Vail Pass at 10,666ft took us every bit of two hours. I’m not much of a climber (I may have said that before) but the feeling of accomplishment when you reach the top of such a huge climb is overwhelming.  We had some friendly trash talking going on the last part of the climb. Larry and I were just riding along (JRA) when we were passed and goaded by Frank and Mike. So Larry and I found it necessary to get out of the saddle and sprint with all of our might. Not the smartest thing to do at 10,000ft. We got a huge gap but it took several minutes for our breathing and heart rate to come down.  I always love playing games on bikes.  At the top we told some pictures, loaded into the bubble bus and went back to the hotel for some well earned dinner.