Today was a nice ride with a few climbs. The last one into Austin was particularly steep but overall not so tough of a day. I’m glad I broke the Fallon-Austin gap into two days.

Middlegate was a bustling place with a surprising number of people stopping through. It was all pretty quiet when I set off at sunrise though. At just 3 miles there was junction in the road and I decided to stay on the main US 50 alternative. Also before the junction was the shoe tree, with hundreds of shoes up on the branches.

A closer look shows these shoes as well.

After the shoe tree, the road continued a slight climb. This brought me to the Cold Springs stop at mile 14. It was before 8am, the official opening time, but I was still able to stop in for breakfast. It looked different than I remember and was told the old station had burned down in 2008 and been rebuilt in 2010.

After Cold Springs the road was a little more level. Still wide open valleys without too much extra to see. Slowly getting closer to Austin.

Started to climb again in a few miles and this brought me to the New Pass summit at mile 40.

There wasn’t much descent from here before started to climb again to Mount Airy summit at mile 46.

A bigger descent here and one could almost see the road for rest of the way into Austin.

It was a long slow ride down and then a slow climb coming back up other side. As one got close to Austin it became steeper, though also had new business advertisements. The motels in town had “no vacancy” signs though one of them said they had a reservation that wasn’t reconfirmed, so got a room there. Otherwise found the international hotel cafe for a later lunch and relaxed. Expect the climb tomorrow morning will be challenging again as it is pretty steep.