On the third day of our trip from home in Prescott, Arizona to visit our kids in Boulder, Colorado we rode from Salida north on 285 for almost the entire day. The Collegiate Peaks are a section of the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains, with several named for prominent universities such as Mt. Princeton at 14,204', Mt. Harvard at 14,421' and Mt. Yale at 14,202'. The clouds hovered above, and sometimes just below the mountain peaks and kept my gaze for the beginning of our trip.
We continued on 285 north through the South Park basin, a 1000 square mile grassland flat at 10,000' elevation. There isn't much in South Park except for long-distance views of the Rockies and miles and miles of grassland populated by herds of cows or horses every few miles. The largest town, Fairplay, has about 700 people which says a lot about the wide-open spaces in this part of Colorado only a couple of hours' drive from Denver.
285 took us up and over Kenosha Pass as we continued north. The Colorado Trail, a 500-mile hiking, horseback riding, and mountain biking trail that stretches 500 miles from Denver to Durango crosses the highway at the top of Kenosha Pass.
We ended our 158 mile ride at our hotel in Louisville, where we'll spend the next 2 days visiting our boys who live in Boulder. We start our ride back home on Monday, looking forward to 3 more days riding through the West.
With as high as the mountains are it is nice to find some flat grasslands that high up.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty amazing, isn't it?
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