What a great day to ride Mt. Evans. If you recall, we planned to do so last year. We pack the car. Got the bikes prepped. Got to bed early. Got up early and drove out...to discover it was race day on Mt. Evans. DOH!
It resulted in a fun ride up Trail Ridge Road from Granby to the top. Great time. Today would be different! We would ride. But a few miles on I-70 after prepping, and getting up early, Dave wonders aloud "when is race day this year?" I pull out the droid and confirm: it was this day. NO! Totally slimed again! So, we quickly change plans.
Dave recalls a new trail segment that would allow a fun ride up to Loveland Pass. We got out of the car and headed out. The new trail was awesome. Smooth. No cars. Few people at all.
Unfortunately, my heart told me pretty early on it would have none of this foolishness. It hadn't been this bad in over a year. Disappointing in many ways, but it was best I turn around. Boo. Dave continued up and over Loveland Pass.
He headed down to Arapaho Basin ski area (see photos of it with actual skiers during the Bike Tour I went on last year). Then he rode back up to Loveland, over and down to the car.
I slept in the Matrix. Or maybe it was a coma. Felt more like a coma. Stopped at a cool like cafe on the way home.
The trip was winding down, yet we kept having fun. It was great sharing dinners, climbing and laughs with Dan and Michelle.
They even enjoyed the birding that never stopped. :)
Our last day in COR, we headed out for some climbing. We had to get out of the campsite by about 2. We managed to get a fair amount of climbing in before having to leave.
Dan and Michelle were packed up pretty quickly and came over to help with the trailer prep. We got it all taken care of and headed out. We had an excellent site and will definitely use it again.
Our first stop was the dump station. These places crack me up! We performed an excellent dump and headed on our way.
No way we'd get all the way back to Boulder so we stopped at a bizarre place I'd only seen on the side of the road - Little America.
A most excellent bivy with it's bold sign and knick-knacks everywhere. Plus a quiet parking lot and a good greasy breakfast deal for the morning.
We fueled up and headed home. A pretty event-less drive happily. We even managed to get the trailed into storage without taking it home. We just piled all the stuff in the truck. It made unpacking far easier. Hopefully we'll be able to do that again.
More climbing ... more fun. Plus, Dave was working the hard sale on Dan to get an RV. I think Dan learned far more than he ever wanted about RV guts. He even got to practice getting fresh water into the tank without drowning. :)
We headed over to check on the Gnatcatchers and learned they'd fledged. We could hear them in the a nearby tree. Because the nest was empty, we were able to grab the photos I mentioned. Can you believe FIVE babies were in this nest? Amazing.
We also got attacked repeatedly by Harry the Harrier. Scary young man! Dave got lots of nice photos using the good camera - eventually I'll get some posted here on the blog.
Dan and Michelle drove up from Boulder and joined us for the remainder of our time at the City. Great fun to see them and spend the time with them. LOTS of laughs and even tears. Some were from pain sadly. :(
Aside from climbing, we did some birding. We got to enjoy a nest of five baby Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers. Watched them as they were fed and went back one day to find they'd fledged. TINY little nest. Seems I have a photo somewhere in one of these COR blogs.
The bird that drew the greatest attention was "Harry the Harrier." A male Northern Harrier had a nest (ground nester) near a path. We found out the hard way as he went into attack mode. If you don't think a very angry bird with a 44" wing span can be scary - you are WRONG. He was pissed. Happily no bleeding from this event.
We enjoyed a full day of climbing. Then wandered to a nearby campground where some of our supertopo friends were staying. They were hosting a Pente Happy Hour! How fun is that? So, we got Pente all dressed up and off we went. We got to see some of our favorite tacos and meet some new ones. Pente was a little overwhelmed by all the folks and had to go home early. We hung out and really had fun though.
The next day we got in more climbing. Unfortunately Michelle got a rock in her eye and scraped the heck out of it. So, we left Dave and Dan behind to play and we drove to the local town (45 minutes) to the ER. Not the way you'd plan on spending a fourth of July, but so be it. Happily they were able to give Michelle some relief. But it meant a rest day for everyone as she healed.
It rained the next day so it wasn't so hard to sit and rest. No climbing to be had anyway.
Again, not much to add photo by photo, but just suffice it to say we really had a great time!
Way behind on blogging. That's the new norm I suppose. Tons (and I mean tons) of work and deadlines and travel too. I start catching up today with our fun time in the City of Rocks Idaho (we went in June!), there has been some biking, climbing, Reno, Tuolumne and other fun. Plus, the yard is half done. I'll try to get some photos soon. To complicate matters, Blogspot has made an "improved" photo poster. So, no matter what I do, the photos are gargantuan. Very annoying. Sorry about that. * may have gotten it corrected using html. I hate these 'improvements'.
So, in June we hooked up the trailer and headed to Idaho for some time in the City of Rocks. Nice to get the trailer out again. Wish we could do it more. One of our gas stops was the "Middle of Nowhere". And it was. And there were two llama there at the gas station which I guess makes some sort of sense. Cute little guys, but felt bad they were just out their cooking in the sun. :/
This crazy stop was pretty close to the COR. We got to our campsite and set up our home away from home. Nice!
The next morning, we enjoyed tea on our private rocks while Pente explored, rolled in the dirt and discovered a love of rolling in the potholes on the granite domes. Weird.
We managed to get some climbing in too. The weather for the entire trip was pretty good with only a few days of rain. The rain was actually welcome as the West has been on fire. In fact, when we left Boulder, we left Bear Creek burning which was a drag.
We also got together with our friend Kim Miller and his family. They have a "cabin" out in the area. So nice to see Kim and Joe again and to meet the rest of the clan. Great people. After a dinner, we headed to the cabin.
The Uriostes were also in town so they joined us. No need to narrate each photo - I think they are self explanatory. Plus, many more to come!
