TA 2 - September 19

To cap off my birthday yesterday I received a lovely Facebook post from some friends I might have been travelling with in South Dakota right now if not for this bike trip. Seems they had a lively birthday party without me (even though the candle numbers are a bit off).

What a nice day for a bike ride!  Just a short and easy ride today, so breakfast wasn’t until 9am. Lots of time to sleep in, but not many in this crowd believe in such things. In the zig-zag route that seems to be the Trans Am, we zagged due west today about 30 miles to the small town of Kremmling CO. Cy spun fantastical tales about a booming downtown shopping district, but in the continuing nightly game of “fact or fiction” I would label this one “fiction”.

The weather was great and the scenery lovely. We had a decent shoulder about half the time; non-existent the other half. I believe we were on the official Trans Am route all day, which means there are probably thousands of cyclists who travel this way each year. I would have thought that when they resurfaced parts of the road they might have done the shoulders at the same time?!?

We are travelling today on the Colorado River Headwaters Scenic Byway.

We are in Grand County, and I’m pretty sure that the Colorado used to be called the Grand River upstream of the confluence with the Green River. Wonder if that’s because the headwaters are in Grand County (or vice versa)?

Anyway - makes for lovely scenery, especially where it carved through a canyon.

We passed through the small town of Hot Sulphur Springs at about 11 miles but I’m not sure if anyone paid the $20 to go in. Later on we saw these shooting ranges set up by the side of the road. About a dozen of them. Just drive right up to the little shelter and you had your choice of targets at three different distances. I just hoped none of them took a sudden dislike to cyclists. Welcome to ‘Merica!

Past a small alpaca farm and some rather barren-looking countryside.

We were in to Kremmling before noon, I think. Went to a greasy spoon diner more to fill in time than out of need to eat. Looked around town and then to the hotel. The town is in a nice western-town setting with mostly barren rolling hills all around.  Nice to just sit outside and enjoy the surroundings.

Stats for the day:
Granby CO to Kremmling CO
48 km. 29 miles.
922 feet up.  1123 feet down.
Temp:  10 C to 25C.  Perfect weather. Sunny, and wind was not a factor.