Limon to Littleton

The last day of the Chicago to Denver leg of my trip was a fun day and a tough day. 99.7 miles total for the day. This first photo shows a typical view from much of the non-Denver part of the ride. It was rainy for several hours in the morning, but then cleared up to give me a beautiful, if hilly, ride towards the big city.

Next is another typical landscape photo including a yellow flower. :) I really enjoy the landscape out here. More hilly, more trees, more variety than the plains.

Just outside Elizabeth Colorado I saw a Smart Car parked in a dealer's lot and I had to stop. It's funny, the guy sells giant RVs and tiny cars. I was only interested in the tiny cars. :)

He also had this electric tricycle. I thought this view was funny because you can't see the front wheel. In the US it's licensed as a motorcycle for some reason - perhaps a simpler process, or less stringent or something?

On my way into Denver, Dale helped me out by looking up local bike paths. He found bike paths such that most of the last 15 or 20 miles to his house were on protected bikeways. Sweet! However, these bike paths suffered from the standard bike path problem - they were designed with recreation in mind, not transportation. So it wiggled and swerved and curved all over the place while the road nearby went perfectly straight. I went a longer distance than I needed to, but the road had no shoulder so it was still a good trade-off I think. Besides, the path went through this great natural area near a creek, and I had an awesome tailwind. I was really flying through the curves, zipping around, having fun. On that section anyway.

At some point the bike path started following an interstate highway, and that interstate intersected with another one. The bike path went through a number of confusing twists and turns in order to stay with the original highway. I wonder when the bike path will be a high enough priority to warrant its own bridge straight through the tangle of roads?

It turns out that suburban Denver is a very large place. Even after this shot I probably still had over 15 miles to go to Dale's place, and he was relatively close to where I was coming from. It took a few more hours to arrive, and in the meantime I was beset by many more hills and two serious downpours. At one point near the end the lighting was getting pretty worryingly close. Finally as I was rolling down Dale's street the rain let up a bit. The garage door was open, I rolled my bike inside, and I was done!

They generously gave me a towel and some of Dale's dry clothes to replace the soaked ones I was wearing, and I could finally relax after 26 days on the road.