Day 48-Convenience Store Disappointment

That probably shouldn’t be the title of today’s post, but it did have an impact on my mood. Or maybe I was just tired from the three freight trains that went by last night, mere yards from our tents. Even Doug heard them!

Uh huh, and there’s another one. 

We left just a few moments before Neil and Ursula. After a tiny bit of uphill, we sailed through Byer Canyon. 

Colorado River

A nice beginning to Day 48. 

Once out of the canyon, it was back to open land, all the way to Kremmling. It was mostly downhill too. 

We pulled into Kremmling at about 9:00. Kremmling had much more going on than Hot Sulphur Springs. Too bad we weren’t able to make it there the day before. We stopped at a coffee shop that had delicious pastries. I had a chocolate croissant, and packed out a spinach and feta croissant for lunch. 

It was called The Shooter. Don’t know the significance of the cow in the coffee cup…

Back on the road, we started climbing, and would continue to do so for the whole day. There were some rolling bits, but generally we were going up. We were definitely heading toward the high mountains. 

Peaks in the distance. 

From inside one of two game overpasses. 

These four antelope rain along for awhile. Then they stopped and all turned to look at me. 

We turned off the highway onto Heeney Rd 30. It took us around the Green Mountain Reservoir on a much quieter road. 

Green Mountain Reservoir. 

It was very rolling, but not many cars. Eventually we came to the dam at the one end of the reservoir. 

Weeee Haw!!! That’s a long way down!

The reservoir side. 

We had to climb back up away from the water. As we were going up, I saw this critter. 

It was about the size of an otter, and had a tail (that you can’t see). Any ideas?

According to our map, there was a convenience store in Heeney. Dang, it was closed! That was okay though, because there was another one near where we would return to the main highway. 

We went up then down, and up again, and down again…over and over until we reached the end of the reservoir, and…no convenience store. You might be thinking, what’s the big deal? Well, we often rely on them for drinks, especially to have with lunch. Otherwise, we run out of water. Since there wasn’t a way to get more to drink, we pushed on until we came to a campground about 8 miles later. Blue River Campground didn’t have piped water, but we were able to filter water from the river. We finally ate lunch at about 2:30. Once I had some food and fluids, I felt much better. 

We had another 15ish miles to Heaten Bay Campground on Dillon Reservoir between Silverthorne and Frisco. 

Getting closer to Silverthorne. 

Once we came into Silverthorne, we picked up the Blue River Bike Path. 

Bike paths are great, but definitely slower going. Still, it was way better than being out on the road. 

On our map, it showed this squiggly bit. I told Doug, I bet we’ll be going up something steep. Oh yeah! We had to get up to the Dillon Dam Rd. 

That’s it way up there!

This is how we got up there. See the fencing up high? It was all steep switchbacks (the squiggly bit) up to the top of the dam. 

Dillon Reservoir 

The bike path continued along the Dam Rd. We rode the bike path all the way around to Heston Bay Campground. 

The campground (USFS) is right off the bike path. We rode to the tent area. My lucky horseshoe came through again as there was but one site available. We snagged it! We want to take a day off tomorrow to do some chores. There is an REI in Dillon which is back by the dam. We also want a day to rest before climbing Hoosier Pass, the highest point on the Trans Am at 11,500+ feet. And…it’s supposed to rain tomorrow (scattered showers). Sadly, there are no showers here, so I’ll just have to wash up the best I can. Oddly, there is only one place in the campground to get water. There’s a huge reservoir! Would it kill them to put in a couple more water spigots???

Im looking forward to sleeping longer than 5:45 tomorrow! Goodnight!