Ok, pretty dry today – except at our site! The truck sinks into the mud about an inch at our site, so even though the roads are pretty much dry, I’m not sure I could pull out of our site! I’d hate to tear it up anyway, so it’s good we’re staying until Sunday.

It’s morning, and we’re planning the next week or so, which means we had to drive up to the Visitor Center to get phone and/or WiFi. This really sucks! Down where we’re camped, there is NOTHING. Well, beautiful views right out the front door, but can’t really get anything done electronically speaking. Later today, I’ll hook up the solar panels, and we’ll see how that works. I’m so excited!

Rain. Started yesterday. Rained ALL NIGHT. We were supposed to leave tomorrow, but that’s not going to happen. Why not? Can’t. No, really, literally CANNOT leave. Roads are dirt, and now they’re wet. They are just as steep as they were when they were dry, but now they’re slick. Even the bare truck slips and slides up and down the hills, so there’s no way I’m pulling my trailer into a ditch, thank-you-very-much. So we leave Sunday, IF it dries out by then. Ugh. Well, the rain is supposed to stop later today.

In the mean time, I’m playing with solar. Ordered a couple of solar panels from Amazon, to charge up the batteries on the trailer. BatterIES because we got a second one yesterday, so we can swap out and charge one offline while we run on the other. BUT, with the solar panels (two so far), we should generate enough to keep the batteries charged pretty long term. Got excess capacity so we charge what we discharge at night. I’ll post pictures as it goes.

Well, another rainy, cold day. So, today we instead went to Laramie, a little closer than Cheyenne, but the other direction. Not nearly as big a town, but kinda cool in its own way. Went to “The Pedal House”, local bike shop, got a map of the Happy Jack and Vedauwoo trails. Hopefully we can ride them tomorrow, or SOMETHING, because it’s not happening today.

So, early afternoon, here’s the temp:

Chilly! And on the ground? Hail! Left over from this morning:

Unbelievable! So then we headed for a bar (of course!) to sample the local brew. Went to Altitude, which reminded me of the bar by the same name in Salida, CO, except these folks have a much better brew, a Stout. Here’s the place:

And here’s a sign on the mirror at the bar itself:

Yes, The Bear felt right at home!

As far as our mission out here, though, today was a total bust. I did buy a small 9-watt solar panel to play with, I’m trying to get some ideas to work on on  small scale, so I can then transfer them to the big panel that should be here tomorrow. Fun stuff, but I’d rather be riding.

Well, today was going to be a ride day, but with funky weather, somehow riding a lightning rod does not seem a good idea, so no riding today. Cool looking clouds, though!

Also at the trailer:

We went into Cheyenne, got some stuff done. Ordered a solar panel, we’ll see how that goes. It just makes a lot more sense than powering up the generators every couple of days, especially since one or two panels should recharge what we use at night. We don’t use much. Couple of amps all the time, this one panel should give me maybe 6 amps, so if it can do that for eight hours a day, it’s basically a wash. We shall see.

Interesting day today – looks like it’s gonna rain, and it’s started to a couple of times, so we just went trail hunting today. Maybe we’ll ride later.

On the way back through the park, we saw a fox! Which brings to mind:

What does the fox say? He said “I’m outta here!”

Ok, back at our site, we see the next door neighbor is leaving … and he has a PRIMO site! We gotta move! The nice thing about this place is that the non-reservation sites are not assigned, so if you see a better one, you can just move in! Here’s the new one:

Not much different? Well … except for the view:

We had only trees to look at before, now we have lake! I like it!

Tomorrow, we ride! Unless it rains, of course – hoping for dry.

Wooo! Big day today. Drove almost 400 miles! Went back to RCMP, though this time with a full fuel tank! Last year we made it through on fumes – NOT a good experience. This time, we took our time and saw pretty much everything we wanted to see. We did the short (!) trip, Fort Collins to RCMP, over the top to the other side, and back. Beautiful! Here are a couple of panos:

While on the far side, we needed lunch, so looked for a place. Not easy to do, but eventually ran across a Chinese place, the Pearl Dragon:

Good food! In Granby, CO. Yeah, we’d never heard of that town either! Then it was back across. Hmmm. Dark clouds in the sky, very ominous, soon, rain … then hail! Quite a lot of hail. Small, but plentiful. Here’s what it looked like:

See the pile under the wiper? Couldn’t see very far, either, sometimes. And lightning. Glad to get out of there!

On the way back, I did see something that falls into the “WTF?” category. I don’t make this stuff up, I just post it:

Yeah, I’m baffled too.

I did also take a bunch of photos with two of my cameras (instead of the phone), but they’ll have to wait. When I post them on this day, I’ll let y’all know on that day’s post to come back here.

Ah, love this place! One of my all-time favorites, and it’ll probably kick my ass today! Ok, let’s clear something up right away. It’s “Curt”, with a “C”, not “Kurt” with a “K”. There’s been some arguments out there. Here’s my proof:

Anyway, we came here twice last year – the first time, because we heard it was great, and the second, after my cousin Adrian showed up, because we knew he just HAD to ride these awesome trails! And he loved them! We rode some old stuff, and we rode some new stuff. The new stuff was HARD. Well, ok, it was hard – not HARD. It still hurt my legs for hours after! But it was beautiful!

This was along the Crow Creek trail, which ends up here:

A really cool place called “Hidden Falls”. Here’s a close-up:

And these folks do trail signage correctly, check this out – it’s at EVERY intersection:

A map of the trail, and a sign directing you to each trail there. Cool! I wish everybody did that!

Not a lot of miles, but a lot of hike-a-bike, so it took a few hours. Good workout!

Day trip to Denver, to go see the daVinci tandem. VERY nice concept, we’ll see how the real deal stacks up. First, went into town (Fort Collins) to get breakfast – The Breakfast Club again, and I got what I really wanted this time – Corned Beef Hash and eggs. Mmmmmm. Delish.

Ok, got to daVinci, and got to see the system, and ride a tandem. WOW! What’s so great about the daVinci? A few things – number one, either rider can coast while the other one pedals. Yes, this is actually HUGE. One of the biggest pains on a tandem, if you use clip less pedals (and you should!) is that when you first start from a stop, the stoker (the person in the back) is already clipped in, so they have no problems, but then, the captain either has to pedal not clipped in for a while, or has to pause the pedaling until he gets clipped in, and that causes some unbalance, and also does not let the bike accelerate smoothly – you have to coast for a bit, and sometimes clipping in is harder than at other times. With the daVinci, the stoker can get the bike going, and the captain can take his (or her, to be fair) time getting clipped in, because the stoker is providing power. On a mountain tandem, this is even more important, because some trails require proper placement of the pedals to avoid a pedal strike on a rock, well, on a regular tandem, where the pedals are tied together, the captain may not move the pedals correctly for the stoker, and those pedals will hit a rock – with this system, each rider can independently move their pedals where they need to be. Again – HUGE.

The second thing? TINY chainrings, and four of them! Equivalent to a spread of 22(!) to 60(!) teeth conventional chainrings! Which means you can have a gear so low that you’re barely moving even while pedaling quite rapidly, to one where you are moving quite fast, while not pedaling very fast. Means big hills are easy, and a top speed of maybe 40-50 mph, easy, depending on how fast you can pedal! Can’t wait to get it – it looks kinda like this:

but ours will be grey, with a 26-inch rear wheel for strength, and a 27.5-inch front wheel, for easier obstacle roll-over. Sweeeet! Delivery is in 6-8 weeks. Can’t wait!

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention it? It’s a full-squish bike – full suspension, front and rear! Woohoo! Look at that ground clearance, from the tiny chainrings!

What a day!

Today WE RIDE!!!

We are going to Lory State Park, West of Fort Collins a couple miles or so. Beautiful park on a beautiful Reservoir (we call them lakes in Texas). Here’s a pano:

We were going to do an “easy” trail. About a quarter mile from the trailhead was a split, Lakeshore trail left, Mill Creek Link Trail top the right. I wanted to go left, but The Bear decreed we would go right. I don’t argue anymore, so I went with it. Right off the bat, there were poles 10″ in diameter laid across the trail, as water brakes. So it meant popping the front wheel up as much as ten inches to clear them. At this altitude, I could do one or two, then it was hike-the-bike for a while until I could re-mount, after catching my breath. We’re over 5,000 feet here – lower than we’ve been, but I’m still not used to it. Here are the logs:

Then more logs – it’s crooked because it’s a video capture:

It got better – the logs went away! To be replaced by big freaking rocks! Like these:

Then Roots and Rocks:

Then a huge slab of rocks:

Yeah, that’s a switchback to the left, on the way back. I’m about ten feet above where the trail disappears left. Maybe more. These are BIG rocks!

We went back to the EASY trail, and had a blast, getting in over seven miles, short day since it’s been eleven days since we last rode. Back at the truck, I look at the trail guide. The trail we were on? DIFFICULT. No kidding!

Ok, what do we do after riding? WE EAT! Pizza Casbah’s Grand Central (Supreme):

Pretty good pizza, though not near the best we’ve had. After, to Stone Cold Creamery for a milk shake! Then, off to Payless to get The Bear some socks. Two interesting factoids about that particular venture. First, on the way to the truck, we see this:

The Screaming Peach – A Waxing Studio. I don’t think they wax philosophical, and I DO know what some women call their “peach” … It hurts just to think about it!

Anyway, get to the truck, put the address into the GPS, and it pops up with this:

I’m not gonna say a word!

Tomorrow? A break. We’re going to Denver to look at the DaVinci Tandem factory. Thinking about a full-suspension mountain tandem. We’ll see how that goes.