Leaving Durango

Well today we said good by to Durango, Pooh Bear, and Princess. Our schedule had us heading to Grand Junction CO to pick up Howie’s son David at the airport there. Pooh was scheduled out as well and some things came up back at home that necessitated Princess catching a flight back as well. This was the one day of driving that I had been dreading since I first heard the itinerary. It involved heading over the mountains from Durango in Ouray. We had done this drive a number of years ago in a Winnebago type RV and I just remember it being scary, to the point I couldn’t really watch out the front (I wasn’t driving). This time I didn’t have that choice. Actually for the most part it wasn’t too bad. Its really just a matter of paying attention to those yellow signs that warn of turns and give suggested speeds that nobody in cars ever pays attention to. The only real issue was when we ran into a paving crew. They had their traffic cones all the way into our lane and at a few points there was nothing but air on the other side of the white edge line. It was a tight squeeze. We made it down, back into the high desert, going through Montrose then on to the RV park in Fruita, just past Grand Junction. I set up camp as Howie went to retrieve David from the airport. We then went out to ride a bit at the 18 road trails. We were the only ones silly enough to be there since it was 97 degrees. It really wasn’t that bad as it was pretty cloudy and there was a bit of a breeze and of course no humidity. We did the loop up Prime Cut and around and down Chutes and Ladders.

Back at the parking lot we headed up Kessel run to frontside then down Zippity Do Da. By the time we got to zippity the nice breeze had turned into a really strong wind, just in time for us to head out across the very exposed spines. We got about half way through zippity and decided to bail out and take Kessel run as we were about getting blown off the trail and Kessel was down in the wash so it was fairly protected from the wind, plus it was a blast bombing down it, up and down crossing the wash. We covered about 14 miles and were out there a couple hours.

Tomorrow its off to Gunnison to ride Crested Butte with Howie’s brother in law, Paul and his nephew Alex as well as a special guest appearance by the Meeker Madness. Well actually we don’t plan on actually riding tomorrow unless its something right in Gunnison at Hartman rocks.

Critter count went up by one when David spied this really cool looking lizard