Everest’s climbed:

3.31

Burgers eaten:

21

Total miles:

1954

Different types of animals seen:

15 (not including birds)

Favorite hotel/motel:

Mountain Lodge, Telluride

Best night camping:

The Harley Davidson Biker Bash we became part of in Jackson, Montana

Best view:

The top of the Cottonwood Pass, Colorado

Our full route

The final slog! It was weird as today should have been fairly easy, but we had lost all motivation now and just wanted to be there! We decided to cut the corner off our journey and instead of going all the way through Cortez and past the entrance to Mesa Verde, we would take a short cut to Mancos and visit Mesa Verde on a day trip from Durango. Unfortunately John’s Mother was really poorly in Texas and so Pam had already gone down there and John was going to meet us in Durango and then head off to Texas himself, so the sooner we got to Durango the more time we could spend with John. So off we peddled with the end in sight.

The road out of Dolores was really steep, but after that the road was fairly up and down. It was tiring – sometimes the ups and down are worse than the passes as it seems so relentless and you don’t have the fun of a huge downhill! The scenery was pretty and every Durango sign we saw made us more excited. We carried on up and down until we reached Mancos where we treated ourselves to our last lunch in a lovely little restaurant, out in the garden (even though we had food for lunch in our bags). As we headed out of Mancos, I had my head down cycling and was startled to see Ryan stopped right in front of me looking at the ground beside the road. I braked quickly and noticed what he was staring at. A huge bear, dead by the side of the road. He must have been hit by a car. He was beautiful. Poor bear.

We carried on our up and down day, this time with bigger hills and descents, stopping one last time at Hesperus until finally we had made it up the last hill and the rest of the journey was all downhill. Whoop, whoop!! We reached the outer limit of Durango with huge grins on our faces! We had done it! How on earth did we manage that?! It was quite unbelievable. Now all we had to do was negotiate through the traffic to John and Pam’s.

Durango looked lovely as we cycled beside the Anamas River, and the GPS took us all the way to the door. Ryan recognised the house, although thought it had changed colour in the 10 years since he had been here last. We pulled onto the drive and were greeted by a barking Lucy, closely followed by the warm and familiar face of John Mackley! Huge hugs followed between us all, Ryan and I included, as we basked in our achievement. We knew that lots of people, sometimes ourselves included, thought we would never make it and we felt very proud to have proven so many people wrong. 1,954 miles in the end! After lovely showers John took us to Gazpacho’s – a renowned Mexican restaurant, highly rated by the Musiello family, where Toni worked for 2 summers whilst at university. Several frozen Margarhita’s and huge plates of food followed and we felt truly revived.

Total climb:

2897 feet

Animal Alert:

The funniest Mule on Earth. It was pulling the most hilarious faces and kept sticking it’s tongue out!

Summed up:

We did it!

Leaving the campsite for the last time this trip

Maybe our best lunch. The steak sandwich was cracking

Getting closer

Closer still

There were times when we didn't think we'd see this sign

Yeah, we made it

Total Distance:

48.272 mi

Total Time Cycling:

5h 29m 41s

It was a strange feeling to know we had nearly reached the end of our trip. We would be so glad not to have to cycle everyday, but sad as well. It was liberating not to have to worry about regular things. Our only concern was to cycle from a to b safely and nothing much else mattered. People say that cycling gives you a sense of freedom, but it’s more freedom of the mind than physical freedom. In physical terms the bikes can be a bit limiting, as we might only be 40 miles from somewhere we would like to visit off the route, but an 80 mile round trip would take us the best part of 2 days and so it just isn’t possible. So I guess we will miss our cycling, but also be glad not to have cycling as our only option for the day.

We negotiated our way up the rest of the pass that we had started on our way to Mountain Village, (with short bursts of rain, then sun, so we didn’t know whether to keep our rain jackets on or take them off!) stopped for lunch beside the river and the rest of the day was technically downhill. We got to Dolores at about 5pm, and didn’t really want to stay here as the only camping option didn’t look that good, but we weren’t far away from Durango now and we had one last pass to climb, so decided to save the pass for tomorrow. Dolores was a small town, with not much of interest so after a ride down the main street we pitched our tent at Cozy … RV Park, on a small patch of grass behind the huge RV’s parked up on gravel. We ate our last dried food sachet, Three Bean Soup, and dreamt of a cosy bed at John and Pam’s in Durango.

Total climb:

2236 feet

Passes climbed:

Lizard Head Pass – 10,222 feet

Summed up:

Almost there…..

Another pass bites the dust

The road is long...

A scenic lunch stop by the river

Total Distance:

61.863 mi

Total Time Cycling:

5h 51m 45s

When we got up we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. So seeing as we were feeling reckless we checked ourselves in for another night! Whoop whoop! We are so naughty. We had a lovely day exploring Telluride. It’s a beautiful place, kind of quirky, with spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. This is definitely a place we could live. Not with the house prices though. It was $3 or $4 million for a traditional wooden townhouse in the centre of town. We enjoyed our staple diet of burger and fries and then headed back to the room as the temperature was so hot outside. We made the most of having a kitchen and used up some of our final packets of food so we’d be as light as possible for the hills tomorrow!

Descending into Telluride

This was actually a small section of a house completely covered in license plates

Telluride's main drag - very scenic

Puppy parking

Afternoon cocktail on our balcony

The view from our balcony