Mark's Big Ride: July 27 & 28 – Sunny in the mornings, monsoons in the afternoons, lightning overhead at night and a boy and his bike!

Mueller State Park in Colorado is probably the nicest state park that I’ve ever visited. It’s about 30 miles west of Colorado Springs, 5 miles south from Divide and Highway 24. The park is located at the very top of a hill/mountain and when we pulled into the park it was:

A) Raining like cats and dogs
B) The lightning storm was just beginning

Some might question the wisdom up driving to the top of a hill/mountain to pitch a tent with aluminum poles during a lightning storm, but not us. ‘course we did have to sit a bit for the rain to let up a bit to even pitch the tents, it was that coming down that hard.

The next morning was bright and beautiful, and I took off for a scenic trip through Cripple Creek, Victor and the Flourisant Fossil beds. Once again, a perfectly gorgeous day in the Colorado high country. Of course, the nice day couldn’t last forever, and as been the case for the past week, the rains came again in the late afternoon. Perfect time for a nap. The rains soon left, we did the normal campfire s’more junk and went to bed. Only to be awakened by the monsoons yet again, and a bonus round of lightning, directly overhead? I was doing the one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three counting thing, and to tell you the truth, I never got past one thousand four…And there were a couple times where I never even got to one thousand one…..

Alccording to the Wiki (and other independent sources) here is how to calculate how close the lightning is:
1. Watch the sky for a flash of lightning. Easy enough, could do it with our eyes closed
2. Count the number of seconds until you hear thunder.. Say "One one thousand, two one thousand etc." in your mind for each second. Got it, no problem, I can count to four
3. Divide the number of seconds by 5 to calculate the distance in miles (or divide by 3 for kilometers). In other words if you counted 18 seconds from when you saw the lightning, the strike was 3.6 miles (6 kilometers) from your location. The delay between when you see lightning and when you hear thunder occurs because sound travels much, much more slowly than light. Sound travels through air at about 1100-1200 feet (330-350 meters) per second (depending on altitude, relative humidity, pressure, etc.), which is a little more than one mile per five seconds (one kilometer per three seconds). In comparison, the speed of light is 983,571,058 feet (299,792,458 meters) per second.
Yup, it was directly overhead!

The next morning was just beautiful, clear and warm, we really took our time packing up and leaving the park, in fact the ranger pointed out that we were just about past the expected checkout time of noon. Our first stop was the Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs, which really paled in comparison to the sights that we had seen earlier. Next planned stop was Golden Colorado, and somehow Josh and I (who was riding BOB on the motorcycle - Boy-On-Back) got separated from Matt and the Escalade. At least we had made plans to stop for lunch in Golden, so we knew what town to meet-up in. I didn’t see a single highway sign for Golden, so when I pulled off Highway 6 to check my map (in a very conveniently located County Coroner’s Office parking lot) someone asked me where I was looking for, and he looked very surprised when I replied “Golden”. He told me that I was already there and wanted to know exactly where in Golden I was looking for. Evidently coroners are particular like that. Beer and a Burger was a specific enough location for him and he directed us to a place downtown. Which, unfortunately looked dead as a doorknob. Coincidence for a recommendation from a coroner, I dunno, but it fits?

I make it a habit to avoid restaurants with no customers, and the place across the street had people drinking beer on their deck, so that’s where we headed. The name of the place was Woody’s Wood Fired Pizza and it was great. Shortly after we arrived we learned that that evening was the night for their monthly “Golden Cruise”, a one hour slow placed cruise through the town of Golden, that started in only 4 hours. After we hemmed and hawed, we finally decided to stay for the ride and got down to some serious pizza and beer. And Josh began plotting how he might win the grand prize in the raffle that evening , an XTC 8 Ball cruising bike. I won’t recap our many hours at Woody’s but Josh did have very positive Karma, and left with the bike he was lusting after.
We’re now in Estes Park, away from the dirt and mud, we have our very own hot-tub overlooking the river and it’s really, really nice. I like this WorldMark camping!
We’ll see what today day brings, besides a slight hangover!

Total cumulative miles – 6.970. I only planned on 7,500 miles for the whole trip, so it looks like I’ll run out of miles in northern Idaho
Best thing today – Josh was a winner
Challenge for the day – 4+ hours in a bar and remaining sober for the one hour ride to Estes Park afterwards. No way were we going to leave and go exploring and and come back, we’d give up our prime seats earned by arriving many hours early!

fuzzy artistic shot from Mueller State Park