11SEP2014

I barely slept last night because it was so cold.  I decided to get up early in hopes that I might be able to complete two segments today.  Spoiler alert:  I didn’t.  I got my stove going and had the best bowl of oatmeal ever, but soon I was freezing again.  I bundled everything I had, but was still freezing.  Oh well, I set off anyways.  After an hour or two, the sun finally came out and started warming up.  The riding was pretty nice today.  I stayed on the road coming out of Lake City and crossed over Cinnamon Pass.  I had been looking forward to Black Bear Pass, which is supposed to be really tough, but when I get there it was closed.  Too bad, as it’s supposed to have an awesome, nearly straight down view into Telluride and you get to see Bridal Veil Falls.  So I went back the ‘normal’ way over Ophir Pass.  Later on I ended up on an OHV trail that despite being over 9000ft, had a lot of mud.  The new (used) tire was pretty helpful here, and kept me from getting stuck.  I did have two lay downs, one of which ended up breaking the mount on my GPS phone.  I had to take a few minutes and transfer my GPS tracks and maps to my regular cell phone via Bluetooth so I could navigate the rest of the day until I had a chance to try to fix the mount.  I noticed that the foliage was starting to give way to a slightly more arid looking scene over time.  At one point I popped out on the other side of this canyon/valley, and I find myself in flat farmland just like Oklahoma.  The scenery really changed quickly.  I rode for a while through fields until I came to my stopping point in Dove Creek, CO.  I got a $45 motel and had dinner at the “Dinner Bell” where I was the only customer.  The motel room is truly the smallest I’ve ever seen, but the price is right and they have wifi.

Google Map of today’s ride