Day 17: Steamboat Springs, Colorado

I spent lots of time sending happy thoughts to Jennie today. It is her birthday and due to the vagaries of international time zones at some point in our afternoon of the 6th Jennie would have woken up to cuddles from her 2 boys in New Zealand on the 7th. Happy birthday Jen. Like good wine you just get better with age.
Today was meant to be a short rest day for us. To be fair it was but we still had some good challenging riding here in the Rockies. We left Rawlins in what is very much still sage type desert country. The desert rises up to form the northern part of the Colorado Rockies and as it does so the trees appear, particularly the Aspens for which this part if the world is famous. We took the obligatory photo in the locally famous Aspen Alley before travelling further South East into greener and greener country.
We got to do some real fun technical riding on some rocky ATV trails that certainly got us sweating. Of course no photos of that but a real little highlight for us.
We met a group of more mature ( than me!) riders also tackling the GDR in stages. The gentleman who agreed to have his photo taken with Dave is 74yrs old! That is damn impressive. We did a name fail but I think he is called Trevor.
We spent a couple of hours this afternoon plotting how to spend the remainder if our trip. In the lovely position if having too much choice we finally settled on a loose itinerary. The intention is to ride a number of the high passes in the central and lower Colorado Rockies. These tend to be very scenic and good technical riding as well. I'm sure I shall keep you informed as we go along but the consequence of all that is that tomorrow will be our last day on the Great Divide Ride. It has proven to be an excellent way of getting here from Canada but the time has come to part company.