Day 35

We are now officially on our own. Evan’s family left yesterday so we have all our stuff back again. I can’t believe my good fortune in terms of having people carry my gear. Today we have to climb the last pass of the Rockies. It was a gradual climb but a climb nonetheless. The last two miles were going to be steep. I started out the day with no service but as soon as I cleared town I had 5 bars again. I called my mom to say hello. After I hung up the terrain starting to incline. I turned on some Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban audio book. Harry’s problems seemed greater than my own haha. The scenery was just as beautiful as ever. There were a bunch of older cyclist coming the opposite was. A lot of them gave me a thumbs up or yelled encouraging things. I think there were some kind of riding club. Almost to the top I saw Brent and another trans-am cyclist we met. It was nice to be cheered on the last couple feet. At the top I took cool pictures with the continental divide sign. The name of the game is to be off the Rockies by noon. It was 11:45. Clouds were forming overhead and the wind was picking up. There was no way I was going to wait for everyone else. I wanted to get off the mountain as fast as possible. Good thing it was only 10 miles to Rand the next town. The first part of the descent was easy but the wind picked up and I could feel rain droplets on my face. Getting into Rand I discovered that nothing was opened. I was far enough down I wasn’t going to get caught in a major storm. The next stop was Walden, 22 miles away. Supposably it was all downhill. However the terrain reminded me of the Ozarks. It was a lot more up and down then I thought. The road also had too many cracks and bumps than I would have liked. The wind picked up and we fought a major headwind. I hate wind and got kinda irritated. Luckily it didn’t last long and turned into a sidewind which I guess is better than a headwind. I soon got into town and ran into an east bound cyclist. She was debating weather to push on to the next town. Since it was about 40 miles away she changed her mind and we headed to the city park at the end of town. In the park there were two other cyclists. The originally were from England but moved to New Zealand. They had all sorts of stories. We talk and it seemed in no time the rest of the team arrived. We were told that there were hidden sprinklers everywhere that went off from 7 to 9. We decided to head to the laundry mat and dinner. I didn’t want to risk setting my tent up on a sprinkler. It was such a relief to do laundry. It has been a while since I had washed anything. Dinner was at the River Rock Creek restaurant. I ate a delicious got beef sandwich with veggies. After dinner we switched over our laundry to the dryer. I went on a search for ice cream. I ate strawberry cheesecake while waiting for the dryer to be done. It was getting cold and the laundry mat was warm so I didn’t mind waiting for everyone’s clothes to be done. Back at the park the Chinese couple and Dan had arrived. There was also another guy (who teaches Spanish) but I can’t remember his name. We all traded until it got dark and the mosquitos got too bad. Tomorrow we’re going to cross into Wyoming!