Hey All,

So I'm gonna give this blogging thing one more try. Mostly cause I went on a cool ride and would like to make everyone as jealous as possible.

Here's the gist, James and I rode from my house up to the Roosevelt National Forest and camped for the night then rode home.

Here is a link to the GPS Data that I collected along the way.
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8704098

You can click on the images and get a way bigger one, if you dare.......

Dad gave me his old GPS unit. A Garmin Etrex Vista. I was able to plug the route into the GPS from the computer and follow it right up to the campsite. I mounted it to the handle bars with a mount that James gave me. It was great! I've used it for the various hut trips as well, it has been killer for that stuff. The display is going out and will disappear after hitting bumps and you gotta give it a whack to bring it back I perfected an on the bike whacking technique over the miles. Until it dies completely, it works for me! I really like it.

So here's the story

James came up Friday night and we finished some final things and got packed up. I had to teach James how Handlebar Bags worked. He had some crazy stuff going on but we got him all squared away. He also helped me get rid of a bunch of stuff I didn't need to take. We left Saturday morning. This is the two of us all packed up and ready to go on the left. I'm a little dark in the picture so here is a close up of MY bike, on the right. I managed to cram everything into the two rear panniers so I didn't need to use the front ones. I can pull stuff out of the two little pockets on the front of the rear panniers while I'm riding, like snacks and the camera. So I didn't need my handle bar bag either. All of which was given to my by my Dad. THANKS!

Basically we headed up 95th street to Loveland. However, we had to detour over to my work to get a lock, I left it locked to the bike rack at work, oops! From there we took the toe path to the cut off across the rail road tracks and back onto the road. This got us onto 95th St., basically. We hit our first obstacle at 95th and Valmont road in Lafayette. 95th was closed! Supposedly the bridge over the creek on 95th was out, so churned the Louisville Fire rumor mill. Well, we went for it, it wasn't too far up to the bridge as you can see here from my on the bike pic:

We are already past the closure signs but you can see the construction is the light part at the "end" of the road. Turns out the bridge is still there, so we road through some dirt, across the bridge and through more dirt, back onto the road. I accidentally took a quick video, check it out:



It turned out to be a non-issue, as the road was still actually open to cyclists. I spotted a runner who must have come from the "closed" bridge that emboldened me to "Go For It". It actually was really nice cause there was no traffic on a large section of this road which doesn't have a great shoulder. To the LFD rumor mill's credit I wouldn't take a fire engine across it!

We took 95th up to Longmont. In the planning this was one of my worries....Longmont isn't a big town but there is a lot of traffic. We also noted the new Oskar Blues Tap House and Brewery at the south side of Longmont, where we would be the next day conveniently around noon. We made it about half way through town on 95th and gave up and took to the sidewalk. I hate riding on the sidewalk, but it was better than the alternative. Once we got out of Longmont things got a lot better.

95th was a lot less busy and we didn't have any issues with traffic the rest of the way. We weren't in any city areas for the rest of the trip. Because of that we didn't find a very good spot to stop for lunch. So we just pulled off the road at a private drive. Plunked down in the grass and had lunch there. We sat in the grass at the front of my bike and ate, it was good!

Here is James making some adjustments to his bars, you can see how far from the route (the blacktop there) we were willing to go.

We got back on the road and headed up toward Masonville. Masonville was our planned stop to water up for the campsite. Off we went. I think we managed to wander into Masonville on the coolest day of the year for Masonville. Here is what we saw:













Turns out there was a bike festival in Masonville this day. They had music from a Bluegrass band and port-a-johns, and free beer. James had a Dales' Pale Ale and I went with the Gordons' IPA, both from Oskar Blues Brewery. We missed the race, but got to see the award ceremony. Can't argue with free beers and live music in the middle of a beautiful bike ride.


The steeds got a rest as well.From Masonville we headed up into the Mountains. You can see them lurking in the background of the two pics earlier. This next section certainly taught us a lesson about touring rides. Turns out, a bike is a lot harder to ride up hill with a bunch of extra gear on it. James and I did the Copper Triangle, you can learn more about it here, together. We climb a decent amount, we were surprised. Ther ride was generally rolling up hill all the way to the National Forest. Here are a couple of images from our ride up into the National forest. It was a beauiful day and the area to the West of Fort Collins is amaizing. Here is one hill:


Here is another hill:


Even though it was slow going we were still having a great time, as you can see.

We anticipated hittting a dirt road once we got into Roosevelt National Forest. Then another fire road, or jeep road to an area where camping is allowed. The main rule is to be 100 feet from the road and you can pitch your tent where you would like, for free! The dirt road in the park was pretty much what I would expect. The fire road was more like a jeep road than I had hoped. Here is what we found.


To give you some perspective on it, here is James pulling a little Hike-a-Bike action up the hill.


Needless to say we didn't go to teribbly far up this road. It continued on like this for miles.


This was an open spot we found to pitch the tent. Lots of space and only one couple on a four-wheeler came off the road into our camp area. Hung the clothes on the bikes to dry and cooked some dinner. Dehydrated Jamacian Chicken and Rice, we both picked out independently, was the dinner of choice. After a decent aount of reading we hung a pannier full of food from a tree, by linking our tie down straps togehter, and hit the sack. We borrowed a lighter 2 man tent from a friend. The 2-man part of a 2-man tent is a bit over rated. We were in there pretty tight. We opened the rainfly to get some extra ventilation and enjoy the cool night air. Moments later, it started to rain. Rainfly got closed back up. But rain passed quickly and the fly came back open and we got a good nights sleep.

You'll have to tune in soon for the rest of the story of the ride home. But we got in 56 miles and over 3000' vertical feet in gain. Good day for sure with another one to come!