A Dissapointing Day

Well we had a nice day in the woods, however the ride was disappointing. The guide book gave us high hopes and Rey at Gearing Up confirmed it was a very scenic ride. The ride as we were going to do it was an out and back to Goose Lake along Goose Creek. It started out OK although we were dogging a lot of horse poop. We were able to ride most of the trail all be it in the little chain ring with a few short hike-a-bike sections for the first couple of miles. Watching the GPS I was getting a little worried as we were not gaining that much altitude and I was figuring things had to get steeper later on in the ride. I was correct. Its always nice to ride in a stream valley/canyon, shady, cool, the sound of running water, but this one was pretty beat up by the horses, especially any of the softer areas and there were a fair number with all the rain the area has had lately. After about 2.5 of the 6 mile, 3000 foot climb, the hike-a-bike was more prevalent than actually riding. We got up well over the 11,000 foot mark and actually ran into a leftover snow drift and mosquitoes at the same time. At about 11,600 we finally hit Goose Lake. There were a lot of exposed tree roots on the way up and things were still really wet in there so three of had the idea that it was going to be really dangerous trying to descend back down the single track so we were considering going back down the road instead. I figured princess would balk at that idea but he ended up having some brake issues and came up with the road idea on his own.

The lake was really beautiful and seems to be a popular destination for the ATV’s as there were a bunch of them parked in the lot along with some jeeps. We ate our fluffer nutter sandwiches and howie took pictures. We then headed down the dirt road trying to not to get run over by the ATV’s flying around.

We needed to get back into town early enough to get Rich to the greyhound station so he could get back to Albuquerque for his flight tomorrow. I kid you not, the bus station is actually a pawn shop that doubles as the bus station, we should have gotten a picture of that sign. Well the “bus station” wasn’t actually open for Rich to get his will call ticket and the bus ended up about 50 minutes late but it all worked out and hopefully Rich will be back in the great commonwealth of PA tomorrow sometime.

Tomorrow is a day off from riding, well deserved and needed as we travel up to Durango CO.