This week was our annual Bike Club ride to Breckenridge. The day was absolutely gorgeous with blue skies and 70 degree temps - much better than the air in Denver with smoke from summer wildfires and temps in the 90s. We had 12 people make the drive up to the mountains.
Even though I've been riding all summer, the ride up to Breckenridge is a bit challenging since you're climbing about 1,000 ft in 11 miles - not terrible, but certainly not easy. The view along the way is certainly worth it. I could have used my new eBike on a couple of the hills, but I don't trust myself yet to be able to control it coming down.
When we get to the top, we always stop at the Cool River Coffee House for a snack. I don't know if it's the time of year or post-COVID euphoria, but Breckenridge was packed and the bike trail was like a freeway. Everyone was out enjoying the nice day.
I went up the day before to do a little sketching, partly in Breckenridge and partly in Frisco. There's a German brew pub in Frisco that I always like to stop at for an afternoon break. Their pretzels are huge and it's nice to find a place with German beer on tap.
The week before I left for Breckenridge, I read an article about an artist who built a troll, named Isaac, in the forest near Breckenridge. So, I was really intrigued to see if I could find it. Sure enough, not too far out of Breckenridge I found him. Truthfully, it wasn't that difficult, because I just followed the crowd of other people out hunting for the troll.
Here's a photo with some kids standing in front of Isaac so you can see just how big he really was. He's made completely out of wood. His right hand is wrapped around one of the trees in the forest. I managed to find an unoccupied boulder a little off to the left, so I sat down to sketch him. Let me tell you, it was quite a challenge to sketch that chest-full of wood shingles.
