We are thinking about doing a overnight or weekend longer distance ride up to Castle Rock, CO. which is 60+ miles north of Colorado Springs and we'd have to use CO. Hwy. 83N. as there are no trails between the cities. I was trying to remember as safe non-traffic way of getting us from our home base up to CO. Hwy. 83 we use to use when we rode bicycles with the Colorado Springs Cycling Club. We have 5 fires burning north and south of us and the day was SMOKEY but hot, 90F + with almost no breeze so we put on the mask's and headed out to pick up the Pikes Peak Greenway north and the Cottonwood Creek Trail up to Vincent St. which we took the bike lane over to Woodman Ave.
Well we got a surprise as the city built a "MEDIAN" in Vincent and we couldn't turn left so we had to ride down to find a opening to head north to Woodman Ave. LOL, JoLynn was blocked by a truck and didn't see me turn north so she kept going south! I crossed over Woodman and waited for her at a Carl's Jr. and she finally caught up to me. We headed up a back road that dead ends with a sidewalk for walkers/bike riders to access the street up to Academy Blvd. which has a bike path as far as Research Ave. then you have to get on Hwy. 83 N. till you get to Franktown, then turn west on CO. Hwy. 86 into Castle Rock itself. Our plan was to ride the PATH for as far as it went then turn around but as stated it only went a few blocks up to Research Ave. so we found a shady spot by a USA Bank and had our brown bag lunch! :)
After lunch we headed back down the path and the way we came up as we got our goal and re-found the proper and safest way to Hwy. 83. Back down Cottonwood Creek Trail to the PPGW and headed to the storage unit to tuck away the trikes and walk home. 19 miles RT and the smoke seemed to get thicker, as you really couldn't see the mountains or Pikes Peak at all!!! Sure hope we get some rain at these fires soon and we get our clear, "easter egg" blue sky back!!
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