Rocks and arriving in del norte

Day 49. 44.7 miles to Del Norte, Colorado. We should be in New Mexico in 2 days. We awoke with a nice view of the sun on the mountain with snow. We didn’t set alarms but we were up when it was light, which is later every day we travel further south. Our tents were wet but as the sun rose and compressed the cold air down, everything froze or turned to frost. The first two and a half miles today were up Cameron Pass and we were at the high point of the day before 9 am. We did a happy dance at the top of the pass. On the 18 mile downhill we caught up to the New Zealand couple (in their 70’s). They took a day off and we road to Gunnison and we ended up in the same place a day later.??? (We can’t keep up with them!) I can’t wait to be 70 and faster! They rested a day and we rode - we should have listened to Jon when he said there was no benefit to ride that day!! After the downhill we had lunch on the next climb and put on our rain gear as there were big storm clouds and it was raining ahead. A bit later we took off the rain gear as it was too hot to ride with it. I think we did that twice more….. the weather is fickle. Eventually we turned down a dirt track with a fast mountain bike downhill and we were having so much fun going down and dodging puddles that we missed a turn and had to climb back up a bit. We were glad to have missed the turn because the riding was fun. We passed a lot of rock formations, with one called elephant rock. We climbed up through a very short notch around a rock formation and dropped down to circumnavigate the airport. The signs indicated “the great divide route” to keep people from cutting through the field that was the airport. We dodged all the storms and rode into Del Norte and checked out the free camping in the town park. We decided to go to the campground because it had showers, a laundary and covered pavilion. Tara and I got coffee before heading to the campground, I needed it to get through all the chores! We got back from grocery shopping to the site just as a thunder and lightning storm was skirting around us. We cooked under the pavilion. Tara and I had fresh spinach, with scrambled eggs, salsa, and cheese. We boiled up the extra eggs to take for lunches, copying Lois and Jon. We sorted food and unpackaged everything to get rid of weight and trash. It rained and was a bit windy and we were glad to be under the roof. As we arrived back at our tent, our Alabama neighbors, a father/son here to do some fly fishing, shared s’mores with us but don’t tell Lois and Jon as they were off showering and missed out. Tomorrow is our biggest climb of 4,000+ feet in one push, the peak (Indiana Pass) around 24 miles into the day and over 11,000 feet. We have 5 days of food (the most yet) and will have a lot of water. We may not have service for quite a few days - New Mexico is going to bring some new challenges as it use very remote, dry and with few services.