estes park to evergreen

We woke to a cool, cloudy morning in Estes Park. Then we climbed. Right out of town we climbed. Then we went down, then we went up. The highway south out of Estes Park is called the Peak-to-Peak Highway. And we spent the day riding from peak to peak.

Lily Lake is right off the road.

The clouds remained all day but never led to precipitation, so we were able to enjoy all of the sections of the road that had been resurfaced. There were a few rough sections, but they weren't too bad, or too long.

And there are many spots like this, that just look like the highway falls away from you like a ride at Worlds of Fun. This is my kind of roller-coaster.

A group of us had decided to find a place for lunch along the way. Black Hawk and Central City seemed like the right location. They are small casino towns just north of I-70. I had read about Black Hawk several years ago when they banned bicycles from their streets. In Colorado! Several groups sued, and the law was thrown out, but it was obvious that there was no love for cyclists in that area. The city had routed the tour around town as much as possible, adding a couple miles and a short, brutal climb, just because they could.

But we stopped and ate in the casino restaurant anyway, because it was there. Then we fought debris in the shoulder on the Central City Parkway. We battled gravity on the bike path and frontage road that got us to US6, and wrestled with too much traffic on US6 until some nicer, quieter roads got us to Bergen Park and Evergreen. It was a cool evening that passed too quickly, then it was off to the tent for a last night in the cool mountain air, on the last night of CRMBT 2016.