Some stories have no distinct beginning or end. They are just passing pieces of context between more major parts of plot. They are merely paragraphs within a chapter. They fill in some details but are not important enough to stand on their own.
And so that is the story of this tour. It’s not really a story. It’s a context-filler, a gap-filler, a few words and days between more major life events. You might think a week-long tour with seven mountain passes/summits might be a story on its own. But it’s not. It’s just what a woman who loves to ride a bike does when everything else in life fails and she’s waiting to turn the page for the next chapter.
The route is thrown together through factors of geography (I am currently in Salida, Colorado), time (I can only squeeze this in in this time frame), interest (there is cool geology to check out along this route), and a desire to ride new roads and passes (I’ve toured a lot of the paved roads and passes in this area in 2013 and 2014). So here you go, the following posts detail a route that the Colorado Atlas and Gazetter, the Colorado Adventure Map and a few National Geographic Illustrated maps suggested we should do (look at maps long enough and the topo lines talk).