Way down there is the Arkansas River.
Way off is the KOA where our gear was waiting for us.
The Royal Gorge Bridge
Tilmann ready to go across
Down along the river are train tracks. Of course, for a few, you can ride the train through there.
All the state flags were along the bridge.
Made it to the other side.
There are all kinds of adventurous things one could do…zipline across the gorge (that would be so cool), swing out over the gorge…and I’m sure others. It cost $23 just to go across the bridge!
We rode back to the KOA, and packed up our stuff. We were rolling out at 10:30. It was heating up. We still had 50+ miles to do. At least there was an awesome descent into Cañon City. I hit my high speed of 38 going down into Cañon.
It was a cool looking town, but since it was Sunday, much was closed. We rode on through. We got to the town of Florence (I think it might be our 3rd Florence) and decided to get some lunch. It took a long time to get our food. It was okay, but not great. I did camel-up on water. We had talked to a guy out on the street who asked us the usual questions. He was a cyclist. He was telling us we shouldn’t do the Hwy we were supposed to do. I know people mean well, but that kind of advice isn’t really something we are going to do. The road was fine, and had even recently been repaved.
Yeah, not much shoulder, but long sight lines.
We came to Wetmore. There’s really nothing in Wetmore. We needed water though. There was a creek. Doug had filled his 3 liter bag when I saw a person. I went to ask if there was any water. He took us around the front of his house to the hose bib. His name was Tim, and he was the pastor of the church next door. Nice guy. I drank a ton, and refilled my bottles. In the shade, it was 92 degrees. We weren’t in the shade much.
A lot of sunny nothingness.
It was supposed to be mostly downhill from Wetmore, but we sure seemed to do a lot of uphill. Plus, the wind was not so favorable. We did get to go down one 9% grade.
It was awesome, but far too short lived.
There were a few interesting rock formations.
I even stopped to take this one.
Finally we were getting close to Pueblo State Park on Lake Pueblo. I had this vision in my head of what the park would be like…woodsy, on the lake…yeah, not exactly. We pulled into Arkansas Point Campground after riding in on this nice bike path.
The lake is really a reservoir.
Turns out the campground is 100% reservation only, but there was a number to call to make a reservation. It took forever because they want to know every single detail, including my driver’s license number! If I were to stay in another Colorado State Park, I would be in the system now, so maybe not such a process. I randomly chose a site that was available. We rolled over to it. It’s close to water and the restroom/shower. Hey, showers are free in Colorado State Parks!
A view of the lake anyway.
I realize I miss the woods. That’s too bad because I don’t think there will be any woods to camp in until maybe Kentucky.
It was a long day today, but that’s only because we did the Royal Gorge first. Tomorrow we will get going in the cooler morning. Don’t know where we are planning to land tomorrow, just that we need to get food in Pueblo. Also, we will be finishing Map 6, and started Map 7. Kansas is in the near future…
Goodnight!
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