44 miles, 6:00/8:00

We have a hard time getting up this morning since we’re a little tired from yesterday’s long ride and late hour, but it’s a beautiful day and once we’re up we feel good and anxious to move on. But first: breakfast. We pack up and head down to the restaurant with wireless internet. I order a veggie omelette with hashbrowns and rye toast, as usual, and Dave gets a cinnamon roll to supplement his breakfast. We’re lucky to get a table with an outlet to plug into, and I get to work making posts.

Halfway through breakfast we see two cyclists ride up and soon they’re inside chatting with us. It’s Bill and Cathy, two riders who met on the trail and are now riding together. We heard about them from Dee Jay and Kerry just a couple days before, and we pass on the message that Dee Jay and Kerry hope to catch up with them to ride another section with them.

After breakfast we go to the post office and get our resupply box, then repackage everything out front and fit it into the corresponding panniers. Bill and Cathy show up to get their own packages and we chat some more. We are disappointed to hear we won’t be riding with them today, as Cathy has a dental issue she needs to wait until Monday to get resolved.

We finally head out of town at 10:30 to tackle the forty miles and 4,000+ feet of elevation gain waiting ahead for us. The book calls today the Big Day, as Indiana Pass at 11,910′ is the highest pass on the Great Divide (though not a Continental Divide Crossing) and it is the day with the most climbing on the route.

The climb our of Del Norte is gradual for several miles, then gets steeper for the last ten or twelve. But we don’t feel like this is the Big Day when compared with all the other big climbing days because today the roads are mostly pretty good and packed and sometimes even smooth. Dave takes a couple pictures at the top and then we keep moving. Just over the other side of the pass is Summitville, an old gold and copper mining area and current EPA Superfund site that has poisoned the streams in the entire watershed. We had to carry water for our entire day until camp because the surface water is contaminated with heavy metals.

The mining operations nearly carved down an entire mountain summit along with other hills around this area, and there is a huge reservoir of burnt orange-colored water being held above a creek that flows down the valley. It’s just ugly. We decide to picnic on the edge. Soon it starts to rain so we throw on our rain gear, pack up and head down to our campground.