Day 29 – Holly to La Junta

Today was one of those rare days when (basically) everything goes right. When the wind is at your back and you’re heading through Eastern Colorado, you can make pretty amazing time. And when it’s not approach 100 degrees, your view on the world is a bit better.

No actual pictures of the ride today. 😉 There were much more interesting things today than the two of us riding trough the flats outside La Junta. It was almost cool when we rolled out of Holly. The breakfast at the Miles Court was great, especially for a $70 motel. So with some food in our belly and the wind at our back, we started the 84 mile trek to La Junta.

About 10 miles in, we passed a sign for the Amache Japanese-American Relocation Center… ie: one of the camps where Japanese-American’s were sent during World War II. It was a an interesting, dark time in United States history, and one that I thought Heidi and the boys should take some time to explore.

So I called back to Heidi in the MCC. They were only a few miles behind and drove in to see Amache just after I passed it. There wasn’t much really left of the camp, but there were still enough artifacts to serve as an eerie reminder of what happened there.

The buildings are mostly gone, but their cement foundations are still scattered around the landscape.

Heidi, the boys, Art, JP and I all rallied about 25 miles in to the ride for our first stop. Even though it was relatively cool the wind and low humidity still draw water out of you in a hurry. Water bottles were swapped and we kept cruising.

By this point the wind was really cooking. We were holding steady at about 20 mph on the ride and it was basically silent… Which means that the wind was at our backs at about the same rate we were moving. We met up next to the Hasty Post Office for our next rally point… nearly 45 miles in to the ride and barely an hour after our last stop. Nice.

We pushed on again, but the wind started to get a bit fickle. Eventually we pedaled in to Las Animas at around 62 miles. JP is the metric century man… 62 miles (ie: 100k) and he punched his card for the day. He rode really strong today and once again showed that being on the road before 7 is his spinach.. or some metaphor.

I grabbed a few more bottles and took a shot at getting in to La Junta. Again with the tail wind, I was cruising along, although the temps were starting to creep up in to the low/mid 90’s. Heidi pinged me after she got in to La Junta to tell me about a work zone on the way in to town. It was about 5 miles long where Rt 50 split in to a 4 lane divided… and one lane on each side was closed and there was no shoulder.

So yeah.. a 5 mile long work zone that was about as wide as a tractor trailer. I’m going to label that “not a good bike route”. I had Heidi SAG me in to the hotel. I’m a little bummed I didn’t ride hotel to hotel, but whatever.. at least I’m alive. 🙂

After we got to town, Heidi and the boys checked out Bent’s Old Fort, a national park with a (recreated) adobe fort that served as a fur trading post in the 1800s.

Heidi likes covered wagons, I think because of all the Little House she read as a kid. The next vinyl wrap for the MCC will probably have a covered wagon theme.

The fort was very authentic… “except for the restroom and electricity” as Heidi pointed out.

They even kept the old west “holy crap it’s hot out” feel. I thought that was nice of them. For the record I stayed back in the MCC, cooled off, ate about 200 grapes, and played iPad. I have had enough oppressive heat for a few days.

It was actually relatively cool in the shade in the fort.

Also, they had peacocks. Here we see the boys preparing to launch a sneak attack. What we won’t show you is them getting chased out of the fort by 6 very angry and loud birds (Note from Heidi – that did NOT happen).

In Colorado, we seemed to have transitioned from the farming in Kansas to the ranching we see here. There are a lot of cows in eastern Colorado. A LOT of cows.

Welcome to La Junta. We refilled the MCC with propane at the local KOA. The propane gauge on the MCC has basically 3 values: “full” “not full but not empty” and “empty”. We have been on the “not full but not empty” value since the first time we used propane months ago back in MD. After running the generator to run the big roof mounted AC over the last week, we had no idea how much propane we’ve used. As it turns out, we had used half of it (7 out of 14 gallons). At least now we’ve got something to gauge our propane use off of. I think we can get 30 hours of use out of the generator without worrying about running out.. which should get us to the west coast and back to Maryland if we play our cards right.

Tomorrow we ride to Pueblo. Only 64 miles, but a front is moving through and we’re likely to hit rain along the way. Tomorrow is a big day too because Pueblo will be the last big city we hit until Cedar City UT in a week and a half. We’ll be doing a lot of stocking up, especially on biking related supplies. Small riding day, but big shopping day ahead. Sleepy time.