Day 24. Colorado

Day 24 28^th

We woke early & Paul, oblivious to the council's awareness of our bean diet, enthused us to go begin the day at the worlds largest hot spring, Glenwood Springs.

Unsure what time the pool opened, we packed up & were heading to the bus at 7am. We invited Vince to join us.

My lack of faith at the opening hours of tourist resorts, I took a swim in the Colorado river which, with all the snow melt was a little brisker than the San Jaun,.

Paul explained to the early rising hot spring workers what we were doing & they let us all in for free.

I think this was perhaps the highlight for Vince of his time with the Monks.

Saying our farewells, we signed V Man’s truck & headed out with Lee, a friend of Pam’s, who was willing to take us through to Boulder with him.

The contrast between Vince’s truck at 35 miles an hour & Lee’s Subaru at 75mph was striking.

Lee took us out of his way to get pictures at The Great Continental Divide,

where we learned Crocks are not designed for snow wear.

We went on from there to Red Rock, a natural amphitheatre where many of the greats have played. There was a concert going on when we arrived, so we weren’t able to get in & test the acoustics with our monkish chants, but instead provided some visual stimulus for some of the Widespread Panic’s fans to spin on.

In Boulder we said our farewells to Lee & walking down the street, discovered they still play The Big Labowski at the cinemas there, with a free White Russian for all wearing a robe. We were tempted to stay a few days 'til the next screening, but duty called us on.

We caught a cheap bus to Denver, where we met Beth & Star. Beth, an amazing girl, not in the slightest convinced of our monkish authenticity, never the less discussed life, God & philosophy along the way while Star slept off the wedding from the night before.

We stumbled through Denver. I found a nice rest stop, but it wasn't to be. RJ's famous Vancouver line came out. "It's only 40 days." So on we went.

We finally found the pub where Paul’s social media friends would be meeting us.

One of the bar men was having a particularly slow night & it turned out, had done a bunch of cycle touring. So he & Nateon & Paul had a lot in common & shared road adventure stories while I talked with Steven from Phoenix on the phone.

It wasn’t too much later that Stephen from ‘The World by Road’ came to join us too.

Robin decided that we should stay at his place for the night, instead of in the park as we were planning & when his shift was done, he took us back to his sleep out with two rooms, a bathroom & kitchen. It was better than a hotel room! Perfect. Thanks so much Robin.

We slept.