Day 3: Powderhorn Rd -> Creede

Woke to ice on the tents, but blue skies and sighs of relief, but it was short lived. The thunderclouds rolled in like they where late for work. Kiki demonstrates the classic brown splatter that biking on dirt roads it the rain produces. Encountered two signs that had wrong mileage on them and to a bicyclist, that matters so much. The first said the pass was 14 miles when indeed it was 16 miles. One might say, what's the big deal. Here's the deal. You get to mile 14, after traveling 3-4 mph uphill for hours. You can barely travel any more. You might even be a tad bit grumpy. And the pass is no where in sight. What gives? I'll tell you what gives it's sloppy forest service mile estimation. I remember Ed Abbey said something about Forest Service mileage and offered a formula to interpret their numbers. I'm at a loss for what it was, but I'm sure it would have accounted for our extra two miserable miles. Mostly this was miserable because these last two miles were the steepest and took us about 50 minutes to cover! Of course as we get close to the top we reach "Lower Mill Pond" which is basically a slap in the face, since of course you KNOW there is an "UPPER Mill Pond".

We finally make it to HWY 149 and the road to Creede only to be greeted by a sign that says Creede 55 miles. No big deal you say, but we'd all expected it to be 40 miles. Turns out that sign is wrong too, but we didn't figure that out until it was late and we still thought we had be 15 miles to go as we rolled into Creede, happy to be done, but 10 minutes before realizing this we were all considering Hari-Kari as a viable alternative to continuing.

Creede is one awesome town. It has a great town park that cyclist can hang out in, get water, wash up in the bathrooms with HOT water. This is us enjoying a early dinner prior to figuring out where we were going to camp. We thought the baseball field was the viable option and being viable, we decided to go ahead and get the police involved by asking their permission. Turns out it would have been better to ask for forgiveness as they showed little sympathy to the fact that at that stage we were only capable of moving our sore, tired bodies one more mile. Here's a bicycle tourist fun fact: If you ask a local where you might camp nearby because you've ridden all day and are exhausted, you more than likely get this type of reply "Welp, ya jes need ta go back about 5-7 miles the way ye came in and take a right at Rozman's place, go up that hill fer a couple more miles till you get the hatchery, then it's jes about 1/2 mile or more uphill to the National forest campground. Ye caint miss it......." By this time of course, we've fallen asleep.

But as dusk settled it, it was time to put on the game face. I set off for one last ride around the small village. I knocked on a door that abutted a vacant lot (perfect for camping) and met Chad. Chad was the type of local you want to run into. So helpful even if he was so unable to give us permission to camp on the lot adjacent his rental. But what he did do was even better, he personally walked me down to RJ and Kate's cabin and said "RJ, I've just given your yard away to a couple of bicycle travellers, hope that's OK". RJ, sitting on the couch, looked up and with out missing a beat is like "Sure, no problem, anything else?". I mean how can you not love Creede. And then RJ and Kate and their 210-pound dog offer us their little attached apartment, "If we'd prefer that to the ground". We're like, on our knees, weeping, kissing there feet saying things like "Ghandi is great".

So this is us snug in our little apartment warm and happy.