Tuesday, July 14th
We got up and ate a quick cold breakfast and hit the road. We soon discovered that this campground was just a few miles outside of a fairly suburban area. That might explain why I had seen some joggers on the road by the campground. Along the way, we got our first good look at Pikes Peak.
We gassed up again and headed on toward the entrance to Pikes Peak Parkway. The GPS showed a route that intercepted the parkway, but when we got there, we encountered a gated road. So we turned around and went the other way.
We had to drop a pretty good way down out of the mountains to reach the start of the parkway. I was first in line so I paid our fees to ride this private road – $10 each. I think Brian got the better deal paying for Mt. Evans!
The road up was partly paved and part dirt. We passed several road graders working the dirt sections. The road was pretty exposed up high, but the switchbacks weren’t as tight as the ones on Mt. Evans.
We eventually made it to the top and took some pictures of the views. We even climbed the pile of dirty snow that had been piled up in the center of the parking lot, as it appeared to be the highest piece of “ground” at the time.
We ventured briefly into the gift shop, where they sold all kinds of items with “Got oxygen?” printed on them. I think there was less oxygen in that crowded building than there was outside! The train car outside is for the “cog railroad” that climbs to the top of the mountain from near Colorado Springs. I rode the railroad up when I came out here back in high school for a Science Camp at the Air Force Academy.
We also took our pictures with the sign showing the elevation and got our bikes parked with the sign and the view in the background.
A lady from Nags Head, NC stopped us and chatted for a while. She comes out here for a month or two every summer. We talked about wanting to ride the Outer Banks someday. She kept telling us how nice the surfing was in the summer. I didn’t ask her why she was spending her summer in CO.
We rode back down to the lower gift shop and changed into hot-weather riding gear. This marked the end of our mountain adventures.
From here we were heading to I-70 and three full days of slabbing it back to NC. We cut through the crazy traffic of Colorado Springs and made it to the east side of town where we followed US 24 northeast to Limon, CO to pick up I-70.
Once you get past Colorado Springs, eastern CO looks a lot like Kansas – flat and treeless. We rolled out the miles for the rest of the day and stopped at the KOA in WaKeeney, KS. They were having an ice cream social that evening. We showered and did a load of laundry. We also finished off our Subway sandwiches from lunch. That was supper, followed by ice cream for dessert. The skies looked nice, so we chose to sleep out under the mesh tent.
I woke up to go to the bathroom at about 1:15 am and noticed flashes of lightning off to the southwest. I checked the radar on my Crackberry and saw a wide line of storms headed east along I-70. Yikes. I woke Brian up and we set up the backpacking tent and took down the mesh tent. Shortly after we laid back down it started raining, but fortunately, we didn’t get any of the heavy thunderstorm stuff that gets WaKeeney mentioned on The Weather Channel’s tornado specials.
| Mileage | |
| Today | 379.2 |
| Trip Total | 3,719.9 |
