I had another of those deep sleeps which accompanies hard work and except for a little pain and stiffness in my right knee, you wouldn't know that I had just finished crossing the Rockies. After packing all my gear and loading the bike I went to the laundry room where I worked on getting my journal up to date.

I would have spent over an hour there and there was a steady parade of women who were doing the laundry. I commented on the absence of men in this part of the campground and this elicited a strong response, particularly from a lady from Tennessee. She said that her husband’s idea of sharing responsibilities was that he drove their RV and she did everything else. Sounded pretty good to me … as a man! She was quite a character and was incredulous that I had cycled across from San Francisco. What got me was that she was complaining about not being a grandmother yet, and she was in her early 40’s. To each their own.

Eventually I headed out and when I went to get one final photo of the Rockies my digital camera died. That was an answer to prayer since I had prayed that it would at least last long enough to get me through the Rockies. There will be no photos until Lincoln NE where (hopefully) I will find a replacement camera waiting for me from HP. I had purchased a disposable Kodak camera so this will have to suffice and I will scan the photos later. It always pays to have a ‘Plan B’ up your sleeve, particularly as far as technology is concerned.

The route out from Estes Park followed the ‘Big Thompson River’. It was nothing short of spectacular. There was this river which wound its way through steep gorges, with the road following adjacent to it – and sometimes over and around it. It was quite an exciting ride with dramatic views of the cliffs. Just hope that my Kodak does it justice!

I stopped in Drake and tried calling Lis. It was too early to get her but I spoke with my father in Toronto who had apparently e-mailed me some route suggestions. He has been right into my travels which is great. The place with the phone had a small stagecoach on top of a daises which was quite eye catching. I’m sure it brought in the tourists. It was one of many potential stops along the gorge, but none of the others were as grabbing. There were numerous Indian art shops and antique shops, however, they seemed to be surviving more than prospering.

Eventually the gorge spread out and I was into the rolling hills at the foot of the mountains. It was much more arid, even though there was a river nearby, and the red soil seemed to inundate everything with a red tinge. I passed the turnoff to Masonville and soon found myself in the outskirts of Loveland. I stopped at Wendy’s Restaurant and had a vegetarian sandwich and baked potato for lunch.

While having lunch I read a free local paper which had several interesting articles. One of them was on Mr. Stanley, who had invented the Stanley Steamer (among other things). This was an early steam powered motor car. When he was in his mid-40’s he was given a year to live by doctors so he decided to move to Colorado where the dry climate would be healthier. It was the right decision since he lived to his 90’s. He decided to live in Estes Park where he built a grand hotel – today it is still called the Stanley and is most impressive. He also drove from Loveland up to Estes Park in one of his steamers, following the horse trail. Nobody thought it was possible and so certain were they that they would come to an untimely end, he couldn’t get anyone to go with him, even to draw water from the river! He made it in just over 3 hours which shows the calibre of his vehicles.

The other article was on a Seventh-Day Adventist institution called Eden Valley. Near Masonville, it offers lifestyle education and natural treatments as well as having a small college. Lis and I had met some of the people from there last year when we attended church in Estes Park but we were not sure where it was located. The article was most gracious in its praise, I suspect the author had been a patient, and if we are ever here again I would like to pay them a visit.

Loveland seemed like a nice town except that whenever I get into a town it seems as though there is a surplus of traffic which makes the cycling unpleasant. I can’t wait until I’m back on the quiet roads. As I cycled towards Greeley I came across an Outlet Store plaza which I cycled around. These are a U.S. phenomena where a number of large manufacturers band together to offer their products directly to the public. If one is interested in shopping there can be great savings and last year Lis and I bought quite a few things at Silverthorne. However, being on a bicycle I was not exactly in the shopping mood, although I unsuccessfully tried to find a pair of shorts for Lis since she was so enamoured with the ones she bought last year.

There was a tourist information centre nearby and I stopped there to recharge my water bottles. I spoke to the ladies about routes east and where I could camp for the night. One of them advised that rather than go towards Fort Morgan, which was my original plan, that I head more NE towards Stirling along Highway 14. She said that there was a campground there and when I checked it was marked on my map so I had a new route to follow. That’s one of the nice things about not having a set itinerary. One can go where the fancy takes one.

The road was quite busy as it crossed the Interstate Highway. Although it was a divided highway with wide shoulders, I still found the traffic levels un-nerving. Rather than enter Greeley I decided to take an earlier route up through Windsor which would get me back onto rural roads. So at the first instance I turned off and headed north. Although it was a back road it was still very busy and the reason soon became apparent: this area is under rapid development with housing sub-divisions serving what must be the growing areas of Loveland and Greeley.

This part of Colorado was obviously settled by expatriate British since the towns have names like Windsor, Buckingham and Hereford. When I saw the Hereford sign I started thinking of that scene from the film ‘My Fair Lady’ where Eliza tries to say ‘Hurricanes hardly ever happen in Hereford and Hampshire’. It comes out as ‘urricanes ardly ever appen in ereford and ampshire’ due to her dropping of the H. A delightful film I sang some of its songs as a wound my way along the road.

Windsor was a nice small town with a really neat Bed & Breakfast. Had Lis been with me we would have stopped there irrespective of when we passed it since it had ‘cutesey wootsey’ written all over it. It was a Victorian mansion with lots of curley cues and painted in a really sweet way. The town also seemed to have some character to it with a number of antique and other speciality shops. There was a lake on the edge of town and quite a lot of bird life. With the Rockies not too far in the distance it seemed like a good place to live.

I continued north and was passed by a couple out training on a tandem bicycle. I don’t know why it is but whenever I see a tandem the woman is always at the rear. Without fail. Must be a male thing about having to steer …

The area was under intense cultivation and the water usage from irrigation was so high that it felt very humid in the area. It was quite a strange sensation since I cycled through a dry, arid region and then suddenly hit this wall of humidity. Later on I would suddenly leave it again. The irrigation was done in two ways. One was to have huge rigs with wheels on them which traversed the field in a semi-circular pattern, with the water coming from the centre of the circle where there was a permanent connection. Accordingly, the corn was planted in circular rows instead of straight lines. The second was through irrigation channels which bordered the property. The water was then taken out into the ground between the crops. Given the humidity in the air the processes cannot have been that efficient.

I reached Highway 14 and turned east towards Ault. This was another small town with a few grain silos and it seemed to exist to service the local farming community. There was only one market in town which I got to just after closing at 18:00 so I went over to the mini-mart at the Texaco petrol station. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it never ceases to amaze me what passes for food. There were about 8 aisles and they were stocked with all the junk food and rubbish that one can think of. I was keen on some bread and they had lots of this, but it was the famous ‘Wonder Bread’. For those unfamiliar with Wonder Bread, it is the height of modern technology. White as snow it is engineered to the point where you can squash it down small and voila! It will miraculously expand again to its original size (they used to have an advert showing that on TV when I was a kid). But since it is fortified with 8 essential vitamins and minerals (due to the manufacturing process removing any traces of goodness) it must be healthy for you. Spare me. In the end all I got was my water bottles filled and I went out otherwise empty handed.

Ault in an attempt to market itself had signs up saying it was A Unique Little Town, but unless I missed something (which I don’t think I did) it was quite forgettable. There was one memorable aspect to it: there was a statue in the park to a local who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for bravery in World War II. He was the first Mexican-American to receive the award and he got it while fighting the Japanese.

The road continued east and the place gradually became more arid. There were a number of farms which had cattle and sheep pens, some of them massive. These are probably brought in from the grasslands which I was soon to enter.

Behind me were the mountains and although I had only come about 100 km from Estes Park, it was amazing the transition. The land was relatively flat (not as flat as Nevada) and it was hard to believe that I had only yesterday been climbing the Rockies and was up at 3685 m. I was heading towards the ‘Pawnee National Grasslands’ park which is an area where they are preserving the grasslands that once covered the ‘Great Plains’.

This area was once home to great herds of Buffalo who were hunted by nomadic Indian tribes like the Pawnee, Sioux and Cheyanne who many of us have heard of through the Cowboy and Indian movies. When gold was discovered in Colorado it brought in the white men and scared away many of the wild herds that the Indians depended on. They were also hunted towards extinction to feed the new arrivals or for their hides. For example, the buffalo were eliminated by 1876. This of course destroyed the Indian’s way of life and there were numerous fights between them and the new settlers. The last battle in Colorado was at Summit Springs in 1869 and by 1871 Indians were no longer a threat to the whites.

There were two ‘waves’ of settlement. The first were what were later called ‘Cattle Barons’. They were astute enough to realise that the miners would need to eat and that the grasslands were suited to cattle. Starting about 1861 they ran open range cattle and made huge fortunes. These were wiped out in the 1880’s when heavy blizzards killed off most of their livestock. The second wave were those of settlers who wanted to farm the area. After completion of the Colorado & Wyoming railroad in 1888 they needed customers and so marked all this land free for the taking to any settlers. Apparently their brochures reached as far as Europe. This brought the people in and they started to eke a living out of the soil by establishing farms throughout the area.

Living in houses made from sod – since there are no trees in the area – life was hard. This part of Colorado receives an average of 10 inches of rain per year and so they needed to adapt to what is called ‘dry farming’. Sugar beets were a popular crop and a number of immigrants were Germans from the Volga in Russia. Hardworking, they managed to establish farms but many failed within a few years due to their failure to properly rotate crops or to understand the unique and harsh conditions. The following is an excerpt from the first expedition into the area in 1822: the land "… is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and is of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for subsistence". How right he was. The regions unpredictable weather resulted in feasts and famines.

The worst came in the 1931 when there was a drought and the ‘Dust Bowl’. I had heard of the latter but the locals described it as an unimaginable horror which has fortunately never been repeated. One man in his 80’s told me that there were these phenomenally strong winds which blew the soil away. They buried farm equipment so that it could not be found. In their house they had to wet sheets and hang them in front of all the windows and doors to try and keep the dust from suffocating them inside the house. Many women were trapped inside for days on end and went insane. After this many of the marginal farms went bankrupt and were ultimately taken over by the U.S. Government who have turned them back into grasslands.

It was in this area that I found myself as the day was ending. The grasses extended off to the sides of me as far as I could see. Except for the occasional deer and cattle I was alone out there. The traffic dropped to about one vehicle every 5 minutes. My camping ground, as marked on the map, did not exist and I cycled on hoping to find a suitable place to camp. There really wasn’t anywhere and I was presented with mile after mile of barbed wire fence. Finally I came to a place where the wire was down lower at an entrance so I decided to camp just off the road. I lifted my bike over the wire and wheeled it 100 m off the road. Part way I noticed that there were tiny cactus, but fortunately they did not completely pierce my tyre with their thorns. That would have just been a great way to end the day.