Day 8 - Up into the mountains

Mileage - 270

Ride time - 10 hours

We woke up at 6 this morning since our maps said it was going to be a long day. When we took a look outside we knew it was going to be a bit longer as it had been raining all night and was still going.

About 30 minutes from the hotel we were suprised because the mud was not all that bad. We still had pretty good visibility so other than riding in full rain gear it was not that bad. Well all good things must come to an end and this was no exception. Suddenly the mud changed from a little slippery to deep muck that clogged up the tires and was super slick. Palmer dropped his bike early on but seemed to get it out of his system since that was his only drop of the day. I was extremely confident on the red devil since I had gone 6 days without dropping it at all. Well that confidence was shot when I came around a corner and went crusing into some deep slick ruts at 25-30mph. The red devil finially could not take it and slipped out from under me.

After a while the sun came out and we began to dry out. We also began to climb and it started getting pretty cold. This was the first time that I closed up all of the vents on my jacket. Soon we had climbed up to our first pass at 10,000 feet. We spent the entire day climbing up and over 9000-10000 passes. We passed through aspen groves and lush forest. I can't do it justice but it was amazing.
I am probably forgetting a ton of it but I have to say it was the prettiest and best day so far. Do I say that each day??
At the end of the day the clouds cleared as we descended to Salida. Salida is a really cool town that has a downtown area that is alive. This is a big change from the ghost towns that we have been passing through since the begining of the trip. There is a festival going on downtown so we are headed down there to check it out.