The Year of the Bike

It is becoming "The Year of the Bike" for us.  We have been riding 8 or 9 miles each morning to avoid the Colorado heat this year.  Actually, according to the Chinese, it's the Year of the Dragon.  That is actually what we felt like at the end of some of our rides....we are "draggin'".  

Today we decided to drag our bikes up to Estes Park and ride around the  lake.  We discovered that "around the lake" meant a steep hill up to the dam, a ride down below it, and then another steep ride up to the lake again.  Not quite what we were expecting. We thought it would be around the perimeter of Lake Estes and more or less a flat surface. The combination of the elevation (Estes Park sits at 7,522 ft) and the hills meant that we wound up not quite making it on one steep grade.

Along the way we came across some turkey buzzards and I thought of the way sometimes people are referred to as "old buzzards".  Gosh, I hope I won't look that ugly in another 10 years of so.  They are definitely not good looking birds!

This is a view of the lake from the opposite side.  You can see the famous Stanley Hotel with it's red roof nestled in the hills below the Rocky Mountains.

We even biked beyond the lake, into the town of Estes Park and I stopped to get a picture of this huge Swallowtail butterfly.

I sure wish that all of the bike path around the lake had been this level!  That would have been much easier.  Or, as our grandchildren sometimes say "Easy peazy, lemon squeezy"!

Don was ahead of me most of the time, so all I can show you is the back of him.  At the beginning, I was out in front, and then stopped on short notice (okay, maybe it was no notice) to take a picture and he almost ran into the back of me.  From then on, he took the lead. He would just wait for me somewhere up the path, hoping I'd show up!  Maybe I should get some car flashers to warn others that I'm stopped in their path....    :-)