Time to get back on the Transam route again! From the campground it was a short ride to Granby, where I would pick up the route. I had a hard time getting on the route in the right direction, since the map had it's north pointing down, swapping east and west from what I expected. Finally I was again on the route though. The maps also show that I'm leaving the more densely populated eastern side of the Colorado Rockies into the far less populated northern part of Colorado and after that Wyoming. The stretch from Granby was 50+ miles without any services, so from now on I need to plan way ahead again.
First thing after Granby was a climb up Willow Creek Pass (elevation 9683 ft) to cross the Continental Divide once more. Just before starting the climb I passed the Colorado river, which was just a small stream here. Hard to imagine that this stream will eventually grow to something that created the Grand Canyon! The climb itself was really nice; gentle grades all the way up, sunny but not too warm weather, a tailwind for a change and off course the very nice views whilst riding along the creek :) Another nice thing on this road was that it was so extremely quite. There was a passing car maybe once every 5 minutes, so all the more reason to enjoy my surroundings.
The climb up was perfect and these riding conditions seemed almost too good to be true. It appeared they were. Looking forward to the descent, I was directly faced with a fair headwind. The headwind grew stronger as I descended. After some 1000 ft of descending the landscape changed into big plains along the Illinois river, between two distant mountain ridges. A very impressive sight and also directly the reason for the strong winds. The winds on the plains were almost as strong as those I encountered in Kansas (without the corn shielding me from it), so even though I slightly descended over the plains, the going was slooooow.
In addition to the wind some nasty thunderstorms appeared, which were blown over the plains. Being on a plain with lighting closeby was kinda scary! I stopped for one storm for some 20 minutes to blow past some distance ahead. For the next one I got to the town Walden before it got uncomfortably close.
While in Walden the skies darkened all over with audible thunder and the wind picked up. As the next possible stop would be a campground some 25 miles ahead, with no shelter or services closeby, I decided to call it a day... better safe than sorry and also it was laundry time, which would not be possible at the next stop. In addition I decided that I preferred a motel room tonight over being rained on in the city park. After I took a shower the wind was gone and it was sunny, but (luckily?) later it started pouring down and didn't stop raining for a long time... glad that I chose for a motel today and hopefully the rain is gone by tomorrow.
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