Cyling Colorado...day 1

For those that guessed on my mosaics that we were taking in the beauty of Colorado from our bikes...you were right on! And, YES, we did see a bigfoot ;)Since we had to allow 2 days to get there and 2 more back pulling our toy hauler RV, we only had 4 full days of cycling. Day one was a ride up into the mountain community of Cripple Creek where we visited the Pike's Peak Heritage Center,
viewed one of the working gold mines...
and browsed the downtown which is 90 percent casinos and reminded us a lot of Deadwood, SD.
Three roads lead out of Cripple Creek across the mountain ranges to Canon City and two were 4 wheel drive vehicles only but we still had a wonderful trip south on the High Road. Our first stop was at the Holy Cross Abbey to visit their winery. I love to search out local wineries on our roadtrips and this one was a great place to visit.
Next we rode over to the Royal Gorge and Bridge which as the sign boasts is the tallest suspension bridge in the world.
We rode over the bridge and...
walked over the bridge where we felt the bridge sway in the high winds.
This was the view of the bottom of the gorge and the Arkansas River below us. We watched the many rafters on this section of the river as they looked like little bugs below us.
Then we took the world's steepest incline railway, to the bottom of the gorge...
where we saw the rafters up close...
and the bridge and red aerial tram car above us.
Next we rode the world's longest single span aerial tram car (hard to see in this photo taken from the bridge, but it is the red spot in the upper right quadrant)back across the gorge...
where we got to see this view of the bridge. Did you notice all the world's tallest, steepest, longest? They like to play up things at this park ;)
We walked through their wildlife park on the way back to our bikes and saw buffalo including this white bull...

all generations of elk, but the white spotted babies were too cute...and bighorn sheep.
We were told in Cripple Creek that it rains almost every day at between 4 and 6 oclock so we decided we better head back through the mountains to our campground. As we drove the sky looked more and more threatening...
and soon it started raining. We stopped and put on our rain jackets and kept driving through the rain but soon it turned to hail. It was the hardest driving I have ever done in my 7 years of biking - in fact it was downright painful as the pea and marble sized ice chunks hit your hands and face.
I was in the lead and there was nowhere to safely seek shelter in the accompanying lightening storm until 3 miles later when I pulled into the Thunderbird Inn.
We were drenched but safely waited for the hail to stop with quite a large group of fellow bikers who all had their "I survived the hailstorm" stories to tell. The Thunderbird Inn however was an interesting story itself...too long to tell in blogville ;)