Hartsel, Pueblo and Colorado Springs

We're off route for the night. Back to Pueblo tomorrow.

Exciting stuff, we're losing elevation all the way to Kansas! I'm supremely excited to be through with climbing for a few weeks, my legs demand a break. Now we will just have heat and headwinds, minus hills. Cool!

This mornings fun project entailed taking apart Bills bike and boxing it up to ship back to TN. Teamwork at its finest.

Super cool moment: drafting a van for 10 whole miles. Vans block way more wind than people do! I wouldn't trust just anyone as the driver, but I trust Bill 100% to drive as we drafted less than a foot behind the bumper at 18-25 mph. Also, mine and McKinley's handle bars were no more than 4" apart, side-by-side. That's trust.

As we move into eastern Colorado, the landscape is looking more like Wyoming: barren, dry and brown. Now that we lost about 6,000 feet of elevation, the mountains are disappearing and the land is flattening out. It feels strange to look into the distance and not see a string of peaks; it's been a month and a half of being sandwiched between gigantic mountain ranges. Kansas has a bad wrap, however, I'm looking forward to possibly seeing things others do not. We should be there in a few days.

Tomorrow is a big day: McKinley's birthday! I'm not sure what the day will entail, but Bill is going to take us to some bike shops to find bike sandals. Maybe we will ride, maybe we won't. I like winging each day, I feel so free of stress right now.