Day 39: Sapinero, CO

Day 39

June 24, 2015

Miles: 39

Montrose to Sapinero

I will begin this post by stating we saw a bear.  We were astonished, amazed, and a little scared.  The bear ran out of the woods on our right and crossed the road 20 feet in front of me.  As he was running past, he turned and looked directly at us.  He was running fast and his mouth was open and I must confess I saw with some disconcertment the healthy supply of teeth contained within that mouth.  I slowed down because I thought I might ride right into him, and at this two things happened.  The first is the bear looked away from me and continued on his way.  The second is Di yelled, "Don't stop! Keep pedaling! Keep pedaling!"  Believe me, I pedaled.  We stopped after a few miles and shared our disbelief at what had just happened.  Di was quick to point out how grossly incorrect were my earlier attempts to assuage her fear of bears by telling her that in all probability we would never even see a bear from a great distance.  She then went on to theorize that this particular bear could very well had been in our campsite the night before.  "From now on", she said, "if we camp out we are either staying in campgrounds with a lot of people, or we will stay in cabins."  I guess she thinks the likelihood  of being eaten by a bear decreases with a greater number of people.

The bear sighting happened three days ago as we were riding into Montrose and it explains why on Wednesday night we found ourselves in a very old cabin.  I am posting this on Thursday, June 25th because the cabin where Di and I stayed had neither WIFI nor cell service.  There may be some readers out there that are a little dubious of our protestations of lack of service preventing our writing of the blog, and may instead surmise we are just being lazy and shirking our blogging duties, but I assure this particular type of reader that nothing could be further from the truth.  Di and I look forward to the evening's writing of the blog and a review of the day's pictures to determine which are worthy of inclusion.  You can imagine our disappointment when last night we were forced to abandon our attempts at completing the blog and instead had to console ourselves by watching a movie on my computer while eating candy bars we had purchased earlier.  Please be assured that my Snickers Bar and Di's Mounds Bar had been purchased as a contingency and not as a plan against not writing the blog.  Although I must it admit we enjoyed movie night.

We got up around 7am and went to get the free breakfast at the hotel.  We each had three eggs; Di's were over hard and mine were over easy.  I guess our egg choice mirrors our personalities.

Getting ready to dig in to some cholesterol

We had a few climbs ahead of us, but we were only riding 39 miles, so it was going to be a pretty relaxing day.

Mountains in the distance always mean climbing is in our future

In addition to the abundance of water, another nice feature of riding in Colorado is the greater frequency of towns, stores, and restaurants.

We are always looking for an excuse to stop riding

 We were treated to the kindness of strangers on two separate occasions today.  At the first, we had stopped to adjust Di's seat when a gentleman emerged from his RV bearing a bottle of water and an ice cream sandwich for each of us.  We were quite happy to accept.  At the second, Frederick, a young man from Portland, stopped to offer to fill our water bottles with ice water from his cooler.  We were quite happy to accept that offer, also.

Who isn't make happy by having ice cream?

It was a four mile climb up to the top of Cerro.  The landscape was filled with flowers and green mountains on both sides of the road.

Pretty.

Di is a great bicyclist and on many days I have to push to keep up with her, but every rider eventually has one of those days where every pedal is a huge effort, and this was one of those days.  Di kept waiting to snap out of it and return to her typical spirited style of riding, but alas, it was not to be.  Di's entire ride was difficult, but like the trooper that she is, she continued on.

Di grinding it up the mountain

Di happy that climb is finally over

We had two lesser climbs still to go, so when we saw another grocery store we were happy to stop and restore our energy.  The energy restoration took the form of tuna fish for Di and ham and cheese sandwiches for me.  We split a large bag of potato chips.  We sat outside the store while we ate and watched storm clouds gathering overhead.

Di taking a lunch break

A short while after resuming our ride it started raining.  The wind was blowing hard and whipping the rain into us.  We had been climbing for a while and the storm, coupled with the higher elevation, brought much colder temperatures.  We had donned our raincoats in anticipation of the rain, but it was so cold now that we knew we had to put on warmer clothes.  We pulled off to the side of the road and in that driving rain we removed our raincoats to put on our sweaters.  We were really cold when we removed our raincoats in that rain, but we started getting warm again once we had our sweaters on underneath the raincoats.  Because it was cold and raining, we kept riding without taking any breaks.  The road took us through a narrow canyon with high stone walls, but in the pouring rain everything was the color gray, so I must confess it looked more foreboding than beautiful to us.  We just kept riding.

Shortly before we reached Sapinero, the rain stopped.  We arrived in Sapinero at 6:30pm; that's a long day for only 39 miles.  Di had reserved a cabin for us at the campground and I was shocked when I saw it.  It looks like it was built in the 1800's as a worker's shack and the interior didn't look much newer.  The wallpaper in the bedroom depicted a number of nude women, all tastefully portrayed, of course.  I only looked once or twice, I swear.  Maybe we were in the brothel shack.

Di at the cabin

I think Di normally would have rejected such a forlorn cabin, but since the bear incident she is insistent we stay in cabins whenever possible.  I guess I have to agree.  No bear with any taste will enter a cabin with wallpaper of nude women.

Di's sleeping arrangement will be bear proof

The view from our cabin porch

We made our dinner of Mac 'N Cheese and then attempted to write the blog.  We struggled mightily to connect to the blog site and tried every trick we knew of to get the blog posted, but all our efforts were of no avail.  We were immensely disappointed, but after a minute or two we were forced to abandon all hope of completing the blog and had to resort to plan B, which was watching a movie and eating candy.  I have to admit plan B went a long way in assuaging our disappointment over not being able to complete the blog.  

Tomorrow we get to see Jen and Ben!  Di and I have been looking forward to their arrival for a while and we are really excited to see them.  Actually, this is a little weird because this blog was actually written on that morrow and we have already met Jen and Ben, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I won't mention it any more.

Tomorrow we ride 26 miles to Gunnison.  Where we will meet Jen and Ben!  Wahoo!  Actually, ...