whistle clean said:
I know what you mean. Every time I go for a ride I am very grateful that I can ride these highways and not feel like it's the "big city experience". I tend to forget that at times but it only takes a few miles out of town and the appreciation sets in quick.
Is it pretty where you live?
You're going to be sorry you asked. A geography lesson follows.
It's gorgeous here, too--just a different kind of pretty. I live right at the base of the foothills to the Rocky Mountains. In less than five minutes, I can be starting up into the foothills (Horsetooth Reservoir--http://www.co.larimer.co.us/parks/Horsetooth.htm) and into the mountains. We have a couple of great twisty canyon rides within just half an hour from our front door--the Big Thompson River canyon (site of a famous flood--http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Tech/Nature/Disasters/Floods/76July31-Big_Thompson.asp), which winds it way up to Estes Park at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Poudre River canyon (
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_river/co_cache.htm), which will take me to Steamboat Springs if I want to keep going for several hours. We can ride well-known roads like Trail Ridge Road (
http://www.nps.gov/romo/visit/weather/scenicdrives.html) or the Peak to Peak Highway (
http://www.estes-park.com/go/peakpeak.html). If I want to go a bit further southwest, I can ride to all the famous Colorado ski resorts (Aspen, Vail, etc.). Next season, hubby and I plan to do a lot of weekend overnight trips deeper into the mountains than a single-day ride can afford.
If I want to just hit the open road, I can head out east onto the Great Plains or north to Wyoming (the border is just 30 miles north of me).
If I want to go a couple of hours south, I can ride up Pikes Peak (
http://www.ppihc.com). Another hour south and I can ride over the Royal Gorge bridge (
http://www.royalgorgebridge.com).
But, even with all that, there's just something about the Pacific Northwest that touches my heart. I only lived there for three years, but my son still lives in Portland and I visit there often. It's so incredibly beautiful, and so different than the Colorado scenery I grew up with.
That's the nice thing about our country. So much variety and so many beautiful places to ride a bike to.