Easy day in Colorado

Our planned destination for today was Rico, Colorado. Unfortunately the only Inn in Rico has six rooms and they were all booked. We looked into a campsite on the far side of Rico, but they had no showers and only vault toilets. In case you aren’t familiar with a vault toilet, I’ll explain. It’s like a port-a-potty, but in a permanent building with a proper toilet, except the toilet opens up into a cavernous hole in the ground. The hole is completely dark and you can’t see how deep it is or what’s in it. Now, you might be thinking seeing the bottom of the port-a-potty is one of the worst parts of using one but I assure you that NOT being able to see the bottom is worse. Anything could be down there! Bats! Snakes! Some kind of terrifying poop monster!

Rather than expose ourselves to a possible poop monster, we decided to look into campgrounds on the near side of Rico. I called one and the woman I spoke to recommended we stay at the other one instead, as it is “far more civilized”. So that’s the one we went to. And it is quite nice! It’s right along the Dolores River, is rather wooded for an RV park, and they had free firewood.

All told, this resulted in a very low mileage day. After the 75 miles we did yesterday, I’m not too fussed about the low miles today.

Since we didn’t have far to go, Mike and I stopped in the town of Dolores. We got coffee from a local coffee shop, walked to an outdoor outfitters so he could buy gloves, then replenished our food and toiletries at the two grocery stores.

People in Colorado seem to have a greater respect for human life than people in Utah. Bit of a low bar but it was nice to see. In general, all drivers today gave me a wide berth if it was convenient. If it wasn’t convenient to do so, it was a coin flip as to whether or not they would slow down and wait for a gap in oncoming traffic so they could give me a wide berth or if they would just pass closely but slowly. At least no one was passing 8 inches away at 70 miles per hour. They also seemed to drive at speeds more appropriate for the winding mountain roads than they did in Utah, in general.

We had a relaxing afternoon at the campsite. I read for most of the afternoon and we had a campfire. Tomorrow will be another easier day.

Highlights

• good scenery. Spent the day riding along a river valley through the mountains. So we had pine tree covered mountains on either side but a gradual climb.
• good weather
• easy ride

Lowlights

• the roadkill on the shoulder included a kitten
• I accidentally swallowed a bug while riding
• the coffee shop put whipped cream on my almond milk latte. And it didn’t seem like the kind of place that would have almond milk whipped cream. So.

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: oatmeal and coffee
• First Snack: pumpkin latte with almond milk
• Second snack: Clif bar
• Lunch: vegan mac and cheese
• Third Snack: hummus and crackers, chips, mint chocolate cookies
• Dinner: chickpea curry with couscous

Stats

• Total distance: 31.50 miles
• Elevation gain: 1,688 feet
• Weather: dry, high of 68 degrees Fahrenheit