| wow what a beautiful day! the sun was already shining when we had our breakfast out in front of the motel at 6:15. just last week we were eating breakfast in the dark. aren't time zones wonderful! patty the chef made scrambled eggs with spinach. you could roll them into a flour tortilla if you wanted to & throw some salsa on top. what a great way to start the day. patty cruised around the breakfast/snack table taking notes as we ate. seems that we're running out of supplies left & right (peanut butter, jam, raisin bran, honey mustard....the essentials). she'll need several pack horses to get her supplies out of the next sam's club she visits. |
| sari & i finally rode out of ordway close to 7. several others had left much earlier without eating much breakfast because they had heard about the olney springs cafe just 11 miles away. madeline, owner/operator of the ordway hotel, had called the cafe last evening to doublecheck its hours & warn them about the womantours invasion the next morning. thanks, madeline! by the time sari & i got to the cafe there were about 8 riders there. they were having breakfast but we ordered pie (surprise). we had heard they had good pies here. it turned out they were ok. before long we were back on our bikes heading west. |
| at boone, 20 miles on along the route, we ran into gerrie & darlene. they both live in colorado. a biking friend of theirs, bob, drove down from the denver area to meet & bike with them today. |
| because of the haze covering them all day, we never got a sharp view. perhaps you can't even see the dark shadow on the far horizon that's really a row of mountains.....but at least you can get an idea of the scrub brush & little flowers along the roadside today. you'll be getting much better pictures of mountains from me before long, i promise. |
| 13 miles out of pueblo, our highway, 96, joined US 50. that's a 4-lane road & it's busy. the shoulders are wide, but pretty much full of debris, including some glass. not much sightseeing goes on when you have to watch the road so carefully as you bike, tho' we did see lots of cute little prairie dogs cavorting along the roadside, bobbing up & down. they're so cute....but how do they survive so close to such a busy highway? |
| sari & i evidently misunderstood both the instructions (& revisions of instructions) that gloria described last night & also the directions debby gave us earlier this morning, 'cause we missed a turn & ended up off route. once we realized we had gone astray, we were hot & frustrated. we decided to stop at the next convenience store. we finally spotted one so pulled around a corner. then we had a big decision to make.....whether to ask directions at the convenience store-----or at the Dairy Queen across the street. we decided that DQ staff would surely be as knowledgeable, so in we went. sari's new to the DQ lifestyle, but she catches on quickly. she ordered a heath blizzard made with chocolate ice cream. i got a georgia mud pie blizzard made with chocolate ice cream. at judith's suggestion, i now have them put the hot fudge on top instead of mixing it in with the ice cream & brownie pieces. we felt soooo much better when we left the DQ than when we entered. |
| sari & i headed down the road that the DQ staff person said would get us to our motel. we ran into darlene & a few others who were heading in the opposite direction. they were pretty sure of themselves, so we followed them. that turned out to be the right thing to do. like many other riders, we stopped at the great divide bike store to talk with the mechanics about working on our bikes during our layover day. it turned out that both sari's & my bike need new chains. i'm having some other things done to my bike, too, while it's there. i'll walk down & pick it up late tomorrow afternoon; the bike shop is only about 4 blocks from our motel. |
| linda's sister dona had called local TV stations ahead of our visit. one station sent photographers out on our route today & this evening we have some new TV stars in our group. rose, deanna, lin, & phyllis were all interviewed & photographed out on highway 50 coming into pueblo & appeared on local newscasts this evening. |
| tonight our dinner was served by the marriott staff at one of the meeting rooms at the motel. 8 new bikers join us here at pueblo for the ride to w.yellowstone. all were on the '98 womantours ride across country--the southern route. |
