The Rest of Day 23, and Day 24 begining

What a day yesterday was! Rejuvenated from my lunch in Walsenburg, I headed off into the mountains. Given the amount of sunlight I had left, I planned to get to the top of the first pass I'd have to tackle (North La Veta pass - elevation 9,400 ft) and make camp with plenty of sunlight left. Starting about 9 miles from the pass, the uphill climb began. I got into a system of bicycling for a bit, then walking the bicycle for a bit, then bicycling again, saving my legs and butt from a long grind up the hill. Despite the walking, I still managed to reach the summit with plenty of light left. I dropped down just a hundred feet or so on the far side before finding a likely camping spot, figuring that even with the elevation, the night wouldn't be too cold.

The night wasn't bad. What was less than pleasant was breaking camp in the morning cold, followed by the long downhill. Normally I love miles of rolling downhill. When I've just woken up, it's cold enough outside to see your breath at times, and your biking gloves are the fingerless kind, it's not so fun! I found myself stopping every few miles to stick my hands under my armpits until I got lower and the day began to heat up a bit. With all that downhill, I made great time to Fort Garland, where I stopped in at Del's Diner for delicious pancakes and oatmeal! After resupplying on fluids, I was off again across the San Luis Valley. It's almost as flat as the plains were! Still, I'll be coming up on more mountains as well as Wolf Creek Pass soon enough. When a man at Del's asked where I was going and found I was planning to use the pass, he started laughing and shook his head. Still, I'm already at over 7000 feet, so I'm not that concerned.

Today and tomorrow should see me crossing two major boundaries on the trip. The first, just a few miles down the road from here (I'm posting this from Alamosa) is the point at which I will have less than 1000 miles left to go on my trip. That is in only about 25 miles! The other big boundary will be my crossing the Western Continental Divide at Wolf Creek Pass - something I plan to do tomorrow (no more camping out right at the nice chilly summit for me!)

With less than 1000 miles to go as of later today, and over a mile of downhill to reach my finish point, it looks like I will manage to get from coast to coast in under 40 days, something I would not have imagined myself doing when I started!

About two days back, I saw my first cacti, an exciting event that I had been anticipating. Moving up in elevation, I'm out of cactus country for now, but am definitely in scrubland regions, with pines on the mountains. Even looking out the window here, you can still see snow on many of the peaks, and the tree line is clearly visible. I don't think I've had any problems with the elevation, although given changing grades I bicycle on, sleep, and food, it's hard to tell whether this has been any effect. We'll see how things go over the next two days as I reach my greatest heights, then begin to drop again.