Boone, Colorado

Canon City turned out to be a very nice town. We ate breakfast in a small cafe and visited a prison museum with a gas chamber that had been used to execute prisoners. Pretty spooky.

We are currently the city park in Boone, a small town on the railroad line. Steve and I flattened pennies on the train tracks, something I was shocked to learn that Steve never did as a child. Our progress had been slow because of the storm; the wind has been blowing steadily west.

Yesterday, due to a ferocious headwind, we stopped short of Pueblo. The weather was gray and ominous again, and there were tornado and flood warnings for the area. We camped near Pueblo Lake, but had to wait for the wind and rain to stop before we could pitch tents, cook, etc. A man in a neighboring site invited us into his RV for a bit. The power was out in the campground, he noted, and Steve verified this later when he tried unsuccessfully to use the campground’s coin operated shower.

The weather, despite the wind, was nice as we reached Pueblo. When the TransAmerica route was first established, bike route signs were put up in some cities. Pueblo still has some of those original signs, as Steve pointed out. We went to a bicycle shop in town to purchase a few needed items, and I bought some pepper spray due to the increasing number of stories I’ve heard of dog attacks in Kentucky on westbound riders.