This really should be entitled “A Day in Denver, Part 2” and is a direct follow-up to that previous post. It was still early in the afternoon when we finished up at REI, so we decided to ride out of town and up into the foothills. Our tentative target was Golden, Colorado, of Coors Brewery fame. From there we would see where things took us.
We made it to Golden with no problems. Rather than hang around the town we drove straight through. We took Highway 6 northwest of town and along Cedar Creek. The highway runs through a valley along the creek, and through some beautiful scenery. The creek was more like a roaring river with some impressive rapids. Apparently folks normally go tubing and swimming in this area. Today, however, there were signs saying that it was prohibited because of the high water.
There was lots of traffic on the road, including RVs and large tour buses. It was a scenic route, to be sure, but this seemed like too much traffic for normal. There were also lots of cars parked along the road. There didn’t appear to be any trails, and with the signs warning about the river we weren’t sure what was happening. Soon, though, we spotted several climbers scaling one of the rocky crags along the road. It turns out that we were in prime climbing territory.