After a relaxing night, we woke up and went to the town bike shop, Lizard Head Cyclery. What we had planned on being a quick maintenance stop turned into a 3 hour repair session. We had travelled nearly 1700 miles without any serious maintenance so it was long overdue. We all needed new chains, a couple new cassettes, and an assortment of other updates. The previous owner of Jonatan’s bike had done lots of weird things, something we were already partially aware of. The owner of the shop, Nicholas, was super helpful. He gave us tons of good tips and fixes. He also did some metal working in his free time and had tons of sculptures throughout his shop made out of old bike parts. Another highlight of his shop was his cat. He had placed boxes around his shop, carefully selecting them to be the cats favorite size, and the cat could always be found laying around the shop in one of them. The cat was also very familiar with bikes. Nicholas took him on tours and mountain biking. You can look up mountain biking cat to see a video of him riding with the cat. He also can take the cat hiking and he will just walk in front of him or behind him.

After a late start, we headed up Lizard Head Pass to Telluride, CO, a ski resort town. After a dry boring day previously, we got right into the mountains as we left town. It was still somewhat dry but there were green fields and trees all around us. We followed a river up the mountain which meant a less steep grade as we climbed to the top. The higher elevations of Colorado produced a completely different scenery from any of the states we had seen before. The bare faces of the Rocky Mountains mixed with patches of snow were incredible. The roads were flanked by beautiful pines and aspens. A vast majority of the cars that passed were Subarus, popular for their four wheel drive capability in the winter. Tons of cars were carrying mountain bikes and other outdoor recreation equipment. This gave us a really good feeling about the culture in the state. Beavers swam in the streams and ponds along the road.

Despite the late start, our day consisted of one consistent climb and then a big descent into Telluride. We went up over 10,000 feet on what felt like a very easy climb. The peak was surrounded by a few 14k mountains and lots of beautiful scenery. After a bagel and peanut butter break at the top, we started our way down to Telluride in the later afternoon. There were a few climbs mixed in with the descent but it was mostly a pleasant ride down. There were ski slopes carved into the mountains though they were completely green this time of the year. We also passed the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, the world's first commercial plant for producing AC electricity.

We finally made the full descent into Telluride and were amazed to see the city. A bike path took us back into the box canyon that it was housed in. The town was surrounded by steep mountains on three sides. Ski lifts still ran up and down the hills. We rolled into a very bike friendly town that looked incredibly well kept. We realized that this was almost entirely a tourist destination so very few people could actually afford to live here. This became even more apparent after a trip to the grocery where everything was at least double the price we were used to (and that's not exaggerating -- at LEAST double). While in the grocery store we ran into a guy with a young child. He saw our helmets and asked what we were doing. We told him of our trip and he said he had done a cross country tour as well along with an Appalachian Trail hike. We joked about the absurd prices in the store. We parted ways with him but he found us again with his wife and they handed us some cash to go get dinner. He referenced "trail magic", a phenomenon where people hiking the AT are blessed with good fortune and generosity. He wanted to pay his part forward to us. We were incredibly thankful and used their money to go to a pizza place to get two very large filling pizzas. While waiting for a table, we talked to a few other people on the street about our trip. Everyone was very interested in the adventure we were on. It was very cool to see so many people this excited about doing a trip like this.

Unfortunately our luck ran out after this. We ate our pizza and headed to the city park where many people had told us we could camp. due to our late start, it was almost 10pm by the time we got there. We arrived at the park to see that the campground was full. We checked around and it seemed like many people were already doubled up on sites so the chance of us squeezing in was low. We called police dispatch hoping to get permission to just set up out of the way somewhere for the night. Unfortunately, this did not work out. They were very friendly but suggested we go to a forest service campground a little out of town. We had no choice but to go there. We used the campground bathrooms to change into our warm clothes and get ready for bed. The low temperature was 34 degrees for that night which still happened in June due to the elevation being 8750'. We biked back out of town and found the forest service road that would take us to the camp site. We pushed our bikes up a mile of very steep dirt road until we finally found a place to camp. There were lots of people sleeping in cars up there and we had arrived late so we had to be quiet and careful with our lights. We searched around for a while and eventually found a spot off the road that was just flat and clear enough that we could set up on it (it was pretty overgrown and not level but it was 11:30 at this point). We put a tarp down to sleep on and a hammock fly over that and set up the rest of our camp. We also had to worry about bears in the mountains. We put all of our food in a bag and searched through the skinny aspen trees for something that could hold our food out of the way. After lots of searching and many tries throwing the rope over the branch, we finally got the bag to a point where it was safe. It was the coldest night of the trip so far and we all clustered into are makeshift tent on the mountainside. It had been a day with a lot of ups and downs and this was definitely not a high point. We vowed that the next day we would make sure not to make the mistake of arriving late again.