Jon Klein's Cross Continent Bicycle Trips and other excursions: They say I'm over the hill!

Friday 6/17: Steamboat Springs

Arrived around 3PM. Had lunch at Back Door Grill, a pretty good burger joint in the downtown area.
Arrived at my hotel just before the thunderstorm started. Then went to a grocery store and picked up some Ramen YakiSoba for a late hotel/microwave dinner.

Sat. 6/18: Across the Great Divide to Walden

Rode up to+ Rabbit Ears Pass ... but was so engaged in the book I was listening to that I neglected to stop at the Continental Divide sign for a new pic and didn't realized I had passed it until I was already about a mile beyond the top. There's a good pic in my June 23, 2015 post titled "Across the Great Divide" which includes the same scene from my first Rabbit Ears Pass crossing from 1985. After the pass it was a fairly easy ride to Walden, the small town in the middle of nowhere, where I'd stayed twice before.

Had dinner at a the All Smoked Up BBQ, where I ran into Pete and Susan, a pair of bicyclists about my age from the Sacramento area, who also happened to be in the room next to mine at the motel. These intrepid souls were biking from DC and were about heading northeast into Wyoming where, if they hadn't encountered enough headwinds yet, were sure to encounter more through Wyoming and Montana.

Sun. 6/19: The High Point of the trip!!

The up is not too bad...

Walden to Cameron Pass. 2,218 ft climb over 30 miles

and there was still some snow near the road and lots more on the taller peaks.

The ride down is splendid, along a rushing river (Cache le Poudre) ... although there was some rain. I sat out some of it in a cafe in Rustic, about 1/2 way down.

Cameron Pass to Ft. Collins: 5,400 ft drop over 67 miles!!

Dropped into my hotel in Ft. Collins after the 99 mile ride and slept like a rock!

Mon. 6/20: Just Visiting

Rode down to Doug's Diner in Loveland to meet my cousin Debbie for breakfast. There was a wait, so we drove to a nearby donut shop and spent the next 2 hrs catching up.

Then biked another 20 miles down to Longmont to Stan's house. He was an owner of the local rep company that I worked with when I was with 2 different semiconductor companies. He also bicycles a lot, is my age, and we had very similar career trajectories.

He and Stephanie fed me a nice lunch with home-made soup. It was great to see him again!

Stan and Me.
I take terrible selfies!

Then we biked down to Louisville together, and I went to stay at my cousin Lee's house for the night. It'd been a while since I spent quality time with Lee and her husband, Jeff... so it was great to be with them.

Tues. 6/21: Family, Friends, and Amtrak

Late breakfast at Jeannot's Patisserie & Bistro, a very nice place nearby that only opened this year. Lee also gave me a quick car tour of Louisville to see some of the devastation from last year's fires, which destroyed a large number of homes in communities nearby. Lee and Jeff had to evacuate, but the fires didn't hit their development directly.

Around 2PM, we drove down to meet Fred and Sherry at the Thirsty Lion, next to Denver's Union Station. They drove up from Pueblo, where they had recently moved from Allentown, PA to be closer to son and grandchildren.,. so the 4 of us were all Allentonians. Unfortunately, Lee left before I remembered to take a picture...

Fred and Sherry et. al. at Thirsty Lion in Denver

Then I got on Amtrak's California Zephyr to Omaha... which was about 2 hours late. The Zephyr was fully booked, as it was when I took it from Sac to Reno on June 2. In fact Francine, the grumpy conductor from the Reno trip, was on the Zephyr for this trip too.

Wed. 6/22: The Midwest isn't all flat!

Finally arrived in Omaha around 6:30AM, still 2 hrs late.