2015-07-05 Day 7: Day off the Bikes, Walden, CO
Post date: Jul 5, 2015 9:59:33 PM
Spent the day in Walden, CO. Actually attended The North Park Baptist Church where Jon and I were 2 of the 11 in the congregation. Also took in the Pioneer Museum which was filled with you guessed it - old stuff. This town, like many small towns, is sorta hanging on. It shows great effort by putting up flags and hanging flower baskets on its Main Street but many of the retail spaces along its 5 blocks are empty. The businesses that are open all have Help Wanted Signs posted in the windows. The guy in the fly fishing shop told me that they get enough summer visitors but no one comes in the winter when the average temperature is in the single digits.
We are staying in the Hoover RoundUp Motel, a 12 room motel. Every place has a story so here is a great story behind this place. The motel is owned and run by BetteLou and Stan. It was constructed by BetteLou's dad in 1943. This couple does it all from the front office to the cleaning of the rooms to the flowers in the front. Get this. Stan is 81. BetteLou is 86. They lived within 20 miles of each other their whole lives. Now the best part, they were just married 2 years ago after meeting on the website ChristianMingle. Just another example of the Internet changing lives. BetteLou says the secret to life is to stay busy. So, if you need a great room at a great price, check out the Hoover RoundUp Motel.
Walden is a excellent hunting area so the motel has some special rules.
We were fortunate to get this room because the rest of the place is rented out by Halliburton, the oil company which is fracking an oil well just outside of town. They have just started fracking around the clock. In this process they inject water and sand into shale 2 miles under the surface so the the shale will release the natural gas trapped inside. Every 8 hours a shift of workers comes in to sleep and a new shift goes out in the trucks.
Finished the day by sitting and visiting with 3 other Transamerican riders - 1 from Italy, 1 from England, and 1 from Germany. They had met up on the route all going east. The rider from Germany actually rode over Cornelius Pass to the edge of Hillsboro. He showed me a picture of the intersection of Old Cornelius Pass and Germantown Road. It is a small world!