Day 3
June 25, 2020
I woke up and felt much better in the morning. My spirits were higher but my jeans were still just as wet as they were the night before. I packed up camp including stuffing a very wet tent into it's bag, which I'd have to do something about later if I didn't want mildew.
As I rolled out to finish my run over Guanella Pass, it was 41F, but my spirits were much improved from the previous day and I was happy to be on the road again.
It was cold and the roads were damp, but the sun was shining and I was enjoying having this road all to myself.
However, when I reached the summit, I was greeted with this.
Apparently Guanella pass is a popular hiking area, even during the week. The parking lots were full with folks parking on the street to get that early morning hike in. From here on out, there were lots of vehicles coming the other way as that's the easier way in coming from the Denver area.
Now, I've learned over my times in the mountains to never understimate a driver based on their vehicle. Especially, never underestimate a local who knows the roads and drives them daily and is in a hurry to get somewhere. I pulled over and let this 4Runner get by.
He was running hot, and wasn't afraid to let his tires howl through the corners. More importantly, quite a few of these corners had drivers cut the inside and the road was covered with gravel, of which he was definitely more confident to fly through than I was.
Guanella pass ends in Georgetown which I hopped on 70 for a little bit to catch Highway 40 north. I'd been on this road for a family trip once before and was looking forward to it. It's a nice climb with multi lane 15-25 mph U turns all the way up.
This runs up through Winter Park and into Granby, where we'd stayed before. I got a quick splash and go in Granby before turning north on CO-125.
I had intentions of staying at Denver Creek Campground on the way back, however it's first come first served, no reservations. That kind of winging it might work for others, but I'm the type that prefers to have a plan, and wandering around when I'm tired and frustrated because I didn't properly plan ahead and found my campground to be full, just doesn't work for me. So I'd planned on checking it out this morning and seeing how full it was on a weekday, since I'd be coming back on a weekday. Once again, Garmin failed me as that was a via point and it never showed it to me and I remembered it way after I'd passed, so my recon mission was failed.
Once past Rand colorado it gets pretty flat, but the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge is still quite scenic.
So, I've been pretty hard on Garmin in this report and not especially happy with it. It doesn't necessarily do the things along the way that I'd like it to do, but it DOES get me where I'm going pretty reliably. You might notice the phone in my photos and videos, well I was running a test using OSMAND on the phone for navigation. Somewhere around this area is where Garmin kicked OSMAND's butt. I looked down at my navigation devices, which had been in agreement for most of the way the past few days, but I noticed a dramatic disagreement between them. Garmin was telling me to turn left in 5 miles, while OSMAND said to turn right in 24 miles. That's interesting, I wonder where they are taking me that is so different, then I noticed something. Garmin had my estimated arrival time in Red Lodge as 5:20PM. OSMAND had my arrival time at 9:15PM. Right then and there I was thankful I was following my Garmin because who knows where OSMAND was taking me. This was pretty much a HUGE failure of the test and I didn't hardly look at the phone apps the rest of the trip.
I don't know what it is about Wyoming, but as I approached the border, the bugs became terrible. I stopped for this picture and had to get going again because I was being swarmed. Never been to Wyoming before, and this welcome was not what I'd expected.
I can't even begin to tell you how much video is ruined from my GoPro due to it being covered in bugs. Here's what my helmet looked like when I stopped for lunch at a Subway in Rawlins.
In fact, I'd clean my helmet at every gas stop and it'd look like that by the next one. Subway lunch was good, and I had cell service so I phoned the family while I had lunch, it was good to talk to them.
The whole area was pretty flat and kind of boring, but different from what I'm used to at home, so I was enjoying myself.
I turned north on 135 (Sand Draw Road) from 287 following Garmin. At some point I remember seeing a sign warning trucks about a steep slope in 11 miles. I squint and look ahead and its flat for as far as I can see. I think, that's interesting, but shrug my shoulders and continue on. The location they are talking about is the following google maps link about where it says "Wagon Bed Spring":
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.6953628 ... a=!3m1!1e3
The Google street view doesn't do it justice and I wasn't running video at the time due to the flat boringness. However, the road makes a few turns climbing as it does, but not that dramatically. Now, the land to the west must be falling away faster than I am climbing because I pass a guardrail and I'm quite high up now. Another few turns and you see the road just fall away over the crest of the hill. It's a little unnerving because of all the turns, and there's no turn warning signs as you crest the hill. Once you can see over, the road just drops what looks at the time like straight down for miles. It was quite impressive and very out of place in this area. Soon enough, it was back to flat boringness.
I arrived in Riverton and turned toward Shoshoni. The last several miles into Shoshoni and across the Boysen Reservoir were some of the worst crosswinds I've ever experienced. I've ridden for hours across the pains of Texas with crosswinds so bad I had to slide over onto the side of the bike, but they were continuous cross winds. Annoying, but ridable. The area around the Boysen Reservoir was so turbulent that it kept blowing me this way and that. If I weren't wearing gloves I'd be able to see how white my knuckles were. I was pretty terrified at times.
I stopped in Shoshoni and a guy warned me that the canyon had awful winds that were blowing his truck all over the place. "Great" I think, more of that. I wondered if this was how the Wind River got it's name, but it wasn't bad when I was coming back. I don't know which situation is unusual. The ride from Shoshoni to the North and coming back across the north side of the Boysen Reservoir was just like earlier, and several times the wind tried to blow me into the path of oncoming trucks. Once in the canyon however it was quite nice.
I think it was Joey that told me the ride between Shoshoni and Thermopolis was amazing and I have to agree. Wind River Canyon was fantastic and I enjoyed it all.
The ride up to Greybull and Cody were pretty uneventful. Finally, I get a new state I've never been to, Montana!
Dear Montana, I thank you for not choosing to welcome me to your state as Wyoming did with the bug welcoming committee, but perhaps you could move the sign to the pullout and make it a little bigger please?
On my way from there to Red Lodge I stopped for some photos. The temperature was dropping and I could see rain on the horizon so I decided to put in the waterproof thermal layers into my Rev'It Tornado 3 suit.
I was glad I did because two miles later the rain started and three miles further the temperature had dropped almost 30 degrees.
I punched through that and rolled into Red Lodge. Seems like all of the FJR community was walking up the road into town for lunch and I got a lot of waves as I arrived.
I quickly phoned Josh and they were up in town waiting on a table, so I hurried down there and met up with the group. I had a fantastic pizza of which I ate half and ended up giving the other half to Craig who arrived late and didn't have time for dinner, so it all worked out well.
I laid my towel on the floor of the closet in my room and hung up my jeans and my tent to let them dry, then I went to bed and slept well on a comfortable mattress.
