Bike Tour Day 12 Buena Vista

This morning we rode a paved bike path all the way to Aspen. It was about 40 miles long and smooth. It was a bit slow with the stops at all the intersections, but it was a nice change of pace and forced us to go slow. It was a steady 2% uphill though and after 3 hours I was tired. Once we got into Aspen we found a coffee shop and had coffee and scones. It was nice just to chill out in a real town and not eat PacTour food.

Then we started up the big climb of the day, Independence Pass. It was about 20 miles and gained about 4100' with an average 6% grade. It was so beautiful it was hard not to take a picture at every turn. Our lunch stop was half way up the hill and provided a nice break. I found I didn't ever get too tired like I have on other long "pass" climbs on other tours. Of course we did stop a bunch on the second half and take photos so there wasn't much of a chance to get too tired. I had driven this pass coming from the other direction a few years ago and I was pretty excited to have ridden it from the Aspen side; it's much prettier this way.

The descent off the summit was awesome. We had a tailwind the entire way to Buena Vista which made the last 40 miles seem like a recovery ride. We rode past Twin Lakes and Mt. Elbert which I hiked up a few years ago as well, and I remembered seeing the Twin Lakes from the top and wondering what lay in that direction. Who knew I'd be riding that road a few years later?

Well, once again we are in the crap end of town and ate a crap restaurant, this time Chinese. We took a walk after dinner and discovered there is an historic district here with tons of cool buildings and restaurants, and even deer in the yards. It was so cool we walked back to the hotel and rode back down there to take pictures.