Indepence Pass- Just another back yard ride?

Four years ago today I took off for New Zealand for five months, to mark the anniversary I went for a nice bike ride. 

Last year I started road biking and I slowly built up to bigger rides before riding Snowmass Village to the top of Independence Pass and back. I even created a blog post about it. Today Bart and I headed up to do it again. This time not as a goal that I've built up to but as just another ride. Today I realized how far I've come in a year and it is nice to look at this ride as a nice half day. The whole ride was great. Mother nature gave us some great weather & the cold breeze off all the snow near the summit was refreshing.  The bike computer got bumped mid ride and I so the ride got split into two activities. Here is the breakdown; 56.07 miles with 6,166ft of elevation gain in 5 hours 45 minutes and 55 Seconds and burned about 4,389 Calories.