Today we finally made it to Loveland pass, marking the highest point we’d reach in the Rocky Mountains and the remainder of our journey. At a staggering 12,000 ft, the view was breathtaking – in both the literal and figurative senses.
View from Loveland Pass
Something I’ve noticed whilst biking on this trip and around the Stanford area: bikes can go faster than cars on many twisty, downhill roads. Many of the turns that would force a car to jam the breaks can be easily sliced through on a bike. To wit, the ride down from Loveland pass was exhilarating. For once we were the fastest thing on the road!
Speeding down an empty bike path
As our elevation precipitously dropped, we were welcomed by warm and humid weather – something we’ll likely need to get used to. This climate meant an uptick in mosquito populations, which was evidenced by numerous bug splats I discovered on my face post-ride. After a well-needed shower, we enjoyed a lovely dinner prepared by our hosts. Thanks Bill and Ann!
Now that we’ve crossed the continental divide, our locale has transitioned from west to east. In nearly all the museums I’ve visited so far, there has been significant emphasis on The West. And unsurprisingly so. Basically since its inception, American culture has canonized and subsequently mythologized the “wild west” to countless ends – a dreamland of minerals, cattle, and new frontiers – a process that all too often erased the violence and displacement produced by westward expansion.
Over the course of our travels, we’ve had the opportunity to observe both the west and The West; two distinct entities whose causal relationships wind around each other like a ball of yarn, rolling backwards through time. Words can not do justice to this temporal Gordian knot. I suppose that’s why one embarks on such a trip. To see the places and people and things that live between the lines of history and float somewhere amongst pins on a map. Perhaps the experiences that evade description are the ones most worth having.
Alex