Today we got our first look at the Rocky Mountains. They are snow capped and looking pretty formidable, but that is for 2 days from now. Today started off warm and sunny with 12 miles along a beautiful bike trail which paralleled the Colorado river. Very nice! After we left the bike trail we merged with route being taken by The Bike Tour of Colorado. There are 2,500 cyclists on this tour and they were on our route to Montrose today and they are on our route for tomorrow as well although they will turn off before they get to Gunnison which is our destination. As for today, we had to work our way into their pace lines and try not to get run over. They have some pretty strong cyclists on the BTC. We rode through farmlands as well as the typical Colorado mountains and canyons. I saw farmers today for the first time since California. A corn field was up pretty high, my first corn field of the year. Sorry, I didn't get a picture. We all wore our America by Bicycle jerseys so we would stand out from the crowd. I met several riders who were familiar with what we were doing and they chatted as they rode by. We met a rider who was wearing the same jersey as we were. He rode the ride last year and just wore his jersey today not realizing our group would be here. He rode up with a couple of us to one of our support vehicles and Michele was wondering who the extra person was until he spoke and then she recognized him. Several of us stopped for lunch about 20 miles before the motel. After we left, a strong head wind started up making riding very difficult. To top it off, my right foot began to hurt to the point I could hardly stand it. I just wanted to get my shoes off in the worst way. We finally made it to the motel at 2:30PM just a little bit worse for wear.
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