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 :)

Colorado

We've had a great couple of weeks in Colorado! We started off in Fort Collins, where our good friend's brother had lived for many years. It's a super nice place with a great recreation area called Horsetooth Reservoir (the one downside was the horrible numbers of centipedes in their shower building <shudder>).  We also went to Loveland, an area known for its artist community. Here's a shiny giraffe I saw on the street:

It's still mostly desert in that area, but it wasn't long before we were in the lush Rocky Mountains.

We spent half a day checking out Boulder. It's a very vibrant city with what looks to be a thriving economy. Piles of people there are active--we saw so many people out for a run or bike ride and didn't see one person who was overweight. Unfortunately the drivers there are absolutely insane, so the cyclists seem to stick to the sidewalks and paths to the side of the streets.

We then drove up into the foothills of the Rockys, up to Nederland. One of the things that stuck both of us was how many people and houses are everywhere up in the mountains. We've been in a lot of mountainous areas on our trip, but Colorado is the first time that we're seen so much development. I certainly can't blame people for wanting to live in these areas...but it changes things. Anyway, the weather was a bit cold so we made it a day of chores and finished the day having a coffee in an adorable coffee shop built in a couple of train cars.

Our friends Ute and Steveo arrived at the Denver airport the next day (Luke's birthday!) so we made our way there to meet up with them. They had rented an RV so we had true camping buddies to travel with :) They had their first overnight camping in a Walmart parking lot experience that night. It's old hat for us dirtbags now, but it was funny to see their reaction and a reminder that what we are doing isn't exactly mainstream. They survived and we headed out to Buffalo Creek the next day and spent some time on the beautiful trails.

Next we headed to Pike's Peak, but not before we stopped at a dinosaur museum for a couple of hours (I *love* dinosaurs, so I was happy as can be). We then drove the truck up the 20 mile road to the 14000 ft top of Pile's Peak. There is a trail called the Barr trail that starts at the summit and descends 8000 ft to the bottom at Manitou Springs. It was too advanced of a ride for me, so I shuttled them to the top and got to enjoy the amazing view!

 At the trailhead--look at that view!

 Some snowy spots

 View part way down

 At the start of the ride

I started the descent down (some of the road is narrow with tight hairpin turns and steep cliffs...not my favourite) and all was going well until I reached a car that had caught on fire traveling up the road. It had happened a few minutes before I got there and luckily happened where there was a rest area where I could pull off to park and wait. Even more luckily, no one was hurt. It took 1.5 hours for the firetruck and police to come, put out the fire and clear the road for cars to pass.
As I eventually drove past I saw there was barely a shell of a car left. It was burning for at least 45 minutes, so it didn't come as a surprise...but it was shocking to see all the same.

I also snapped a shot of the Big Foot warning sign on the side of the road:

"Due to sightings in the area of a creature resembling "Big Foot" this sign has been posted for your safety"

I made it to the bottom 10 minutes before the bikers arrived and we went for a well deserved dinner at a pub down the street. We learned from the waitress that the two cats hanging around, both missing a leg, were products of a time when the town was overrun with cats. There was lots of inbreeding going on (hence the missing legs) and the city had to trap a bunch of them. The interesting things you learn!

Our next day was spent in Salida/Poncho Springs. Luke, Ute and Steveo took on the 60km Monarch Crest Epic bike ride (where they saw another forest fire) while I puttered around on the trail network closer to town. I must admit that it was nice to have an RV to relax in, especially for dinner once the sun goes down.

We had originally planned to go north to Breckenridge or Steamboat Springs, however Luke discovered that they already had a fair bit of snow so we decided to go to Buena Vista and Gunnison instead. We went to a fantastic hot springs called the Cottonwood Hot Springs and stayed at a lovely campground where we heard coyotes howling in the night.

Steveo and Ute headed back to Denver on the Friday to catch their flights the next day. They had expected to leave early Friday morning but when they went to start the RV the battery was dead. Luckily we were still around so Luke and Steveo drove to town to buy jumper cables and after a couple of minutes of re-charging the RV started again. We also learned that the pass they were planning on taking back was snowy and icy from the night before, so getting on the road later than planned worked to their advantage since gave the road crews time to sand the roads. Unfortunately for them it meant that they couldn't sneak one more bike ride in before they left Colorado...but it was nice to be able to spend a bit more time with them! (and they made it over the pass with no problems!)

Luke and I headed up to Crested Butte. What an amazing place! It's incredibly beautiful and surrounded by mountains. I fell in love! Luke had been there a number of years ago when it was a tiny town of little wooden buildings, so he was disappointed to see that the town is much larger now. The trails (that we saw anyway) are also a bit wrecked from ATV, motorbike and horse activity. And real estate is super expensive. Luke biked the Teocalli Ridge trail, where he got snowed and saw many, many hunters shooting at things in the woods :/ I stayed down lower to do a hike and saw many cows out to pasture.

Gunnison Forest, down the road from Crested Butte

We've been at pretty high elevations all week and the thinner atmosphere makes it harder to breathe. I'm hoping that will make us superstars when we get to down to more normal elevations :D We're now trying to avoid the cold and snow so we'll be heading west.

Rain....

After leaving Boise we made our way over to Sun Valley/Ketchem Idaho. We had been there at the beginning of our trip and were hoping to check out more of the trails. However this time we ended up being there when they were having a number of days of rain, so we didn't get onto more trails this time. It's such a beautiful area though--I'm sure we'll end up there again at some point!

As we were driving to our next destination, Idaho Falls, we drove through The Craters of the Moon National Park. It is such an interesting place! It has fields of black rock formed by lava flows of the Great Rift fissure system. We went through around dinner time, so the info centre was closed (Luke tells me that my love of info centres makes me a nerd)...but wikipedia tells me that it's a difficult environment for plants and animals because of dry winds and the heat absorbed by the black lava (summer soil temps often exceed 66 degrees!).
The good news is the weather was still stormy, so we got some dramatic photos!

 Luke and a rainbow

Sun breaking through the clouds

The weather continued to be rainy in Idaho Falls. And it was still rainy in Driggs and Jackson WY. That was pretty disappointing because we returned to the area to get on the trails that were too snowy the first time we were there in late May. The trails are supposed to be particularly good. Luckily it's somewhat close to Sun Valley so we can make it a big missed trail trip in the future :)

There was more rain in Laramie and Cheyenne WY and the ever present Wyoming wind made it pretty cold a lot of the time. We luckily had a reprise for an afternoon--the skies were still filled with dark clouds, but it didn't rain--so we went to the Curt Gowdy State Park. I was very pleasantly surprised! It is a super beautiful area with really well marked trails (believe me, this is a big plus) and a big variety of trails with around 70km of trails to choose from. Some of the trails were super easy, except for the strong winds making it a rough go when it was a head wind. Other trails had super fun rock slabs. I didn't get to the hard stuff but Luke said there was a trail that was super challenging (which is saying something).
I saw some mule deer (one was super bouncy) but Luke saw mule deer, a jack rabbit, a golden eagle, and a rattlesnake! All of his encounters were pretty close, because the trails were twisting around big rocks so he would surprise them at the turns. The rattlesnake actually attacked his front wheel when he was coming off a tight squeeze on a bridge--he didn't have room to back up and the little guy attacked and bounced off his spoke before taking off.

Here are some photos from the area:

 View from the trail

We're now in Fort Collins CO. Luke found a photo posted by a biker of an aggressive rattlesnake on the trails around here. I will be very extra cautious around here!!!