Saleeda, Salida,

Just on the east side of Monarch Pass is a town called Salida. We decided to make the town our temporary home for two nights while we rested our legs after the big pull up to our nation's natural separation. Much to our surprise, the very weekend we made our stop, the FIBArK Whitewater Festival was also taking place in the historic old town Salida. In fact, we would have never noticed had we not decided to visit a bike shop for supplies on our day of rest. Since we did notice, we strolled around, had some delicious beers, and watched the festivities. Among the many kayak and rafting competitions, the most entertaining was the hooligan race; a competition of creative raft building, speed, and most important, survival. The winner was a vessel titled "natural disaster" which was ultimately a whitewater flotilla complete with a burning tree.

As far as we can tell, Salida will be our last chance to take advantage of free camping on our public lands. In the coming stretch of the country, we will see less BLM land, shorter but steeper hills, and more agriculture. For us, the increase in fertile land means we will have to be more creative and more inquisitive when searching for our nightly tent sites.

Eastern Colorado, Kansas, and the Midwest are unexplored places for all three of us travelers. It is also where I think we will start noticing significant differences in the people, culture, and scenery. Until this point, we have seen a variety of different geological formations and terrain, but the general population is not much different than those in the pacific northwest. Moving east, we will be sharing the road with the corn farming communities of America, who feed our country (hogs, cattle, and people), believe conservatively, and live rurally. Of course, these are the preconceptions I've set out to explore.

Rockies: tapped.

That John Denver was not full of shit. The Rockies are rocky, mountainous, and high.

We finally reached the great divide, which means we are now watching water flow east to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, much like ourselves for the next month and a half--at least in terms of moving east. From Gunnison, highway 50 winds east up a valley before making a sudden increase in grade, which continues for a little more than 7 miles before reaching the summit at Monarch Pass. The average grade for this pass is a mere 6.5%, but pushing roughly 100 pounds of bike at such high altitudes made even the strongest of us feel drained by the top. As we reached the last mile, a few shouts of encouragement from passing cars helped feed adrenaline into the voids of our muscles. Once upon the summit, wet with sweat and shivering in the cold bursts of wind, we answered the gamut of questions ranging from our psychological wellbeing to where we would be heading next. No, we do not have mental health issues, we will be going down next, and no thanks, I brought my own beer.

Our interactions with people at the summit were encouraging to my general feeling about sharing the road. Typically, we don't interact with many motorists because of the physical separation between car windows and speed. So talking to people who've passed us, and hearing their excitement for our journey leaves a positive taste in my mouth for coexistence.