Distance: 84 miles Cimarron, CO to Sargent, CO
Ride Time: 7:15
Average Speed: 11.5 mph
Altitude Gain: 4062 feet
Average Temperature: 82
Not to beat a dead horse, so to speak, but our biggest challenge to date has been having good communication!! Most of the time our Republic Wireless phones have no service. Republic Wireless uses Wifi based on Sprint towers. In the back woods of Colorado either Verizon or ATT have cell coverage, not both, but one or none. Because we have no service, Kathie has no GPS capability and we have no way to talk to each other. She drives ahead and I look for where she is parked as I ride along. It is not an easy thing to do. We have received miracle after miracle where we are lead to each other. We will have to figure something out. I think the Lord must be getting tired of bailing us out of our impossible situations.
We rode around the Gunnison reservoirs. They are interesting, but the biggest thing was all of the boats in tow that I had to dodge while riding. I rode up and over Blue Mesa Summit at 7519 feet. Kathie watched one boat speed around the lake and then blow it’s engine and sit helpless in the water. She also watched a flock of geese swimming in the water in the same vee formation that they fly in.
By the end of my riding day, I was beat and I had not seen Kathie. I didn’t know if I had missed the campground we were looking for. Of course the phones didn’t work. Kathie was parked in the canyon and had decided to climb the mountain wall to get a better view. She saw a cyclist coming and assumed that it was me. It wasn’t me. Later down the canyon the other cyclist and I saw each other and he stopped to talk to me. Because of traffic, I could not get to his side of the road. He waved his arms and yelled something and then rode on. Within a few minutes the Lord had done His miracle again and we were united.
Another problem is that most of the roads we drive on are real small, low traffic roads with no pull-outs or turn-arounds. Kathie may travel 20 to 50 miles with no way to safely pull off of the road. Oh, and have I mentioned, no cell phone coverage.
We decided that since, we don’t know if there is a place to pull off of the road or turn around, I would ride to the next store to see if they may have a place for us to spend the night. I rode about 5 miles up the road to Sargents, found that they did have a campground behind the convenience store, and then rode back to tell Kathie that I had rented a camp spot for the night. To date, it is the most we have spent for a night.
ThruUSA2 