Day 3 July 26

One of the first safe places to stop and smell the mountains.

And they are very aromatic

Everywhere you are, they are too

Sometimes the weather can be somewhat inimidating

Impossible is a word I don't use much, but riding through hundreds of square miles of verdant plains surrounded by mountain ranges containing some of the highest mountains in Colorado if not the world, makes capturing the feelings pretty much impossible. You just have to be there. It was a little chilly leaving the Super 8 in Alamosa around 7:10. I rode for a couple of hours before the temperature broke 60.

As I rode through South Park I regretted the photo ops I missed because they happened so fast or there was no safe way to stop and get off the bike. Some of the pictures you would have seen if I could have stopped would have been:

...a red kayak maneuvering through the whitecapped rapids of the Arkansas River with a paddler wearing a bright blue life jacket and matching rafting helmet.

...a llama with soft brown body and pure white neck and head standing about twenty feet from the road looking directly at me with a hint of a smile ready for her portrait.

...a couple of blonde, pony tailed cowgirls with their cattle dogs moving a herd of longhorns.

I managed a couple of photos, as you have seen, to show the majesty of the fourteeners, mountains with an elevation of 14,000 feet or more, on the west side of the ride through South Park. Majestic as they are, bear in mind the floor of the plain is at 8,000 feet so the vertical rise in view is 6,000 feet. In Safford, Arizona the elevation is about 3100 feet and Mt. Graham is twenty miles away at 10,000 plus making for almost a 7000 foot vertical rise. So in my native Arizona we have the equivalent views, and for the climber (minus the oxygen complications), the equivalent challenge, of the fourteener.

Nonetheless, the view from the rest area where I took these photos encompasses six of these remarkable mountains.