Friday, June 12, 2009

Yes Tour Day 3: Mountain Man Crossing

Chelsey here (feeling much better!) reporting on Day 3
Miles: 50
Sun Salutations: 5
Handstands: 5
The day started off with all of us well rested and eager to go.. I still had a fussy stomach, but nothing that could stop us. After loading up on oatmeal and mate, we were off to our next destination. We knew we were in for a pretty big morning. We were going over Cottonwood Pass, a pretty steep climb and mostly farm roads. What we weren't all that aware of was how muddy it was going to be! At the top of the pass, we were greeted with a foot of wet, soggy mud. The kind of mud that likes to cake itself onto your tires, making you immobile. Dan has a pair of knobby mountain bike tires, they worked great at cleaning up all the mud. He paved the way for my bike which was real nice. Thanks Dan. Jason had a great time bonding with the BOB trailer and the mud he had to drag it for a good long time. Luckily, when you go up for a long time, you go down for a long time.. at the end of our fun mud times, we were greeted with a long fun stretch of downhill! By the time we got to Gypsum (the town at the other side of the pass) the boys looked awesome. They were coated in mud. Their faces looked like they had gotten some new strand of the Chicken Pox. Instead of red dots, it was brown dots. I came out of the deal miraculously clean! I only had one brown smudge on my face. That is a first, usually I come out the dirtiest!
In Gypsum we parked our bikes in front of a supermarket. While Dan and Jason went in and answered the workers many questions about where they had been, Sam and I did some yoga in the parking lot. After a lunch of peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches and a Java Juice mocha, we were on our very happy way towards Steamboat Springs. We were told to not take the road we were about to take by some locals due to muddy conditions. We learned our lesson earlier, so we opted for the easier, drier route (or so we thought).
We road along the Colorado River for the next 4 hours. It was gorgeous. The rain washed all of the mud off of our bikes and then two rainbows came out framing the river and mountains perfectly. Our ride ended in Burns at a little place called Mountain Man Crossing. It was an old bridge across a tributary river which served great as our pad for the night! On the other side of the bridge we found a nice warm lit post office. We made us of it by cooking up an awesome Indian meal and watching a movie courtesy of Dan's computer. That night I had my best sleep yet. We fell asleep to the sounds of river underneath us.

Check out the map of this leg

No comments:

Post a Comment