Wow, what a fantastic experience! This weekend the family headed up to Crested Butte to hang out with some friends and mountain bike (ok, the mountain biking was just for Craig, Lanny, and me). I had never been to Crested Butte before but I’m so glad that I went.
Judging by the size of the town it was clear that skiing, hiking, biking, and photography are the only things that the keep the town alive. I get the distinct impression that this part of Colorado is somewhat of a little known secret. The town is very small and quiet yet it still boasts some of the most beautiful scenery this state has to offer. It’s essentially the same area/range as Aspen, but on the other side. So, it benefits in the beauty category but it’s not as crowded or developed. The ski mountain is small and there’s only one way in to Crested Butte, so all things considered I think it keeps a lot of the population elsewhere.
On to the mountain biking. If there’s one trail to ride in this state it’s 401! The views and wildflowers were mind blowing! Everyone we ran into agreed this weekend’s trail was the best trail they’ve ever been on…if not, in their top 3. We rode up the hill with a local from the area who had been on the trail countless times and he said all things considered (trail condition, flowers, greenness) it was the best he’d seen in a long time. You can ride up to the top all the way from the town or you can essentially drive to the very top of Schofield Pass and get dropped off for a fun ride down. We started our ride at the parking lot at about 9,700 feet and climbed all the way to the top at about 11,400 feet. At the top the trail heads down the mountainside and into the most beautiful valley you’ll find anywhere. From the top of the mountain it’s 4 miles of continuous descent. We rode all the way to the bottom of the trail and then rode all the way back to the house on Saturday. In total we covered 22 miles on mountain bikes in about 4 hours, which is a pretty good trip. Lanny has a GPS odometer, heart rate monitor, etc that he can upload to Google Maps. Although it cut off the beginning of our trip, it’s really fun to view the elevation, speed, distance, and his heart rate.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. The other highlights of our trip was the Tercel averaging 41.67 mpg and our Salida gas station adventure. Long story short, the gas station was packed with cars waiting in line to get gas. As we were waiting a Jeep that was parked started to roll backwards into the line of cars. I saw it out of my periphery at first and initially wondered why he was backing out. I did a double take when I realized the “person” in the driver’s seat was really a black lab. I had to jump out of our car, run over to the rolling Jeep and jump into it and slam on the brakes. Luckily, the owner had left the door unlocked. She also had left the keys in the car so I was able to pull it back into the parking spot. I got a round of congratulations and thanks from some of the other waiting drivers and I also made sure the woman driving knew what had happened when she returned to her vehicle.
Not a bad weekend! Seriously, you need to check out all of these gorgeous photographs.
Since I now have a mountain bike I’ve been looking for an opportunity to combine riding with hiking 14ers. It just so happens that next weekend (17-19 July), I’m heading down to the Lake City area to hike Handies peak on Sunday with my friend Josh.
Because it’s such a long drive down there, I’d also like to hit Redcloud and Sunshine Peak on Saturday. The crazy part is, I want to partially ride and partially hike to these summits. Does anybody want to go with me?
Here are the details…I’ve included links of the route with photos:
As I mentioned above, 12 miles is easily doable walking, let alone riding a bike. The only challenging part will be the short sections where we have to walk our bikes. If I don’t get any takers I’ll still probably attempt to do this on my own. If you don’t have a bike but would like to hike, I can be persuaded to walk.
The hike up Handies on Sunday is also open to anyone interested. I’ll be driving back to Colorado Springs Sunday afternoon but we can work out the logistics if you’d like to head back Saturday instead. This is going to be a great time on the mountain. Let me know!
The summer transfer period in football is also called “silly season” due to the plethora of ridiculous rumors that surface about players moving to a different team. 99.9% of the rumors that you hear never actualize…which I pretty much attribute to boredom. No games are being played right now, so to combat the lack of activity and excitement we create it for ourselves to pass the time.
During this season where moving teams is allowed, some players have hired marketing companies to produce brochures on themselves. You know, to “market themselves” to prospective buyers. I also find this silly considering every minute of every game a player has played has been videotaped for the entire world to see. I think we all have a pretty good idea what a player can do on field without a shiny brochure.
At any rate, arseblog created this mock brochure of one of their players. I found the “brand values” page extremely funny and silly. Apparently Adebayor is nutritious and fully vaccinated!
Julia just finished her first flight. Technically she has flown before (this is her third trip in 18 months), but the trip up to Spokane was the first flight now that she's aware of her surroundings.
The flight from Denver to Spokane went really well for us since she slept the entire way. She was awake for the entire flight from Colorado Springs to Denver though and that's when we got to watch her little brain process what it means to fly.
We had the window seat in our aisle so she got to watch the landscape the entire flight. She didn't seem to mind when we took off until the landing gear disappeared under the wing outside our window. For the next 15 minutes or so (the rest of the flight), she kept pointing towards the missing landing gear and saying "uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh". She was saying it so often that I began to wonder if she knew something I didn't know. I thought like women's intuition there might be something similar called "baby sense". I assured her repeatedly that the landing gear would come back when we were about to land but it didn't seem to register.
The funniest one-liners Julia used were:
- after a few minutes of silence she looked out the window and said "down" in the same way she says it when she wants off of a chair or the bed. I thought that was very perceptive. Obviously, on some level she knew we were "up".
- when the plane banked left or right she said "whoa" in the same way she says it when she almost stumbles or loses her balance. When coming in for landing we took a really sharp turn and in fear she said "whoa whoa whoa whoa" very fast and in succession.
- of course, once the plane did something she liked and we got a big "weeeeeeeeeeee".
It was quite hilarious and, as usual, it stopped as soon as I took out my camera to record her.
We went to a few motorcycle dealerships in Idaho with Stacey's family yesterday. It brought back a lot of memories (and created thoughts of new ones) since I bought my first motorcycle while I was living in Spokane. Jules loved it too (obviously).
