Day 21:  11,312'

Today started around 7,900' in Gunnison, Colorado. We needed to go over Monarch Pass, the highest pass of the trip.

Where did we wake up in Gunnison? Well Jon and I are trying to keep this trip on a budget. It is very easy to spend a lot of money. Last night we decided to sneakily sleep in a park. 

I slept under this picnic table and Jon slept between the two. Unfortunately they have a crazy sprinkler system that drilled me in the head in the middle of the night.

This is our bikes getting drilled. 

We checked the weather and it said 0% chance of rain. It rained from the moment we woke up until 11pm.

It didn't help we were in a cloud. Speaking of clouds, Jon was on cloud nine when he met two of his favorite actors! Unfortunate about Katie's arm...

Luckily the day cleared up as we made our way up to Monarch Pass!

We were pretty excited when we reached the top.

After the trip up, we were able to fly through the trees for 15 miles without pedaling.

45 miles after the top we landed in a town called Coaldale, CO. We have a tent site and ate a lot of PB&J for dinner. 

I'm sitting across from Jon writing the blog. We are on a river. It's cool.

Tomorrow we'll be ending our day in Pueblo, Colorado. The end of the Western Express! When we get there we'll be eating at Black Jack Pizza because its a Dine Out restaurant. Dine Out restaurants donate a portion of their profits to No Kid Hungry in the month of September. There are locations all across the US, so visit No Kid Hungry's website and choose a place to grab a bite. If you live in Metro Detroit there are a ton of participants. Theres only a week left in Hunger Action Month. Act now!

DAY 22 To the Plains!

As you can see by the topographic map that was in a general store, Colorado is very different climatically west to east. Today we finished our "Western Express Trail" and now join up with the "TransAmerica Trail". This is a major triumph for us, this means we have gone 1583.5 miles. 

Today was a 90 mile day. It started uphill into the trees. It was a strange feeling. This would be our biggest uphill for a long time to come. 

It was bittersweet. In Kansas we will see one crop and flatness for many days. Hours and hours of the same thing isn't necessarily exciting.

By the end of the day, everything had flattened out. We are now in Pueblo Colorado and it is the desert. We were not expecting it to be the desert. It is. We are not happy about that fact. There is no camping available here, so we are staying in a motel in town. I only have 1 extra tube, so we are going to grab a tube and some cliff bars early tomorrow morning before we head out into the sparsely populated Kansas.

Tomorrow we want to get 90 miles in as we approach the border of Kansas. 

We have a pretty good thing going on with editing together some footage. We hope to upload that soon. The trick will be finding a strong enough wifi signal. Hopefully tomorrow we can!

DAY 23 Population 84

We've arrived in Haswell, CO after a long 102 mile ride. We don't have internet so we can't upload photos from today's ride, We'll try and post more tomorrow.  

Haswell is a really small town, population 84 according to the 2000 U.S. Census! There's no campsites or motels so we're staying in a park. 

A little tid bit to leave you with: Haswell, CO has the Country's smallest jail 12x14... that's smaller than our living room!

UPDATE: THE FULL SCOOP

Thanks so much to my girlfriend and mom for putting that information up, we really had almost 0 service. Here's the full scoop:

We saw pretty things.We stayed at the Santa Fe Inn for $55 on the night of the 22nd day. So we woke up here! We face timed our Uncle Brad and BFF Max Schuler.

We went through many towns that were completely shut down. This photo was taken in Olney Springs, Colorado and every single shop was closed. We were confused. We asked someone walking into the post office, "Can we find anything to eat or drink here?" 

"Everything's closed, unless you want stamps."

We stopped at a place for lunch called, "My Place." They gave us our meal for free because it took a very long time to get to us. Lots of cowboy hats in this area. (We ended up leaving a tip the size of the canceled bill)

In the afternoon we met Roman. Roman was coming from Yorktown, Virginia headed to San Francisco. He is from Austria and had a lot of questions about the mountains and the desert. 

Eastern Colorado was arid. 

It was also flat. Can you believe this is Coloardo? It was like this for over 100 miles.

Flat and dry. When we got to 102 miles, we were mentally done. Physically we felt well, but we were bored to death and mentally tired. 

We came to a town Haswell, which was much less of a town than we expected. The only store in town was closed for the Junior High football game. Luckily, we had purchased ingredients to make peanut butter at a previous town. We found a vending machine and had a pop. 

We set up in the city park.

Day 24 Kansas!

We've heard a lot of smack talk about Kansas. In Colorado, many people told us we would miss all of the climbs of the mountains due to the flatness and sameness of Kansas. "The plains are the worst part of the trip," they say. It was discouraging. We started worrying that we'd go crazy.

Then we remembered that we are talking to people who choose to live in the mountains. We are the products of plains-people. Momma grew up in New Lebanon, Ohio. It's in our blood.

We woke up around 5:30 AM and hit the road as the sun rose. It felt like we were in Kansas even though we had 50-ish miles left of Colorado.We took the morning easy because we had to wait til 10 AM for Cascade bicycle shop to open. Just a reminder, we are in Montrose, Colorado. The mechanic was super accommodating and repacked Jon's front hub with grease, and then trued his wheel. It is so sad that we have come to expect that bike mechanics are pretentious, and that a kind mechanic makes our hearts melt. So refreshing!

As silly as it may sound, Jon and I made a concerted effort today to talk more than we did yesterday. These plains can make you tired if you aren't actively engaging your mind. Shortly after this picture was taken we started writing a musical about Colorado feeling like Kansas. 

 

The first town we came upon was Eads, about 21.5 miles into the day. We both got this breakfast.

We were planning a 101 mile day to the town of Leoti, but then received a text message from our mother that our friend Haley's grandparents live in Kansas. After further investigation, they live 24 miles east of Leoti, exactly on our route. Could we possibly do a 125 mile day?

(Spoiler alert: we made it. Here is Haley, whom has incredible grandparents. She appears to be battling the wind or dancing in this photograph.)

We met David and Richard, whom are from North Carolina. They had nice accents. They did not have nice things to say about Kansas. 

Life in the plains exemplified below:

After 50 something miles we passed into Kansas. 

We stopped at many gas stations for beverages. 

They said Kansas was quite lovely, and gets more green and humid. We would like to experience some humidity so that our mouths don't dry out so fast!

Night fell and we entered the Central Time Zone. We rode many hours today. From dawn til dusk. Being on a bicycle for 12 hours in a day is a crazy feeling.

We finally got to Scott City around 9:00pm. The days are getting shorter and shorter, and it is a bummer that we lose the sun so early.

This is Marlo and Don. They are AMAZING! They've grown up here and lived here their whole life. They had a corn and wheat farm. 

All around the house you can find Don's INCREDIBLE wood work. Look at this kaleidoscope he made!

Day 25 Half-way? yes.

Kansas! Jon found a public radio station program called Western Swing and Other Things. It was hosted by the Dot City Marshall and "Cowgirl Jeanie". It was amazing. At one point Cowgirl Jeanie said, "And the Marshall knows you never kick a cow-pie on a hot day!"

We went by the homestead of George Washington Carver, a modern genius.

Because we have been pushing for so long with little rest,  we are very tired. 

Everyone we meet tells us "Wow! You're making great time." But we feel like we are still up against the clock. Many that do this trip, do so with little time constraints. We both are trying to get back to work on Monday October 20th. Why? Because we love work, and work loves us, and we want to enjoy and do the heck out of this tour, but also realize that life does exist elsewhere. 

It's the challenge of focusing on the goal, pushing as hard as you can while also slowing down to enjoy the precious moments that the trip brings. It's a difficult balance. 

The culture here is great.

except for the love of oil. Notice the "pulling for the oil industry" on the building.

The slower moments in the grass with the insane Kansas wind have been treats. I may have even fallen asleep on the side of the road today while we were taking a "fiver". 

As we finished our 87 mile day in Rush Center, Kansas, we went to the only restaurant within 40 miles" Greg's.

33 oz. of beer for 3 dollars. Then we headed over to the city park and slept.