Switching gears

Golden to Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Monday-Thursday, July 15-18, 2024

After more than 3,000 miles, the trip is winding down. The feast is almost over, now comes dessert. Golden is at the doorstep of greater Denver, today is just 30 miles to the first of three sets of friends I’ll be staying with here.

One more bit of descending, past the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre, often called the country’s greatest natural outdoor concert venue. Could only see this glimpse from the road

but I’ve been to a concert there, and wow what a place.

The venue is best recognized by its two massive monoliths, named “Ship Rock” and “Creation Rock”, as well as the smaller “Stage Rock”, which together flank its 9,525 capacity seating area and naturally form the amphitheater. Many of the biggest bands have played here, most notably the Beatles in 1964.

That descent led me to the cute little town of Morrison, then onto the C-470 bike path.

C-470 (in red on the map above) is the southwestern segment of Denver’s incomplete beltway. Originally planned to be I-470, the full beltway was never completed for environmental concerns, but 3/4 of it was later finished by the state, the green portion is designated E-470. Most beltways are dreary-but-essential thorofares through suburban sprawl, but C-470 is a scenic wonder, skirting the foothills of the Front Range and offering dazzling views throughout. The associated bike path was a dream to ride.

At least until I hit another “trail closed” sign like yesterday, and was detoured onto the South Platte bike trail, gorgeous but not where I was going. I was left to negotiate the Greater Denver grid on my own, and was again gratified to see that even on streets not designed for bicycles, I felt accepted and safe.

My first two sets of friends live in a Denver suburb called Highlands Ranch, which as the name implies lies on a plateau above the city, so I had a mild climb at the end. Along the way, I discovered that my front brake no longer worked. This didn’t matter much now, since I was only going uphill, but thank heavens this hadn’t happened while I was making the recent 7,000 foot descent to the Denver plain. Since your weight shifts forward as you brake, the front brake provides most of your stopping power. I figured I could use my upcoming cycling hiatus to figure out the problem.

Steve and Karen, my trail angels from yesterday, were waiting to greet me at the entrance to their home, a CCRC (continuous care retirement community) called Vi at Highlands Ranch.

Steve was a residential and commercial architect who for many years was my main cycling buddy, Karen was a real estate broker and assessor, both are Vermont natives who had been our close friends for decades. When they retired, they lived for a while in a condo in Florida, but kept searching for a more suitable place to spend this phase in their lives. With their combined experience in real estate and business, they were well suited to understand the issues involved, and found an ideal community here.

Boy did they ever. I have seen a number of CCRCs over the years, but never one like this. Perched on the edge of the plateau, their sumptuous suite had a 270° view of the Rockies and the eastern Colorado plains. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scenery, which continuously changed from crystal views of the mountains, to swirling storms, to gorgeous sunsets. Their location had every amenity you could want to support an active lifestyle, but also on-site rehab and long term nursing care facilities to guarantee you would never have to leave, no matter what your future healthcare needs. Wow.

One of the amenities was a well-lighted and equipped bike repair station, I discovered that the brake problem was just mud from that highway construction jamming the mechanism, easily rectified. I was free to sightsee, and Steve and Karen led me off on adventure after adventure, focusing on the compelling geology of the Front Range, oversimplified here.

I learned that much of Colorado was originally underwater, covered by a shallow sea teaming with life, which created layers of sandstone and limestone full of fossils, later tracked by dinosaurs. An uplift called the Laramide Orogeny then spawned the Rockies, tilting the flat seabeds up at an angle and exposing amazing formations, such as those that formed the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. We took a 5 mile hike above that amphitheatre

Saw dinosaur footprints across a tilted slab

descended into the Cave of the Winds, carved out of that limestone and filled with formations

and had lunch in Colorado Springs, with a knockout view of Pikes Peak* and the Garden of the Gods.

The Garden of the Gods is something else again. The name sounds grandiose until you actually see it, with its sandstone formations, fins, gendarmes, and balanced rocks.

We spent our last day together watching rock climbers at El Dorado State Park, having a Nepalese lunch at the Sherpa House in Golden, and seeing more great rock formations at Roxborough Park. Alas, I didn’t get pictures, except for this one of a doe nursing her fawns.

All in all, these three days have been a vivid but low-key contrast to the daily push to move forward, to get more miles. Switching gears from the main course to the tasty dessert. Yummy.

Distance 35 miles (including 10 miles of hiking), 3,106 total. Time 10 hours with stops. Elevation gain 2,013 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

*This is the second, more famous of the Pikes Peaks. I climbed the first one three years ago https://scottluria.org/2021/06/27/zebulon-lives/