Posted by: Arin
I'm grouping these three days together because in all honesty, not that much happened (aside from lots of riding). The scenery has been gorgeous though.
On day 16, we rode to Pagosa Springs from Durango. It was really hard to leave, but we finally did around 11. We were able to ride the Animas River trail for the first few miles before hopping off and onto the 160 highway. We were both really sore from all the skating we did, and my crash wounds were pretty fresh, so we just chugged along for a while. Rolling hill after hill lead us through Bayfield and all the way to Pagosa Springs. We stopped to get some food and set out to find somewhere to sleep. It was getting dark and we spotted a campsite, so we decided to check it out. The lady in the office told us it would be $24 for us to get a site for the night. $24!?!? That's ridiculous for two people on bikes. However, we saw that there was an option to leave an envelope with no money and pay in the morning. With that knowledge, we decided to bandit camp there. It was a cold night, and somehow the tent gathered a lot if condensation that dripped onto my sleeping pad. In the morning we woke up and made a clean getaway without paying. We were on the road at 10, which is early for us.
The next day we encountered our first real mountain pass. Shortly after starting to ride, we came across an awesome waterfall and stopped to marvel at it for a while. Directly after the falls, we saw a sign that said "Wolf Creek Summit Pass - 8 miles. We had already climbed for maybe a mile just to get there, and the rest of the day was looking to be slow going. We were climbing for what felt like (and was) hours before we got to the top. It was cold up there!
A look back revealed a sign that said "7% grade - next 9 miles", which you can imagine was pretty gnarly with 90 pound bikes. An internet search later told me the pass was over 10,800 feet, the highest I've ever been by my own human power. An amazing descent followed by miles of rolling hills brought us into Del Norte. We grabbed some food and started heading to the National Forest area so we could camp for free. On the way though, we spotted a crappy little skatepark and decided to stop and skate for a while. We were the only ones there aside from a couple of little kids and had a blast, despite there being only 6-7 obstacles. As it got a little later, we headed off further down highway 112. We turned off on county road 33 towards a place called Elephant Rocks or Elephant Boulders or something like that. A bit of riding down some dirt roads and we ended up at a pretty well hidden spot to make dinner and camp.
Day 18 involved a lot of riding. We continued up 112 for a few miles before reaching a section if highway 295 called the gunbarrel, a long and straight two-lane highway that doesn't turn for 20 or more miles. We started off with a headwind, but soon the wind was blowing in our favor; we reached the end of the gunbarrel and continued along the highway. About 70 miles in, we reached a junction. We could either buy food at a gas station and camp in the national forest nearby or go to Salida (5-10 miles out of the way) for what seemed like better luck for food. We decided to check out Salida, but when we got there everything was closed! We ended up buying food from a 7-11 and continuing on. By this time it was dark, so we had our lights on. It was wild; as we rode back towards the 285, there were deer everywhere. If you flashed your light off the side of the road, there was a deer. We got back on the 285 about 10 miles further than where we got off and it seemed difficult to find a spot, so we ended up camping off the side of the highway behind a patch of trees. Luckily it was fairly warm out that night so we got to sleep without a tent and stayed more hidden.
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