This was one of two for me. I was visiting near Winter Park, CO (USA) and got to explore the dirt roads. Not many people or cars. Peaceful and great scenery. Very fun and wonderful weather. Got to try out using my new SP Connect phone mount + OSMAnd for navigation. Can recommend for sure.
Let’s see pics or hear stories from your rides, folks. Where did you ride? What amazing things did you see?
Picture from Friday’s ride from Buena Vista, CO to Cottonwood Lake and back (25.5mi/2,200ft elevation gain).
Picture from last night’s after-dinner ride on my nearby trails (10.5mi/550ft elevation gain).No pictures from this morning’s trip to the farmer’s market (18mi)
By-oo-na Vista is so nice. Do you ride on 306 or is there an off-road trail? I just got my gravel bike so now I’m finding all the cool dirt roads.
I followed this, except on the way back, I stuck to the right and went back the way I came on 343 instead of taking 344 over to 306 early as I wanted to avoid the pavement as much as possible (there was a lot more traffic than I was expecting). I parked in town, but if you wanted to avoid the paved road completely, it looked like you could park on some pull-outs on 343.
https://www.gravelbikeadventures.com/route/buena-vista-to-cottonwood-lake-out-and-back
Oh, nice – & how funny. I followed some of this route for my Saturday ride.
https://www.gravelbikeadventures.com/route/tour-de-grand-county-creeks
Great site, though I need to figure out a way to get their GPX files without signing up for Strava. (Just a data privacy thing with me)
I switched over to Ride with GPS for the most part (my activity there still syncs over to Strava), but I grabbed the route files from here: https://ridewithgps.com/users/171708
How was the WP area? I thought their rides up there looked really nice. I’ll have to try one soon.
Thanks. I’ll check that out.
Great, that St. Louis Creek Rd is great – flat, straight and a slight incline, but among the trees most of the time. A couple of rude truck drivers, but well…
got covid a little over a year ago and it trashed my breathing. finally feel like I’m getting back a bit. I live in a mountainous area, and my indoor trainer has been great for slowly trying to recover my aerobic fitness without worrying about not being able to make it home!
Sorry to hear that, but good for you! I hope you can get out and ride again sometime soon. 👍
If sharing a picture from the past weekend is allowed, here’s mine - I went from my home at the extreme north of Bogotá all the way to the south, a sector that is stigmatized as “dangerous” (ironically, where I live there’s kind of the same stigma) and went down a town called Une, the oldest in this department (or state, if you will), where my dad, parents and brothers lived when he was a kid - you have to go from +3200 to ~2300 meters above sea level, all in ~11 kilometers or so. This picture was taken at the lowest point of the ride, so please excuse me for the shitty quality of it - my hands were numb after pressing the brake levers for pretty much all of the descent, which was a pretty shitty road, as much of the countryside roads here. Maybe a thing for a gravel or mtb bike, but still somehow I managed to do it and it was peaceful with almost no cars whatsoever.
Oh and that was just the beginning, the ride back to the top was no stroll through the park either - it rained all though and through and got freezing to the top - but it was really great. I still can’t believe i could do it.
Not shitty pic at all. Thanks for sharing! I usually forget to take pics on my rides 'cause I’m so busy enjoying the views.
… almost no cars …
Heaven!
I am different kind of cyclist…
