Here’s a few parting shots of Kremmling. It was a wonderful tiny town. Highway 40 changes its name to Park Avenue there. I loved that.

  

   I breakfast at a restaurant that was packed. I sat at the counter and met two bikers. What they do is drive to Steamboat Springs and  take the ski lift up Rabbitt Ears and then buy down.

The scenery on the ride was beautiful, as usual.

                          

On the road I met a fellow biker going the other way. He was one of those mega-muscle men with an expensive bike in a biking outfit. He had a handlebar bag and another tiny little bag hanging from the main bar. He was traveling from Telluride to someplace I’ve never heard of. He had no panniers. He was only staying in hotels and his bike clothes we’re the only clothes he had. I envied that.

Biker man told me how freezing it was at the top of Trailridge Road which he had recently come down. He had gloves on but he said his hands were so cold that he could hardly stand it. He said he thought there was something wrong with his bike because it was shaking all over the place and wouldn’t stay on the road straight so we stopped and looked at his bike and then he realized it was himself that was shaking from the cold and his bike was fine.

I traveled along the Colorado River all day. I found myself loving it more and more. It was such a gigantic source of life. And it has such a beautiful sound. Also for the first time ever, I saw a tributary entering a river! that was so cool! I hope you can see it in the picture.

  

Biker Man also told me about this gorgeous canyon that was coming up and how much I would enjoy the gorgeous canyon. Well, the gorgeous canyon to me was very scary. There was no shoulder at all and rocks that could fall down were high on either side. I could hardly wait for that stretch of land to be over.. To each her  own. I prefer the river.

I rode along for a while longer.

to hot sulfur Springs Colorado. That place is amazing. Again the Ute Indians felt that these waters were sacred as they were medicine waters. Even though the place is gigantic and has 28 pools I just stayed in one. It was superhigh in all kinds of minerals especially magnesium and lithium. I was thinking this is a good way to reward my body after Rabbit Ears and to prepare it for Trailridge Road.

As I said I spent the whole time in one tub. The only other person in that tub was a girl who is a sophomore at Brown. She was a Navajo Indian and her mother wanted her to do something that would make tons of money. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She had never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. We talked for an hour.

She was extremely stressed out about what  to declare as her major. She wanted to know what it means to be successful. I said happiness. If you’re happy you are successful.

Here’s another guy I met after I left the Hot Springs. He is from Texas and he was elated that he had caught a brown  trout. He could hardly believe his good luck. It was his first brown trout! (maybe they don’t have brown trout in Texas?)

And a few parting shots of  Hot Sulfur Springs, Colorado.

 After Hot Sulpher Springs I passed by Windygap. It’s sort of like a damn or something. They had to stop construction when they were building it because they found household items from Indians living there from 5500 BC to 500 A.D. It was a very important find because until then they believed that all the Indians were nomadic. But they found evidence there that this was not the case perhaps. They think the Indians lived there year long but they don’t know how they survived the winters.

      

It came time to say goodbye to Highway 40 which was a little sad because I had grown quite fond of Highway 40 but it was time to take a left onto Highway 34 which is famous in its own right. The Indians used this route to traversed what is now the Rocky Mountain National Park for thousands of years.

  After all the land beauty I came across a gigantic lake. Because I am  from Oakland when I hear the words “Grand Lake” I think of a theater and I think of Lake Merritt which is very small. I wasn’t prepared for a Lake Tahoe kind of situation which is what Grandlake is and it’s the smallest of the three lakes. These are the water heads where the Colorado River starts. The lake itself is gorgeous of course and commanding but all the commercial activity around it is less appealing

   Finally I got to The town of Grand Lake, Colorado which I hated. Perhaps I would’ve liked it if it wasn’t Labor Day weekend but the way it happened was I came from wilderness and beauty and space into traffic jams and people waiting in long lines for ice cream and I just wasn’t prepared for that.

I left the hubbub of Grandlake after getting some food and went to my campsite which was a mile or two  off Highway 34.