Day 23: Denver to Barr Lake

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post is what an awesome host Hanie was. She made us an awesome dinner when we got there and sent us off with homemade cookies and cream rice crispy treats, as well as just putting up with us being around for almost three days. So thank you Hanie for everything!

Anyways, we got a late start out of Denver because we were so comfortable. We probably left Hanie's around 11:30 before stopping by Safeway and Trader Joes to get dinner and snacks. We would have just gone to Trader Joes but didn't know it was there until after we went to Safeway. We already had groceries, but I had to stop in to get some chile spices dried mango so we got rolling around 1.

The story of the day was the wind. We were riding through some of the most intense headwinds and crosswinds either of us had ever been in! Wind is bad and all, but what made it worse were the roads we took out of Denver. Instead of calling on local advice, we decided to look at a map and take the most direct route. Colorado St. (Highway 2) to Highway 76 was what we chose. It was awful. The shoulder of the road was nonexistent to a foot wide the whole time, with gravel on the right and semis on the left. The wind was blowing us all over the place, and every time a big truck would come by, it would block the wind and force us to try to not swerve towards the left. Often times we would end up riding on the gravel because any other option was too sketchy. Two hours and about 10 miles into the ride, we sat down on the side of the road and stayed there for an hour. We were too discouraged to continue right away. We finally did, and made it maybe 12-13 more miles by 6. At this point, all we wanted was to find a place to camp. In this picture you can see the wind blowing Brad's windbreaker around even when we're standing still.

On the map, we spotted a state park nearby: Barr Lake. We had to cross the freeway and backtrack for a little over a mile, but it seemed worth it. We headed over that way and turned onto a dirt road into the park. The lake was huge and the road was awesome.

We rode for a while, not finding anywhere to camp until we reached a picnic area. That's where I got my first Colorado flat tire. As I stopped to fix it, Brad scoped out the area ahead to try to find a spot. Meanwhile, the ranger drove by a few times. That wasn't a good area, so we headed back to look around the other side of the lake we could have turned onto. There we found an awesome hiding spot behind some trees and set up camp. 

(Photo by Brad)

It was in an out-of-season hunting area, so there were a bunch of those little hunting boxes around. We ended up using one of them to hide from the wind and cook dinner. Just goes to show you that even a crappy day of riding can end in a cool way. 

(Photo by Brad)

In the morning, we sat in the box again and there were tons of hawk out flying around. I'll leave you with one last picture of some majestic birds.