Last night was very chilly; I guess we should've figured it would get cold since we were at 7,000 ft! Obviously, we all survived. We actually slept til 8am this morning, which is quite late for us. I think we were all dreading the climb ahead of us. Luckily, we did almost half of it yesterday, but we still had 10 miles until the summit (Kit Carson Pass at 8,560 ft). 
It was a tough climb, but we all made it. We had awesome views of Red Lake near the top. We stopped at a little National Forest information booth at the top. As we were resting, we noticed some other bikers unloading their bikes from a car. A few miles down the road, we met them: two young law students from Atlanta who were pedaling across the USA. We didn't immediately recognize them as fellow tourists since they didn't have any panniers on their bikes. We found out that one of their mother's was driving sag for them since Pueblo. 

We all biked a couple of miles together up to the next pass, Carson Spur at almost 8,000 ft. We thought we'd reach the peak at Carson Pass, but little did we know, there were two more summits! The next was also at about 8,000 ft and unnamed. At that point, we finally felt as though the rest of the day would be, "all downhill." Of course, we were mistaken.

The rest of the hills weren't so bad, but our legs sure felt them after a morning of climbing. We ended up biking about 45 miles, which is below our average, but they were 45-very-intense-mountain-climbing-miles. 

We finished at Cooks Station, which isn't really a city, but actually a little gas station. There wasn't anything else nearby that offered camping, so we decided to stay here. We made it just in the nick of time, too. They were ready to close, but luckily, the two law students were ahead of us and told them to wait for us. A nice woman allowed us to buy some snacks even though she had already closed the register. Since the campground behind the building wasn't officially open, she just let us stay on the porch behind the building. Unfortunately, she had turned the generator off, so there was no electricity or water. Oh well, we've gone without showers before...it's not so bad for us, but I do feel sorry for the people in our vicinity.