Day 43 Canon City - Colorado - 48 miles - Total 2413 miles

Canon City - 5332 Feet
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I'm feeling something i haven't felt for a long time, cold! I'm in my tent at 5000 feet with a temperature of 15/60 degrees outside. I am camped 10 miles West of Canon City, surrounded by mountains, and near to Royal Gorge, the dramatic setting for the world's highest bridge.listening to the strange new night sounds.

We didn't plan to be here, but more of that later.

After my anxiousness of last night, the day could not have been better, with a cloudless beautifully, blue sky, yet again! The temperature was cool in the shadows, but the Sun was strong enough to feel pleasantly warm, an effect that always reminds me of skiing.

Road and Rockys
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With still no contact from Simon, Rob and I set off, with the usual round of shopping to do before we could finally 'put the hammer down', and go, this time, it was a visit to Triple A, for some maps, and a bike shop for a pump for me.

After a few turns, the road straitened out, and took aim for the distant mountains. It rippled and rolled, as it carried us along, past a very different landscape from what we have been seeing for the last week. The change has been dramatic, in a relatively short distance, gone now are the endless undulating prairies, the regimented fields of corn, the dirty, smelly and sadly forlorn feeding pens full of cattle, all to be replaced by dry looking, low laying scrub land, broken up by the conurbations of yellow earth mounds that signify the homes of the prairie dogs, who stand on guard, upright, with alert eyes, and noses to the wind, doing impressions of Meerkats, like a living wave of yellow fur, they flow into their holes,with an indigent squeak, as i pass, and out again when i'm gone, to stand on guard yet again. The suddenness of the change in the surroundings i can only put down to, the hight we have gained in the last week, and the effect that has on the rain fall. We were used to seeing the wind and mechanical pumps working away in the fields of Kansas, but there is not so many here, because there simply isn't the water lying under the ground, it is hard to believe that some people have to haul all the water they require in large plastic tanks trapped to the beds of their pickups to their homes. It was in an effort to drill for water, that led to the discovery of Oil under these lands in 1860, and the area very quickly became a major producer, until the flow dried to a trickle in the 1920,s, and the oil industry moved on.

Sunset over the Rockys
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More from the old cogger later

Elevation:- 5332 Feet

Distance Today:- 48 miles

Total for Trip:- 2413.98

Sunset over the Rockys
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Average Speed:- 10.6 mph

Maximum Speed:- 38 mph

Time:- 4 hrs 32 mins

Start to Finish Time:- 6hrs 5 mins

Temperature at Start:- 28/76 degrees

Humidity at Start:- 42%