Colorado Ramblings and Namesakes

My enthusiasm for baseball's Colorado Rockies grew even greater after September 8, when the team brought up an infielder from the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox by the name of Mike McCoy.

Of course, this column is about bicycling, not baseball. But thinking about the Colorado Rockies baseball team got me ruminating about autumn cycling in the team's namesake mountains. And that's about as good as it gets: crisp mountain air, groves of shimmering aspen in their brilliant fall finery, cool temps, fewer cars on the roads ...

Where to ride in Colorado? For beginners, check out this article focusing on five of the state's most spectacular scenic byways (it also includes a useful locator map at the bottom). Or, if you're looking for something a little longer, look no further than Sections 6 and 7 of the Great Parks Bicycle Route. That fantastic route will lead you 700 miles through the heart of the Centennial State, from Steamboat Springs in the north to Durango in the southwest.

If you're rarin' to go off-road in Colorado — or off-highway, at least — you could do no better than to put your fat tires on Section 4 of the Great Divide, tracing the Continental Divide from Silverthorne in Summit County to tiny Platoro, located not far north of the New Mexico border. This entire section (almost) is stunningly beautiful at any time of the year, but with an exclamation point in the autumn.

Speaking of exclamation points, the Rockies are in the playoffs!!!!

photo by M. McCoy

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BIKING WITHOUT BORDERS is posted every Monday by Michael McCoy, Adventure Cycling’s field editor, and highlights a little bit of this or a little bit of that — just about anything, as long as it’s related to traveling by bicycle.