Belated Blog

Well, I got super lazy about blogging the last bunch of weeks so I have a lot of catching up to do.

The last time I wrote we were in Albuquerque NM at the White Ridge bike trails. We arrived at the trailhead a bit late and only got a small ride in that day. It is a really interesting area--it felt like every time you turned your head you were seeing something unique in the landscape! And there are (allegedly) oodles of fossils from the Jurassic period and the remains of the longest dinosaur ever found, a seismosaurus, was found near there. I found no fossils.
I can't find my photos from this area (they are probably on my phone) so I'll update with those later.
When we returned to the parking area we met a super nice and fun gal named Laurie who spent the weekend in the area geocaching. A disconcerting thing happened in that there were a number of people out target shooting (which seems to be a very popular pastime in the desert) and someone was shooting over our heads. The sign very explicitly said "no shooting" in the parking area, so either they had horrible aim or they were being a jerk. Fun fact: bullets flying over your head sounds like mini-missles.
We hung out that night at our campsite and the next morning I went geocaching with Laurie. I really like the hunting and exploring aspects of geocaching...but I've promised myself I'll mostly do it in nature areas since I'd feel creepy poking around people's neighbourhoods.

Albuquerque started getting cold so we headed west for warmer weather. We stopped in Gallop NM to ride the High Desert bike trails. Besides being super fun, it has quite realistic metal silhouettes of animals scattered along the trails. The rabbits and birds were sweet but the mountain lion that emerges from behind a rock as you're climbing makes your heart race for a good few seconds before realizing it's fake. We met a family of three from Oregon in that parking lot who were on a shorter version of what we were doing--traveling around to mountain bike. It turns out that the guy is a photographer and had worked at a surfing magazine. He and Luke had lots to talk about on the trail.
That night we went to a coffee shop and met another super nice person (so many great people in New Mexico!) who was a slick pro road racer and is now a coach for the bmc junior team. He was a huge talent, but got some concussions while racing and was told he couldn't risk hitting his head again. So now he's opening a bike shop/bakery with a local talented baker. We must go back and visit his store now that it's open!
As an aside, the is a fantastic campground in Gallop with a great view, heated washrooms and *really* good showers. These things are important, especially since it was getting cold in Gallop too.

Continuing to flee from the cold, we traveled to Tucson Arizona next. We took the more scenic drive on highway 60 through a couple of national forests and reserves. The drive was phenomenal!!! I was not expecting such incredible views and scenery. (did I take photos? Of course not. Google images of Tonto National Forest. You won't believe how amazing it is)
Our new friend Laurie had spent a few days of her vacation in Tucson so we met up with her on her last night there. We stayed in a campground in Oro Valley at the edge of town and listened to the coyotes howling in the huge Santa Catalina natural area.
I *love* Tucson. We spent about a month there and we are so impressed with what it has to offer. First, it has super amazing desert. It's one of the few areas that have saguaro cacti. Finally I have some photos!

Pretty much everything in the desert is thorny.

I finally decided to take the plunge and go for tubeless tires on my bike. It only took getting a flat tire on every ride in Tucson for me to do it.
Tucson also has a amazing mountains! We drove up Mt.Lemmon and spent a night there. It amazes me how there is desert down below and on the mountain you'd think you were in Canada!

Mt.Lemmon

It has an elevation of just over 9000ft and as you travel the Catalina Highway up you'll also see hoodoos and canyons.

I just read this description of it:

great vistas, outlandish rockscapes, cool mountain forests and deep canyons spilling out onto broad deserts. Because the road starts in the Lower Sonoran vegetative life zone and climbs to the high forests of the Canadian zone, it offers the biological equivalent of driving from the deserts of Mexico to the forests of Canada in a short stretch of 27 miles. Here you'll find plants and animals and geology that exhibit some of the most wide-ranging natural diversity to be found in any area of comparable size in the continental United States

(turns out I was right about it being like Canada!)

There is a big, long downhill trail that Luke biked. It was too big for me, so I enjoyed the drive down and saw at least 20 people biking up the road. Tucson has a huge road biking scene.

It's a pretty sprawling city but it has all kinds of interesting neighbourhoods. There is a cute hipster neighbourhood near the university, a few gated golf club communities, affluent neighbourhoods and places you are recommended to avoid because of gang activity. They also have my new favourite chain of stores called Bookmans. Most of the stores have used books/musical instruments/electronic equipment but they also have one location that has used sporting goods. I suspect I will buy a banjo there someday soon.

One night we heard a couple of owls hooting in a Walmart parking lot. We followed the hoots and saw two huge owls, one in a tree and one on a ledge of the building.

Tucson has an impressive amount of trails--over 400 miles-- and we just heard that the city is planning on developing over 2000 more miles of trails. The Arizona trail also runs through there as well. There is an Arizona Trail bike race that is either 300 or 750 miles and is self supported, with no entry fee or prizes. People say it's even more challenging than the Great Divide race, which I didn't imagine would be possible. This has piqued Luke's interest, of course.

We spent a day out in the Coronado National Forest, which was an interesting experience. One of the interesting things was going through a border patrol check point. It's strange to still be in the country but have to stop and have military people ask if you're American and look through your window to see if you're smuggling people. They were friendly enough to us, but I imagine it's a different experience if you look Mexican. Once we got to the forest it was a little disconcerting as well. It felt like the middle of nowhere, but there were plenty of people booting around with guns and atvs. Nothing happened, but it didn't feel terribly safe.

This prompted us to have a discussion about how, although we lock the bikes on the roof rack, it would be too easy to steal our bikes. And sure enough, the next day my bike was stolen. It wasn't stolen in the desert however, but from the parking lot of a coffee shop in the middle of the day. The a-hole ditched their bike by a tree around the corner, cut my lock, jumped on and took off. I will never forgot the shock I felt when I looked at the truck and my bike wasn't there. I'll admit I cried a little.

The police didn't care at all and I'll never see that bike again. I prefer to think that some kind, clean person is enjoying my bike after that dirtbag spent minimal time touching it.

Then the next day Luke's bike was almost stolen. We decided to spend the day in Phoenix and the very first time we stopped some other jackass tried to steal it from an even busier parking lot in the middle of the day. The only thing that saved the bike was that the would-be-thief was too dumb to know how to release the strap on the back wheel--they tried cutting it and cut the tire instead. They couldn't ride off with a flat tire so they abandoned it. We had over 6 months without any problems and then this, two days in a row. We decided to leave Phoenix and I spent a lot of time being angry and refusing to leave the truck unattended.

The stolen bike, along with some other things, made us decide to return to Ontario for the holidays to see family and friends. So we started heading home. But we took a detour to Big Bend Texas first.

We stopped in Marfa Texas, which is a cute little town that it an artist mecca with an international art scene. The cost of living is quite low so artist can live there easily and focus on their work. They also have a fantastic coffee roaster.

Big Bend is crazy amazing. We stayed in the town of Terlingua, which is a tiny place with an old ghost town and interesting people. There are no building codes so you can pretty much do whatever you want. One person lives in a pirate ship and has a building that looks like a mostly submerged submarine. They only got cell phone reception about 5 years ago.

There are also a lot of trails and one trail has a hill that is covered in crystals. We didn't even get to the Big Bend National Park, which has the Rio Grande flowing through it. One fellow camper spent a month in the park and it sounds fabulous.

We spent a few days at a campground run by a retired couple. Our site was on a ridge and there was only one other person camping up there with us. He had just retired from the Marines and had been traveling for four months by that point. He had rescued a little abandoned chihuahua at a rest stop and they've been travel buddies ever since. This chihuahua, whose name is Poncho, is one of the nicest dogs I've met. He's smart and affectionate, with pretty long fur and minimal yapping. He would jump up against Luke's leg and nibble at his hands until he picked him up and held him...and he would sit there content to be cuddled all day long. We need a trail dog.

The campground was pretty sweet. It had a great bathhouse with hot shower (you can probably deduce that we've had lots of not hot showers on our trip) and the owners have a donkey, two horse and about 60 chickens. You can buy organic eggs from them and the chicken lay 'easter' eggs that are naturally multicoloured. I just had to take photos.

They tasted amazing too!

Here's the sunset view from the campsite:

You could also see Mexico in the distance from our site.

It is wonderfully warm there at this time of year. I actually found it too hot sometimes. In the summer, they get 2-3 months of 40-50C temperatures. I don't think I could handle that. Interestingly, they get occasional downpours that, for those who collect the rainwater from the roof of their house, provides water for the whole year.

There had been a little bit of rain, and the previously bare looking thorny plants were blooming.

The local bike shop holds a bike festival in February with a two day, 100km ride in the State park. That sounds like unfinished business to me!

We reluctantly left Big Bend and started heading north for Ontario. As soon as we hit Austin TX it started getting cold and we spent four days traveling and sleeping in the horribly cold weather. When you're sleeping in your truck anything around 0C is very unpleasant. I hit a particular low when I started wearing my soft striped lululemon leggings in public because I didn't want to get changed to go to bed. I went into Walmart that way and Luke predicted I'd end up on the People of Walmart website.

We made it to London ON safe and sound. It was a hard adjustment to be back indoors so much and the current cold weather and snow has me dreaming of Tucson....

New Mexico

We've been in New Mexico for almost two weeks now and we are loving it! We drove down from Cortez through Shiprock NM to Farmington NM. Then, after a brief trip back to Durango, we went to Aztec NM and rode the Alien Run mountain bike trail. It goes past an (alleged) alien crash site from 1948, where 16 alien bodies were found before being quickly removed. We met the super nice fellows who built the trail as we were leaving and they filled us in on the details.

We also went to Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan Project. The town is actually really pretty and you'd never guess that it was the birthplace of the nuclear bomb...until you have to show your I.D. as you go through a check point that goes past the laboratories. You can visit the labs if you want, but you have to go through the check point even if you're just passing through. We were actually headed to the Valles Caldara National Preserve, home of a super volcano! The caldara is over 12 miles long. Here's a photo of a small part of it:

We hiked a trail called the East Fork that went into a box canyon. Besides being incredibly beautiful, the stream running through it had gold!

Luke, the aspiring gold miner

Gold!!

We learned earlier in our travels that you find gold in the black sand of rivers. There was so many flecks of gold all through the river! However, this area is one of the few where it is illegal to pan for gold (which is why the gold hasn't been taken already) so we regretfully left it where we found it. It was beautiful to see though!
Further down the canyon we saw this lovely little waterfall:

And here's a sweet fluffy flower I found:

We also spent some time in Santa Fe. It is an incredibly artistic city. We wandered around for a couple of days and finally had a good experience with a mechanic (we had yet another repair to do on the truck. sigh. ) We made a trip to Taos, which has crazy amazing mountains and is also super artsy. There is an earthship community just outside the city (where the homes are made from recycled materials, use passive heating/cooling and recycle their water). The visitor centre was unfortunately closed when we got there, but I took a photo of one of the homes:

Taos also has the oldest continuously inhabited pueblo community (which was also closed to visitors when we tried to go there). The weather wasn't great when we were there however, so we headed down to Albuquerque. We didn't get to bike any of the trails in Santa Fe, Taos or Los Alamos, so we have unfinished business there.

We both really like Albuquerque! It is located in the Rio Grand Rift Valley, with the large Sandia Mountains on the east (sandia means 'watermelon' in Spanish, since the mountain glows red as the sun sets, with the layer of green trees at the top) on one side and the The Sisters dormant volcanos on the other side. The volcanos are a rare example of fissure eruption, where the magma rises along thin cracks. The fissure is over 8km long! The mountain is still slowly rising and the valley is still slowly dropping, being one of only a few active rifts in the world.
We visited the volcanos and I particularly enjoyed walking on the volcanic rock--its hollow sound makes me feel like I'm walking on cheerios.

We went to the Sandia Caves, one of the oldest cave dwellings known from the Pleistocene era. The trail to get there was pretty short and easy, but the climb up the spiral staircase to get to the cave didn't make the afraid-of-heights me too too happy.

the stairs. why did the have to make them see-through?

Here's the entrance to the cave. All the significant finds from the people who lived here (including mastodon bones!) have been removed and there has been substantial vandalism.

the entrance to the cave

The cave goes back quite a ways, but it is blocked off. Here's the view at the furthest point you can walk:

 It's hard to see, but it does continue on. On a sad note, we met a fellow at the cave whose nephew had commented suicide a couple of days before. They used to go to the cave together and he had taken a break from the funeral preparations to come to that quiet place to honour him.

On a happier note, Luke always takes his gps along when he is biking the trails and he recently inputed the info into his computer. Here are the details of his mountain biking on the trip so far:

2,710 km

377 hours

107,779 calories

climb 189,410'

descend 206,725'

My details are less than this, but still a happy amount for me :) 

I'd also like to show off my new socks for a moment.

 What's that swimming in my sock?

 Sock Shark!

And finally, here is a photo taken at a Walmart parking lot:

In my next post I'll share some photos from our visit to the White Mesa, and my new past time of geocaching!

Durango and Cortez CO

It is a beautiful fall morning in Durango--most of the tree's leaves have changed colour and there isn't a single cloud in the bright blue sky. We drove down the Million Dollar Highway to get here and the drive between Ouray and Silverton was unbelievable! Ouray is the most beautiful little town, nestled in a valley closely surrounded by tall mountains on all sides--paradise! Silverton is an adorable town with old west style buildings and the drive between them on the highway had incredible views. However, my camera battery had died through that whole journey so I don't have a single shot. Luke did take some photos though, so I'll post them once I get them from him.

The highway is described as "challenging and potentially hazardous to drive; it is characterized by steep cliffs, narrow lanes, and a lack of guardrails" by Wikipedia (and by a nice fellow we met at a laundromat who recommended the drive). I do not like heights and curvy roads in the mountains make me nervous...but we've been on so many roads like that on our trip that it didn't even occur to me that this road was 'potentially hazardous'. It kind of seemed normal actually. I have to give huge credit to Luke for both doing all the driving, and for being such an exceptional driver that I can even handle being on those roads at all!

We've been in the Durango area for about a week. Durango is so awesome--there are so many trails and people on bikes everywhere! One of Luke's favourite mountain bike idols, Ned Overland, lives here so I've been hearing lots of stories about "The Lung".
We also spent a few days in Cortez, where my new favourite trails are--Phil's World! They are crazy fun.
Just outside of Cortez is Mesa Verde, which is covered in ancient dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans (formerly known as the Anasazi). They had been living on the top of the mesa, where the soils were superior, but eventually they moved their buildings (called Pueblos) to the sides of the cliffs to protect themselves from invaders. You can see what I mean in these photos:

Glowing in the setting sun

Can you see the pueblos? 

View through a window into the Sun Temple (which was never completed)

The Ancient Puebloans ended up leaving this whole area within a couple of generations. At one point in time it was a huge mystery as to what happened to them, since it seemed like they had disappeared. After much investigation archeologists learned that these people actually left for lower areas because their lives on the mesa weren't working for them any more (due to things like drought and depletion of resources).

We also saw this wild horse up on the mesa:

YAY!

When we were looking at one of the many great views on the mesa a large crowd of crows gathered overheard. They were swirling around in the air currents and when they would come close by they sounded like jets! I've never heard anything like it before from birds.

We also did a bike ride in the Canyons of the Ancients, where you could go down spur trails and see other remnants of pueblos.

Our next stop will be New Mexico!

Palisade Rim trail

Here's another video of Luke riding the Palisade Rim Trail. Luke's been busy!

Grand Mesa--the bear edition

I've finally got around to posting the now edited video of our time on the Grand Mesa with the bear. Listen for my bleeped our swearing and when I squeak a tiny 'hey' at the bear after Luke has already scared it away!

Teocalli

Grand Junction and Fruita

We headed for Grand Junction after Crested Butte and we've had nothing but beautiful weather ever since!

But before that here are some photos from Crested Butte that I didn't include in the last post:

Luke got snowed on while on a trail up on a ridge in this area. I stayed down lower and just got rained on.  

The first night we spent in Fruita we stayed at a campground with these adorable bunnies :

There was also this unusual grass. You can see what it looks like when closed in the background.

The campground was beside a dinosaur museum (I love dinos!!) and this area in general has had numerous dino fossil discoveries. I love dinos so much that this is pretty much how I see myself:

We also stayed at the Island Acres campground in Palasade CO. This is one of the views:

The Colorado River was on the other side. Such a beautiful spot!
We spent some time on the Palasade Rim Trail. Here's a view from part of the trail:

Pretty flowers on the trail

There was also petroglyphs on some of the rocks.

Even though there is a sign asking people to respect the petroglyphs and not to touch the rocks, people had scratched such things as 'Hi' and happy faces onto them. At first I was annoyed but then I thought about how, although it is pretty garbage art in my eyes, those people had done what our ancestors had done. Who am I to judge?

We also drove up to the Grand Mesa, which is the largest flat-top mountain in the world! We went there at the advice of a lovely couple from Whitehorse that we met at the campground. The first time they made the drive up the roads had gotten very slippery so they had to turn around and had a hard time coming back down. The snow and ice had mostly melted over the next couple of days though, so they made it all the way up on their next attempt.

I was so impressed with how many lakes and forests there are--you'd never expect it given the desert you find down below. Here's the view from the trailhead of our bike ride up there:

And this the view from part way up:

We also had an amazing sunset:

You can see one of the many patches of snow in this shot. It was chilly, but worth it for the view!

Our bike ride was mostly flat and easily, with some muddy bits and some patches of snow on the trail to bike through. We came up to a look-out point that was at the edge of a large field, with a smallish bit of woods to the side. Just as we arrived, a huge 500+ black bear emerged from the trees about 100 metres away and was heading straight for us! Luke yelled out and the bear turned around and ran in the opposite direction, so we were fine...but it freaked me out all the same.  I've never been that close to that big of a bear in the middle of nowhere before. Luke was just starting to record the view when this all happened, so we have it on video. I'll post it next time so you can see the incredible landscape and hear the yelling :)