Days 9-10: the trip ends, the backlog begins.

So I just dropped Jeff off at the Las Vegas Airport, which unfortunately brings our trip to an end. Or rather, it brings Jeff’s trip to an end. Since I don’t have a job yet I get to keep driving up to Oregon. But either way, it’s sad that the tomfoolery had to come to a close.

We’re pretty far behind in blogging the trip, and I’m way too tired to do it all tonight. So this is just Days 9 and 10 for now.

Day 9: Fruity for Fruita

After leaving Peach Valley, Jeff and I drove to Fruita. Since it was too hot to ride when we first got there, we hit up the local dinosaur museum, complete with fossils, moving dinosaur displays, and an earthquake simulator with shaking floor. See below. It was pretty much awesome.

EARTHQUAKE!!!

After the museum we headed out to the Kokopelli trail area outside of Fruita, rode Mary’s Loop, the Horsethief Branch Trail, Steve’s loop, and Moore Fun, plus a few others. Horsethief and Moore Fun brought some of the best riding so far on the trip, combining some fast and flowy singletrack with bits of slickrock and a few hairy technical sections, particularly on Moore Fun. Also, the ride brought some great scenery as a lot of the trail mileage hugged a canyon edge overlooking the Colorado River.

View on the Horsethief Branch Trail

Jeff on top of Moore Fun

Then we headed up to the Road 18 area to camp out. It was in the middle of nowhere, and the 10 or so miles of poorly maintained dirt roads were probably not so good for the trusty Chevy Prism. We set up camp, made a lovely meal of Kraft Mac and Cheese, Hot Dogs, and New Belgium beer, then passed out to a clear night sky with some shooting stars. If it weren’t for the mac and cheese it would sound kinda romantic.

Day 10: Road 18 riding and bad hippy guitar in Moab

Woke up, took down the tent, and headed out riding more-or-less from the same place we camped. The trails around Road 18 were fast, but with the exception of Zippety-Doo-Dah, were kinda boring. Zippety was pretty sweet though. Also, it was our first day of riding when it was truly hot as balls. I ran out of water with a couple of miles to go, and both of us were hurting by the end.

Zippety Doo-Dah

After Road 18 we headed into town for lunch at the Hot Tomato pizza parlor (had lunch there the day before too, and it’s great), then drove to Grand Junction with the hope of doing some more riding. Except it was 102 degrees, and there was no shade on the ride, so we drove through Colorado National Monument instead, which had some breathtaking views, plus one badass guy with a mohawk, lots of tattoos, blue flame shirt, and a moped.

Jeff in Colorado National Monument

That evening we drove to Moab, Utah, via route 128, a sweet drive weaving along the Colorado River, and checked into our room at the Lazy Lizard hostel, and went for a run/hike up the Hidden Valley trail to a hidden valley. Came back to the hostel to find one guy playing bad guitar and another girl playing bad mandolin in a poor rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” We showered and fled those poor excuses for hippies like wildfire to grab some Mexican food for dinner. Then we passed out so we could ride the Slickrock trail the next day.

The Prism posing for a glamour shot on the drive to Moab

The Hidden Valley

More to come...

-Kevin

Days 5-9: The Monster Entry

Sorry blog, it’s been a while…


So days 5-9 brought us to Fort Collins, Boulder, back to Denver, through Aspen and Peach Valley Orchards, and on to Fruita. First person changes back and forth in this entry, figure it out.

Day 5 – (Bikeseat) Up the Poudre

After making the drive from Denver to Fort Collins we headed up the Poudre. It was wet. The Poudre’s a canyon, as you probably knew, and we first went for a ride at Hewlett’s Gulch. About two thirds the way up the main climb we got caught in a lovely thunder/hail storm mix. Other than that the ride was just swell, with about twenty stream crossings.

Just after the hail cleared

Jeff on one of the many stream crossings

We stayed in the Poudre to head up to Young’s Gulch for another 30 or so stream crossings. Jeff ran, I biked. On stream crossing 46 or so for the day I fucked up, and had a less than ideal encounter with the nose of my saddle. Let’s just say it made me want to go to prison even less than before.

Fort Collins seemed like a pretty fun town, so we tried to go out after getting back to the fleabag El Palomino Motel around 9:15. But after a dinner and a beer we decided we just needed to pass out because we’re lame like that. Seriously, we have a blog. Did you think we were cool or something?

Day 6 – Horseteeth, Silver Saddles, Crazy Hippies, and Cougar huntin’

Rude awakening, 7:00. We tried to go back to sleep, but 45 minutes of banging (not hammer) from the room next door made that pretty much impossible. So we got a fairly early start biking at Lory/Horsetooth State Parks. 1500+ feet of vertical in just over 3 miles is a lovely way to start off the day. On the way down we both ate shit a couple of times on the switchbacks and did our best to hop all the horseshit on the lower sections of the trail. Spent a bit more time in Fort Collins, yadda yadda yadda…drove to Boulder and got there around 6:15.

It turns out there’s only one legal campsite within 40 minutes of Boulder, and it was full. We had made no plans for lodging whatsoever, and spent the next two hours searching for an affordable room. After driving through Kansas where the signs advertise lodging for as low as $26/night, our expectations were a bit low for the Boulder area. We eventually ended up crashing at the Silver Saddle motel, which, while cheap, wasn’t as cheap as we’d like. And then we met a crazy hippy.

The crazy hippy seemed innocent enough, asking only to fill his water bottles and, like noble gentlemen, we invited to our humble abode to dip his beak. We tried to make conversation, but he generally responded with a vacant stare, a classic deer in the headlights. He appeared to exist in a prelingual state, incapable of communicating. We asked him where he was going, you know, to camp, and he responded, amid muttering incoherence in English, broken Spanish and German, “I met a beautiful lady today, a little young, but that’s okay,”. So we hydrated a pedophile.

That night we did a little cougar hunting, meeting such characters as Katie the life insurance telemarketer, bizarro T Bowen and bizarro Mercedes.

Day 7 – Riding Boulder, crashing in Denver again

Not much to say about Day 7 except we rode/ran Hall’s Ranch and Walker Ranch outside Boulder and crashed back in Denver. Jeff stayed with Jeff and Keri again, I stayed with the Waggoners, old family friends.

View from the top of Flagstaff Mt. outside of Boulder

Boulder Dam, from the top of the main Walker Ranch climb

Day 8 – Aspen – “a place where the beer flows like wine”

In Aspen we found ten dollar sandwiches and hiked up Ute mountain instead of biking. We met some the female Asian majority at Kendra’s summer program at the Aspen Music Festival. We ate some baller sushi (thank you mama Nealon) and I succumbed to extreme fat body weakness, ordering a large waffle cone of Chunky Monkey at Ben and Jerry’s, which Kevin helped finish as he biked no handed through town spilling on himself. Ended up the night driving to Peach Valley Orchards, a community supported agriculture farm, to spend the night with Emily McDonald.

@ the Continental Divide on the top of Independence Pass

Jeff on the Ute Mountain viewpoint, Aspen

Day 9 – Organic Farm and Fruita

Woke up, met Ken and Gale, the owners of Peach Valley Orchards where Emily works, and decided to stay around for a little while to help out. We picked garlic and strawberries, Yay!

Now we’re in Fruita, and we’re gonna check out the dinosaur museum before an evening ride and an intimate night camping. Adios.

As Kevin already mentioned, Day 4 was a wonderful double header of biking on the foothills of the Front Range. We rode Apex in the morning with my cousin Jeff as our guide. He led us skillfully down the treacherous switchback of Sluice Box and then through the wonder and magic of the Enchanted Forest. In the afternoon we visited the Aviator pool, hitting the diving board with Jeff’s boys Anthony (8) and Brendan (5), while Lola (1) and Keri stayed within the safety of the 1 ft 4 in shallow end. At around six we set off yet again for the foothills, this time climbing Mountain Falcon in the town of Morrison. Nealon cleaned the majority of the 1200+ ft climb, but I and my pneumonia lungs struggled as we battled up the hill to rumbles of thunder. We had a nice Chipotle nightcap a little after nine and hit the couches, completely spent.

This morning Kevin and I are flexing our domesticity muscles, doing laundry, reorganizing the car and primping our bikes. We head off to Fort Collins in an hour or so in search of entertaining campsites, even more entertaining campsite inhabitants, and more riding.

Jeff climbing the Sluice Box.

Jeff on the Apex.

Cousin Jeff and his knife. It's for mountain lion defense, nbd.

Leaving Mount Falcon, with Red Rocks in the background. Piss-poor lighting.

SICK CLOUDS!!!

Day 3: Lions and tigers and freakshows, oh my!

So, day 3 brought us through Kansas and into Denver. Kansas is more or less 400 someodd miles of very boring. Very boring. But Jeff and I managed to find the two only points of interest in the whole state. The only other interesting thing about Kansas was a tornado warning.

First we went for a run and a swim at Wilson State Park on Wilson Reservoir. It was an oasis in midst of the boring, and the run included two full-throttle sprints to avoid birdshit.

Wilson Reservoir

Next was Prairie Dog Town. We saw signs for the world's largest prairie dog, rattle snakes, and a six-legged cow about 60 miles out, and obviously, we had to go. It was pretty much awesome. My only regret is that Mr. Lowe wasn't there to "blink" some prairie dogs with his rifle.

Jeff's squatting, prairie-dogging with the prairie dogs.

The world's largest prairie dog. Kinda reminds me of T-rex arms...

Straight outta Chernobyl! Legs 5 and 6 on the six-legged cow.

Jeff trying to cop a feel. Some things just never change.

the albino peacock

Anyways, we made it to Denver last night, and are staying with Jeff's cousin Jeff and his wife Keri. Did our first ride of the trip this morning. It was pretty amazing, and we're heading out for round 2 in a few hours. More to come...

Peace and love,

Kevin

Day 2: "Let me get my hands on that Jamaican tail...Woman, I will whup your Jamaican kid's behind."

That's a direct quote from a radio talk show we listened to around St. Louis, Mo. The host had listeners call in about mixed race, second marriages and disciplining the spouse's kids. He called today's show the "Let me whip your white kid's behind" hour. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Connecticut. Other than that, the day pretty much consisted of lots of driving.

We're staying at Hannah Lowe's house near Kansas City for the night (Jeff's psyched), and doing a lot more driving tomorrow, hopefully making it to Colorado.

Three facts from the day:
1. Indianapolis cops suck. The speed limit on I-70 switches from 70 to 55 right outside of the city, and I got caught doing 67. $150 poorer, count it.
2. Missouri is way less geographically boring than either of us thought (side note, we're nerds)
3. Missouri has to have the highest pornography store and fireworks store per capita ratios in the United States.

A few pictures:

The whip.




Nostalgiaville: the first stop on our quest to find dumb shit on the side of the road. It was, well, really dumb. More dumb shit awaits in Kansas.

Why we're screwed: Kevin's Jewish and agnostic.

Very nice!

Just who I want to buy my RV from.

2nd time this guy's screwed by gas prices.

-mcab out

Day 1 - Getting Dutch Ovened at Mom's Dutch Kitchen

Hi!

Salutations and Greetings!

Welcome to the first day and first entry of Kevin and Jeff's Excellent Adventure.

We started off our little adventure with a epic drive through traffic and cataclysmic thunderstorms. The first leg of our trip confirmed that, besides Susanna Fowler and family members, New Jersey has no redeeming qualities. Pennsylvania was long, but surprisingly hilly which was nice, and it provided us with a wonderful dunch opportunity, the eponymous Mom's Dutch Kitchen, photos to follow. We concluded our journey at casa Hatch and its wonderful coffer ceiling. After a little GTA 4 with papa Hatch we called it a night, preparing to battle the floods and tornados of Kansas the following day.