SUMMARY:  It took less than an hour to walk from our camp on the mountain, down to huge Copper Mountain Resort.  It wasn’t 7:00 yet–nothing was open till the Starbucks baristas spotted us and let us in.  Then we had a 10 mile downhill (yay!) walk on a bike path (yay again!) to Silverthorne.  There was beautiful mountain/river/lake scenery, but we had to watch our step–lots of geese were around, leaving “calling cards” on the path.  At the end of the trail, there was a large dam to cross, then Silverthorne itself–pretty, but it’s like one big outlet mall.  Weird, after being in the mountains.

DETAILS:  We could hear the traffic on the freeway all night, but our campsite was mosquito=free (almost) which was nice.  Early in the morning we headed down the trail, and in less than an hour we reached the huge complex at Copper Mountain.  It looked like a city, highrises and all….but not a human being in sight till we finally spotted a guy out walking his dog.  He told us where to go and find some breakfast, but with the caveat “Probably nobody’s open yet.”  That was true….but when we peered hopefully into the Starbucks, the baristas spotted us and let us in.  After coffee and donuts there (plus enjoying just being warm, and being able to wash up with WARM water in the bathroom), we headed off for a REAL breakfast at a place called Camp Hale.

Now that we were totally stuffed, we put the backs back on and looked for the bike path by Hwy. 70.  We could have opted for the Ley Red Route into Silverthorne, but we didn’t have enough food or enough energy to go that way.  The bike path turned out to be very nice, but you really have to KEEP RIGHT–there are so many bikes!  And since the path follows a river plus a “chain” of ponds, there were also a lot of geese.  There was a mama goose with a fine flock of goslings, so I stopped to get a picture of them.  Mama was nervous about me hanging around, so she tried to herd her flock away, but the goslings did not give a care, and ignored her.  Then dad–the gander–saw what was happening.  Uh-oh!  He was downstream a bit, but jumped in and began trying hard to swim towards us.  The current was too strong, though.  When he saw he wasn’t making any headway, he climbed out and began waddling at me as fast as he could.  I left quickly!

The bike path reached the town of Frisco, where we stopped for a Gatorade and ice cream and got a good laugh watching a bike instructor with a whole bunch of really little kids on their bikes, trying to teach the kids to ride.  He kept saying, “Kids, do your PEDALS!  Pedal!  Pedal!”, because a lot of them were still just pushing the bike along with their feet.  But since biking is obviously HUGE around here, I guess they start ’em young!

We picked up the bike path again, and it was so pretty!  It followed along the shore of Dillon Reservoir–so blue and sparkling, with the mountains as a backdrop.  If we’d stayed with the CDT, we’d be UP in those mountains right now, travelling the highest elevations on the whole trail.  But after reading hiker blogs about that stretch of CDT, and seeing their comments about “If you don’t like heights, you might have a hard time here”, we had decided on the Silverthorne route.   Down on the lake, there were all kinds of kayaks, sailboats, powerboats and paddleboards, but nobody was swimming.  The water must be COLD??  There were also a lot more geese, and they had left “calling cards” all over the path.  We really had to watch our step.

To get to Silverthorne, we hikers have to walk all the way across the top of a large dam before we are at the path that switchbacks down to town.  Turns out that “town” is basically one shopping mall after another.  It’s like a series of “villages”.  It felt so weird.  We managed to find a McD’s for lunch, then the underpass to get by Hwy 70 (which was a total parking lot eastbound…no indication of what was causing the backup).  We found the First Inn (recommended by Yogi) and they were really nice to us.  We got a cheap room, they did our laundry, and because we were staying there, we also got a great dinner deal at the steakhouse restaurant next door.  It was one of those “cook your own steak” places.  Fun!

After that, I went to 7-Eleven to get some more resupply food for our packs and then we headed back to First Inn to sleep.  Maybe.  It was a really warm night (we are not at 11,000 feet anymore!) and there was no AC in our room.  Oh well, you get what you pay for!  The weather report for the next several days sounds like the T-storms will be back.  That will be tough, because after this, we’ll be back up high in the mountains and reconnecting with the CDT.