As usual our out of State vacation plans died off due to lack of FUNDS! :( We decided we'd do a overnight "staycation" and ride the New Santa Fe Trail up to Monument, CO. They don't have any motels in Monument, but we found a "Glamping Campground", which was set up for Luxury Camping, fully equipped wall tents, electric fireplace, personal portable hot tub and Queen size bed, LOL, our level of "roughing it"! ;) We've rode the New Santa Fe Trail up to Ice Lake on the USAF Academy a few times over the years but never rode it all the way to Monument. It's all dirt/gravel with some rocks and a few short but steep, slick uphill inclines.
The ride up to Ice Lake went like normal, I had to help Jo get over a couple of the hills but no big deal. From Ice Lake up to the North "trail gate" was a LOT tougher, the inclines were steeper and slicker and sometimes the erosion logs (to slow down rainwater on the downhill) stuck up higher and made it hard to get over! This is supposed to be a graded dirt trail, but some bozo laid down piles of small, sharp black rocks which made a very bumpy ride with our non-suspension trikes!! :( Between the USAF Academy North Trail Gate and all the way to Monument we had to deal with more of the sharp black rocks, laided across the trail and lots of 2 to 3 in. deep SAND, which would just stop us dead in our tracks even on the flat parts of the trail, it was miserable, then add the 90+ F heat and very little shade made it a real PITA!! We made it to the Baptist Rd. Trailhead it had a restroom and shade on one side of the building, so we ate our brown bag lunch and took a break! :) Then fought our way into the town of Monument. Finally on pavement, we made our way over several more hills to the "Glamping Campground". It was quite and not quite a fancy as the promo photos but very comfortable, we unpacked, everything was there, sweet! We were too tried to ride back to town for dinner so we had a pizza delivered, LOL, ;) We ate dinner using the rocking chairs on the tents deck, this tent has full electric so we had lights and just vege'd out watching the stars come out and the moon rise, then headed for bed! Glamping is cool, here's a link to the Glamping Campground: Monument Glamping
Here are two links to video's covering part 1 and 2 of our ride up to Monument Glamping Campground on the New Santa Fe Trail:
On Sept. 7th. we headed back to Co. Springs but decided to use Hwy. 105 and Hwy 83 to Powers Blvd, then south on Woodman Ave. to pick up the Cottonwood Creek Trail back to home. Well Hwy. 105 was terrible, lot's of morning traffic and NO shoulders on 90% of it so we had lot's of "HATE" from car drivers, they need to learn to share the road as it's the only way to get to Co. Springs if you don't want to use the trail!!! :( Hwy. 83 was better at least it had a "just wide enough shoulder in most places! At first Powers Blvd. was great with wide shoulders although the traffic was insane even on a weekday! Then we hit several construction zones which took away the shoulder so more "HATE" came our way. Same on Woodman Ave but they finally had a wide sidewalk that got us to the trail, YEA!! 90+ F again. LOL, here's a sign you want to see after hours of riding up steep hills!
Cottonwood Creek Trail over to the Pikes Peak Greenway and back to apartment!
OMG, this is perfect!!!
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