Colorado, part 2

After the Rockies, we headed further west toward Glenwood Springs. Our friends Taz and Mike live about 13 miles from there in a little town called New Castle. We rode our bikes one day from Glenwood Springs to Carbondale (10 miles one way) to the 37th annual Mountain Fest. We ate food, listened to music, people watched and perused the crafters wares.

One of the crafters did really creative work with wood, where they let the wood check and crack and then filled in the voids with crushed turquoise. Here's an example...

The next day Bob, Taz and Anna rode up to Vail Pass, starting from Vail (we've done this pass from the Frisco side which is the easier side) . The Vail side is about 15 miles one way and just under 3000 vertical foot climb. Whew!

Here's Anna after we got back down to Vail...

Our third day of road biking, Mike Joined Taz and us for a ride up to the Maroon Bells in Aspen. The road has very little traffic. We've been wanting to do this one for awhile, so it was a real treat to see. Here's Anna making her way up. 8 miles and about 2000 feet vertical.

And here's another view from the road. Spectacular.

The four of us at the top!

The Maroon Bells were shrouded in mystery (read: thunderstorms) but we managed to get back to car before we got soaked.

We're saying goodbye for now to our road bikes. They'll be living at Taz's place until we swing back through Colorado on our way home. It was worth bringing them for these classic rides!

Colorado...

The drive to Denver was uneventful, and took our usual 3 days (11 hrs; 10 hrs; 8 hrs). Diesel prices really aren't that bad, although we just spotted our first over $5 a gallon station yesterday in Glenwood Springs.

We spent a few days in Denver and got to ride our road bikes 50+ miles over 2 days, which certainly helped us get acclamated. We both felt strong on those rides! We then headed for the mountains just west of Boulder and spent the weekend camping with friends. Bob and I did an awesome hike in the James Peak Wilderness to Crator Lake, about 3 miles one way and 1500' vertical. It wasn't easy, but we made it and felt sore the next day.


Next was Rocky Mountain National Park, where we decided to do our first backpack of the trip. We went to the less visited northeast corner of the park, along the North Fork Trail. It went from a stream canyon, to forest & meadows as we climbed 1500 feet over 6 miles to our designated campsite. We were beat! The next day we hiked to Lost Lake and enjoyed the sunshine and alpine views. The 3rd day we hiked out & beat the thunderstorms to the van. The wildflowers we've seen have been better than ever... probably due to the big snow year.

Photos from the backpack trip:



We spent one night in the Winter Park area and did some of the wonderful mountain bike trails in the area. Again, the flowers are awesome and the trails were really fun, not too hard. We did a 1000' climb that was very challenging, but again we made it, and the downhill was a blast!A typical van camp setup....

Almost ready to go...

The first step of the final packing day is taking everything out of the van that has already been put in over the past few weeks (except for the food, an amazing amount of which was sucked up by the cavernous storage under the bed). The rest of out junk - backpacking gear, climbing gear, clothes (everything from tank tops & shorts to fleece & hats), bike clothes, bike shoes, bike tools, hiking boots, low-top shoes, sandals, camp stove, chairs, table, and on & on - easily filled the rest of storage space. The road bikes will go inside & the mountain bikes outside.


The basil crop is ready to made into pesto today. When we return, it should be all grown up again.

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Bye for now! We'll try to update this a few times during our trip.
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Beach Trip

We spent 4th of July weekend at Roy and Yoli's house in Bethany. The van has been properly "de-sanded", so now it's really time to get serious about packing! Here's how we manage the kayaks on the 9' tall Sprinter. This is an animated GIF, but blogger doesn't seem to want to show it as such. Hmm.


This horseshoe crab was alive and kicking in this picture, and it was still alive when Roy put it back in the water!

We got our blue crab fix... it's been a few years since we indulged in this treat.


The four of us did a bike ride together one day for a total of 12 miles. Roy hasn't been riding much (if at all?) since his hip replacement a few years ago. He didn't really want to go on this ride, but he's glad he did. It made our weekend to hear Roy say he'd forgotten how much fun it is to ride a bike. He was like a kid, riding in arcs and circles and zooming all around!

Plus, he has the coolest helmet around...

Time to get serious

We leave in 13 days, so it's time to get focused on packing all the stuff we've been gathering in piles around the house. This is my first stab at the dry food. That REI bag contains backpacking food. I'm trying to learn from past years and not bring too much food to start with; some of the things we packed from home ended up making the round-trip back home. I want to avoid that this time.