{"id":2753,"date":"2023-09-13T16:12:56","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T21:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2023-09-13T16:37:58","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T21:37:58","slug":"meeker-over-the-nine-mile-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/2023\/09\/13\/meeker-over-the-nine-mile-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeker, over the nine mile gap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today a nice ride from Craig over a low set of hills to Meeker. Grades in the west are different from eastern mountains. More likely to be a long gradual ascent or descent than a lot of short sharp hills. Today I started with 22 miles of relatively flat followed by 14 miles of gradual climb followed by 10 miles of gradual descent. It was 40F starting but a more comfortable ~70F by the time I finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Craig to Dinosaur there are two routes I considered. The most direct is to follow US 40 for 91 miles and stay in Maybell in between. The route I picked is CO 13 to Meeker and CO 64 via Rangely. I’ve done US 40 twice and decided to try the Meeker\/Rangely route instead. This also had an advantage of less daily climbs than the Maybell\/Dinosaur section which is hilly. Also an advantage that there were good places to stay in both Meeker and Rangely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My route started out following the Yampa River along a valley. I passed a large power plant, a mine and then more along the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At 13 miles was Hamilton. All I saw was a post office, a community hall and a few houses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I like these dry landscapes that leave the rock uncovered. Many of these hills along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Iles Grove was an early settler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These guys from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) stopped as I was at the marker. They were spraying the cracked road areas with herbicide to stop weeds. They were going just slightly faster than I was so passed again later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wide open spaces but headed to thread my way through the hills in the distance. This started a very gradual climb from 6250ft to 7500ft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Signs said a coal mine, likely a strip mine beyond the hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the top. No sign here but earlier indications were this was the Nine Mile Gap over the Danforth Hills. From here 10.5 miles down to Meeker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking back the way I had come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many of the Mormon Crickets on the road – https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mormon_cricket However not so many that I couldn’t avoid them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upcoming road work for tomorrow. I’m told most of the resurfacing is done but there is still a bridge they are finishing and alternate stopping traffic from each direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meeker has a taxidermy shop with a large skeleton out front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall it was a nice ride and nice to visit a new place in Colorado I hadn’t been before. <\/p>\n\n\n

WP Strava ERROR 403 Forbidden - See full error by addingdefine( 'WPSTRAVA_DEBUG', true );<\/code>to wp-config.php<\/pre>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today a nice ride from Craig over a low set of hills to Meeker. Grades in the west are different from eastern mountains. More likely to be a long gradual ascent or descent than a lot of short sharp hills. …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2760,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions\/2760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}