After
reaching the summit of Harney Peak I had an awesome opportunity to stay with a
couple that had worked in the National Park Services their entire careers. They lived in Custer, SD and Penny Knuckles
was a biologist for the park service while her husband Dennis was a ranger and
bush pilot in Alaska for many years before retiring recently. They had a ton of great stories to tell and
were very fun to hang out with. Penny
also cam through for me as I left the next day I forgot both my water bottles
at their house. I didn’t notice till I
was a few miles down the road and since I was already running later I figured I
would just deal with it and get some bottles at my next stop. But as I was riding about 25 miles from their
house she drove by and gave me the water bottles back. That was a great surprise.
The ride that day was pretty fun as
well. It was mostly down hill and I rode
through Wind Cave National Park. Here I
was able to see a lot of wildlife from the road. Including a herd or bison that were probably
no more than 15 feet away. It can be
kind of intimidating when they are all staring at you and you have no
protection to speak of. So I apologize
for not getting a picture of them but I felt like it was a good idea to just
keep riding.
The next
two days were pretty straightforward but they were both over 70 miles so they
made for long days. Eventually I made it
to Scottsbluff, NE where I got another flat about 5 miles from my destination
after another 70+ day. After fixing that
I decided to stop by the local bike shop called Sonny’s Bike Shop. There were some great guys working there and
they helped tune my bike up as well as outfitted me with some puncture
resistant tubes and a new patch kit.
After that I headed over to the local fire station where I was spending
the next two nights because a snowstorm was supposed to blow through the next
day. Both sets of guys were fun to hang
out with as we watched football most of the day.
When I
started riding again I headed down towards Pine Bluffs, Wyoming that turned out
to be an incredibly long day. I had a
head wind for most of it and ended up having to ride an hour and a half after
dark in order to make it there. But upon
arrival a church was nice enough to set me up in a hotel for the night.
The next
day I knew was going to be almost 90 miles because that was going to be the
first town I could make it to while also hitting the high point in
Nebraska. In order to get to the high
point I had to ride about 8 miles down dirt roads and then another mile on a
bison ranch. You could see the bison
heard off in the distance but that was the most exciting thing to see from the
summit. It turned out though that I was
not done with the dirt roads. I still
had another 12 miles to go with it changing from a hard packed down road to a
loose dirt road that was pretty hard to ride in. I actually changed in to my running shoes so
that I could ride and walk the bike a little more comfortably. It also made it easier to bail the bike would
slide out from under me. Eventually
though I make it to asphalt though and was able to continue at a pretty good
pace because what most people don’t realize is that the majority of Colorado is
very flat.
I didn’t
quite make it into town though before it got dark and I was on a pretty busy
road without much of a shoulder. After
riding this for a little in the dark I stopped and was going to try and find a
ride into town. Lucky for me the owner
of the driveway I had stopped in was on his way to the airport but he got his
wife to come get me in the truck and she took me into town.
I was worn
out but thankfully tomorrow was only going to be about 45 miles as I rode to
Denver and where I was going to stay for the next couple days. My mom flew in to hang out with me for Thanksgiving,
which was very nice. While in Denver I
finally got a chance to go meet some of the people that work for the Big City
Mountaineers. We went to lunch right by
their office at a very cool little place called the Vine Street Pub. Afterwards we went over to their office and
they showed me around.
Heather
from Big City Mountaineers actually invited both my mom and I over for
thanksgiving dinner the next day that was awesome. Some of her friends were also there so it was
a fun day just hanging out with new people where most of them worked in the
outdoor recreation field. For dinner her
fiancé made a really good smoked turkey and the sides were all really good as
well.
Well after
having a great set of rest days it’s on to the rocky mountains and the highest
point in Colorado, Mount Elbert.
- Michael
Hunter
No comments:
Post a Comment