I love Fruita! Mostly because I really like the trails out at 18 Road. Richard really wanted to come here, and it’s a great choice. The time of year sucks, because it’s HOT. We’ll have to ride early to avoid most of the heat.

Ok, that was the plan – the reality? Somewhat different. We awake at 7:00, and get to the trailhead by about eight thirty or so. It’s already hot. The Bear and I cut our ride a bit short, we only do almost eight miles, but we get done the essentials – Prime Cut on the way up, then we decide to try Joe’s Ridge, which two locals highly recommend, and they are quite correct to do so – it’s another nice trail up here! Then we take the road back up to the top so we can do my favorite trail of this system – Kessel Run.

Not many photos today, really just one from out there that shows why we can’t have nice things:

That broken brown thing is one of those fiberglass sign posts that the Forest Service uses for various marking purposes, and that small red thing is a fired shotgun shell. Really? Never mind we are in a “No Shooting” area. Even if this were an “It’s ok to shoot” area, those are not targets, moron! This person deserves to have their guns taken away, at least temporarily, as they CLEARLY do not know anything about responsible gun use. And this was not the worst of it – we went around looking at different campsites (most of which were pretty nice, for primitive campsites), and in a couple of them there was trash everywhere – empty plastic water bottles, plastic bags, what probably were dirty diapers, and at one site even an old shirt. And in a couple of them, the stone fire rings had been dismantled and strewn all about, and in one site it had even been driven over! REALLY?? Oh, and at that one, they had also driven over (and broken) the brown fiberglass thingie that had the site number on it. REALLY?? What the hell is wrong with these people, that obviously think it’s perfectly fine to destroy public property?

Damned animals. Must have been related to that jackass on the four-wheeler that we ran across when we did that loop the other day outside of Buena Vista. Jerks. Oh well, end of rant.

What did Richard do? Well, when we got done with Prime Cut, we ran into a couple of locals, so I sent him off with them, as they were going to do Western Zippity, Zip Off, and Zippity, and I knew riding with me would never do the trail justice. He didn’t want to, but I was forceful – I wanted to be sure he enjoyed himself here. Anyway, after that, he wanted to ride Zippity-Doo-Dah, so we drove him back up the road to the trailhead, then caught him at the half-way point to take some video, and after he was done, we took him back up to get in a quick drop down Kessel Run. It was noon when he was done, and it was HOT. And he was also the only person dumb enough to still be on the trails – but he had a blast!

After riding, what do we always do? EAT! We hit the Hot Tomato for some pizza:

An Icarus Sicilian pizza. Mmmmm. Good stuff, but so huge we couldn’t finish it. As last year, it was very good pizza, but not quite on a level with the Slippery Otter in West Yellowstone, or more recently Moonlight Pizza in Salida. Still, REALLY good! Also saw a sticker there for our friends in Dallas who are suffering muddy trails and can’t ride:

And then, at the local bike shop (Over the Edge Sports), we saw this cute one:

Yeah, what did you THINK that stood for?

A good day. Tomorrow, the Kokopelli Trails, but a lot earlier than today. we hope to ride at 6:00!