Somewhere in the mountains, but not quite Colorado yet...

I felt cold during the night, and woke to a chilly 9 degrees. It was hard packing, and I had numb fingers and toes for the first hour of riding. I regretted having given my polypro gloves to Greg to take back to San Francisco.

We saw a squirrel, and elk-prints in the dusty road.

The climbing was relentless; by the time we had ridden 10 km, we had already climbed 1,000 feet. We rode past a farm house in the middle of nowhere that looked deserted, and then the remains of an old log cabin.

 There were quite a few squirrels around, but no other animals.

The temperature was much kinder today: it was only 20 degrees at 9 AM, and 28 degrees at 10 AM. The hottest it got was the mid-30s.

We passed through a huge alpine meadow, still climbing. We climbed almost constantly for the first 25 km, where we reached a height of 10,000 feet.

 Then descended back to about 8,000 feet where we reached a sealed road with a campground and picnic area -- and fresh water.

There were thousands of caterpillars on the road...I tried dodging them again, but it was almost impossible.

We met two people riding the divide route on motorbikes. They were originally going to cycle it but decided to use motorbikes instead. They had camping gear, etc, but could of course travel a lot faster than we could. They had travelled from Abiquiu in just half a day.

We stopped at the picnic area to have lunch. So far, we had only ridden 28 km...it was tough going with all that climbing!

We looked at the map, and decided we would have to load up on water, so we left with heavy bikes again.

We then enjoyed a fast 6 km descent on the sealed highway before turning off onto a dirt road and more endless climbing.

 After about 40 km the road began to undulate as we crossed another huge grassy plain. The scenery was spectacular, the roads were quite rough, and we were getting tired.

Pete gave up and ditched his extra water, trusting that we would find some along the way. I wasn't so sure, so I kept my water and struggled with the weight.

As we rode through the plain, we saw hundreds of locusts on the road. They would take off as we approached, and fly with us on their yellow-and-black wings. One hit me on the ear.

At long last we reached an intersection and turned into a road that the map described as "higher grade". Gay joked that that just meant that the road had more gravel -- and he was exactly correct! It was tough riding on all the loose gravel.

The road turned and reached a wide canyon with a river at the bottom. As soon as we started to drop into the canyon, we began to battle a strong head wind, which made the riding even more difficult. After a few km we decided to stop for food and a rest -- and to get out of the wind.

The river was fenced off, with some kind of reserve around it. There were no bushes beside the road to shelter behind, so we climbed the fence and walked across to a good-sized bush. I sat down, and quickly realised I was sitting on some kind of stinging nettle! My hands and ankles were itchy for about half an hour afterwards.

 We ate more food, and then Gay and I had a nap while Pete tried to make his way down to the river to get some water. He didn't make it...the ground became too boggy, and then he managed to cut his thumb while cleaning the mud from the cleats on the bottom of his shoes.

We rode on for a few more km before reaching a bridge across the river, which was rather grandly called the Rio San Antonio.

 A hundred metres beyond the bridge was a patch of scrub beside the road, where we decided to camp for the night.

We washed ourselves and our clothes, and I sewed up my lightweight arm warmers -- they were too wide for my scrawny arms, so I made the upper end narrower so they won't fall down all the time.

 We had a dinner of pasta and "spam animals" as Gay described it, also known as tinned spam.

 After dinner, we filtered some water from the river, had a cup of tea and went to bed. We joked that it was a late night -- 8 PM -- but we are all really tired from the riding.

Started today at the bottom squiggle, and camped tonight near Rio San Antonio

 

We had been riding for 5 hours, covered 60 km and climbed 1,200 metres (4,000 feet). Tonight we are camping  in the Placita Canyon at about 8,800 feet. We also passed the half-way mark today -- half way from Columbus to Steamboat Springs. What a journey!