Ice Cream and Guns
I knew I had to get up early and get on the road on Friday with the weather report calling for high winds. Generally, the winds don’t pick up until later in the day. I was camping in the city park in Walden and woke up just after 5:30.
The temperature had gone down to the freezing point that night and while I was comfortable in the sleeping bag, I knew that getting out of it it would be another story. But I started thinking that for each minute of lying around it was going to be another minute later in the afternoon of facing the winds. So I got up and began packing.
I passed by a restaurant on the way out of town and, even though it would delay the start, I thought of stopping primarily to wait until it warmed up a bit. It was very cold. But a sign read “Sorry, closed this morning due to power outage.” Apparently much of the town didn’t have power overnight, for some reason. This was the second day in a row where something went wrong with me trying to get breakfast in a restaurant, which may be some kind of sign.
I then stopped by a Shell station to eat something and warm up. They had a few tables set up inside and I was able to talk about the football game the night before with Daisy, another employee and the vendor who was there. By now it was 7:30 and even though it was a very comfortable place to hang out, I had to get going.
Leaving town you come to a sign which directs you to take a right to get to Kremmling. But my directions said to keep going straight. This is where my maps from Adventure Cycling take me on the long route. Very much longer in this case. To go the shortest way I later found out it was 61 miles. My route was going to be 80, but with less traffic and much more scenic as it goes through a national forest. But you really have to pay the price in those extra miles, as I found out.
The ride took me through yet another climb and another pass over the Continental Divide. I was glad to get to the top at 11:10, twenty minutes earlier than I expected. From there it was about 20 miles of fantastic downhill and some of the best scenery of the trip, with the mountains, blue sky and leaves that had started to turn yellow.
The fun then came to an end with a slight turn into the wind, followed by a long hill. And then came the part I was dreading, which was a repeat of yesterday, but longer. I turned right, which in this case had me heading west, as in back towards the Pacific, for 22 miles. But with the winds heavily out of the west, it meant a huge struggle to get to Kremmling.
Along the way, I passed by a small town called Hot Sulphur Springs which looked very nice. At the old fashioned Dari-Delite ice cream stand, families were sitting on the picnic tables out front and it was a pleasant setting. Then just after that you see a black sign about two feet by three feet with big white lettering simply stating “Guns” and an arrow instructing you to hang a right to get yours. Ice cream and guns. It was a strange mix on the spectrum of wholesomeness within one block.
I’ve spoken with several foreign cyclists who have told me about their surprise in seeing guns advertised and boasted about in various, sometimes comical ways across the country. And also their shock that bullets are for sale in stores they stop in where they just want to get something to drink. But here it’s still viewed as part of everyday life.
Even though I would have liked to have stayed in Hot Sulphur Springs I really wanted to finish my plan and get to Kremmling. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. Sometimes I think that the worst part of the headwind is constantly listening to it and the growing noise when it really starts gusting.
Pulling into Kremmling was welcome as it makes for a shorter ride today to Breckenridge, at 54 miles. But it’s all uphill from here for the next two days on the climb to above 11,000 feet and the top of Hoosier Pass.