Day 13 - July 26

Today was an "improvisational" kind of day. Although the radar showed no rain at all over Rawlins, there was most certainly rain over Rawlins, so we decided to forego the interstate ride heading east for a secondary road. So, after putting on our rain gear, we head out and, after about 15 miles, we found out that WY71 becomes a dirt road - not knowing how far it was dirt and knowing that it had rained all night, we decided to turn back around and sort of follow the originally planned route.

Within an hour or so, we crossed into Colorado and even though we

had some periods of light rain, it wasn't too bad at all. The temperatures wound up staying around the 65F mark for the bulk of the day, which also wasn't bad.

We wound up crossing through the Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Rd and lucked out in that the whole ride within the park was without rain. It was neat to climb up to almost 12,000 ft and at times to ride within the low cloud cover. We wound up having lunch at Cy's Deli in Grant Village.

Our planned destination was the town of Blackhawk - but unfortunately, we were not able to get rooms locally. While we were stopped there, we were in the midst of a huge thunder/lightning storm. I was very glad to be stopped and in a sheltered spot as the storm passed through.

Since we were planning on heading towards Colorado Springs in the morning, we wound up getting a room in Englewood, CO at the Extended Stay America for the night. Since nobody really wanted to get back on the bikes to get something to eat, dinner was ordered in. We are actually going to stay here for 2 nights, and that will mean that tomorrow's ride can be done without the added weight of all the gear.

So, tomorrow we will see if we can see the peak of the Pike :-)