Moving Along

I talked to the mechanic at the shop earlier this week and found out that the estimate on the car is done, but he is waiting to get approval from the insurance company to order the parts and do the repairs, meaning that it will be at least another week until the car is ready to go. Instead of hanging around in Crested Butte, I decided to rent a car in Gunnison for the next week until I leave to head back to North Carolina for the weekend. I am picking up the car tomorrow and was planning on heading north to South Dakota for a few days before going west to Yellowstone. After checking the weather, it appears that it is turning cold both places with overnight lows in the low 30's in SD and down into the low teens in Wyoming. After seeing this, I decided to head west instead of north, and take a chance on the weather not being any worse up north when I get back from NC in a couple of weeks. While I have the rental car I am hoping to hit Fruita, CO for an afternoon to ride the Zippity-Do-Dah trail (video here) before heading to Moab, UT and hiking Arches National Park and Canyonland National Park, as well as ride the legendary Slickrock Trail in Moab. After that, the plan is to head up to Salt Lake City and take a dip in the great salt lake before stopping for a quick hike in Dinosaur National Monument. After that, it will be back to Gunnison to turn in the car and hop on a bus for Denver, where I will fly back east. This all looks good on paper, but my plans so far haven't exactly gone as scheduled, so who knows what will actually happen.

The Anti-Midas Touch

Before this trip started, I had some trouble with my phone not working correctly, so I had to go to Wadesboro while waiting for a new one. Once that was fixed, both of my parents got sick and needed medical attention. Once they were better, I drove to Colorado where my car broke down. Finally, while waiting for my car, the computer that I was using crashed and apparently has a failing hard drive. It seems that wherever I go, I leave a trail of wreckage along the way. Pretty much all I have left to break is my bike and my health, feel free to place bets on which goes first. I am going to go with health, because I am not sure that I could break that Surly if I tried.

Where's Summer, B.?

The weather here in CO has gotten very cold. The high yesterday was 40 oF and the low last night was 23 oF. Yesterday afternoon brought on a really heavy snowstorm, accumulation almost an inch in a little over an hour. Tonight and tomorrow are supposed to be more of the same, cold and snowy. Wasn't yesterday technically still summer? If it snows here in the summer, I need to be far away when winter finally gets here.


Although it could be interesting to test the 20 oF rating of my sleeping bag, I decided that I was tired of camping for the time being, so I went back into town and got a bed at the local hostel. It is definitely nice to have a warm bed to sleep in when it is this cold out, but I am the only one here so I feel like I might be missing out on the real hostel experience.

Crested Butte, CO

I made it to Crested Butte Tuesday morning after spending Monday night in Pike National Forest, just west of Colorado Springs. Crested Butte is a small resort town, surrounded by Gunnison National Forest on the western slope of the Rockies. It is a true mountain bike mecca. There are high quality trails everywhere you look and was one of the birthplaces of mountain biking. On Tuesday, I got to town and found a good camp spot, then set out to ride the 401 Trail, which has a long fireroad climb followed by an amazing singletrack descent back to the valley. There are definately no trails like this back east. A good bit of the descent was on the side of the mountain with no tree cover, with amazing views of the surrounding scenery.

401 Trail

On Wednesday, I went and visited the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in town, then returned to the forest to ride the 403 Trail. 403 was similar to 401, but a good bit more technical, with more rocks and waterbars to navigate on the way to the bottom.

403 Trail

I was planning to leave town Wednesday night and start heading north, but things didn't quite work out as planned. I was driving on one of the dirt forest roads near where I was camped when my car kicked up a rock and put a hole in my oil pan. There wasn't much of a shoulder where I was so I had to either leave the car where it was, blocking the road for other cars, or try to drive to a parking area that I saw up ahead, maybe a 1/4 mile or a little more ahead. I decided to go for the parking area, but before I made it there, the engine seized up from lack of oil. I pulled out my cell phone to call for a tow truck and was not surprised to see that I had no reception. I was about 10 miles from town, so I got my bike out and got ready to ride back for help. Fortunately, another car came along and the driver helped push my car down to a better part of the road where it would be out of the way and I took off for town on my bike. I kept my phone in my jacket pocket so I would have easy access to it and I could check along the way to see if I was getting reception. I never did get a signal in the forest, but when I made it back to the edge of town I reached in my pocket to start making calls and found that my phone was no longer there. I turned around, turned all of my lights on, and tried a quick search for my phone. I rode back a couple of miles with no luck, and decided to abandon the search because it was getting darker and colder by the minute. As I was riding back to town for the second time, thinking about my stupid mistakes, in the dark and cold, I hear a wolf start howling from behind me and think that this has to be one of the most miserable nights I have ever had. Fortunately, I was able to find a hotel with decent rates and a good hot meal when I finally made it back to town.

Thursday went a little better for me. I had my car towed back in and called my insurance company and I was told that they are going to pay for all of the repairs and the tow bill, I just have to cover the deductible. Later that afternoon, I was trying to find the nearest store where I could get a new phone and make this ordeal a little easier when I got an email from my brother Steve saying someone had found my phone. After a few more emails and phone calls, an all around awesome guy named George stops by the hotel and drops my phone off for me. He had been walking his dog as I was riding into town and saw my phone on the road, then took the trouble to track me down and return it. Many thanks go out to George.

I do not know how long the car repairs will take, but for now I am playing the waiting game. If I have to be stranded somewhere, Crested Butte has to be one of the better places (at least until it starts getting snowy) but the longer the repairs take, the more places I am going to have to cut from my trip. I have been thinking that I should try to get the northern portion of the trip done by the first of October, because after that snow becomes a serious threat in those places. I have already given up on Rocky Mountain National Park, and will almost definitely have to shorten or cancel my visits to South Dakota, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Park. There is also a chance that Geico will refuse to pay the repairs for the seized engine, saying that I shouldn't have driven with low oil, but given the situation and lack of area to pull the car over, I stand by my decision to try and drive to the parking area, and for what it is worth, the tow truck driver agreed. But, if I have to pay the repair bill myself, I will probably not have the funds to continue on and have to head back home much earlier than anticipated. Nothing to do now but wait.

It Begins

After a long series of short delays, I have finally escaped NC and headed west. I am currently in Lawrence, KS at a local coffee shop called Java Break. I left Wadesboro yesterday morning and made it into Missouri last night, stopping near Columbia and sleeping in Mark Twain National Forest. Despite the name, there isn't much of a forest there, but I found a gravel road in the middle of some farmland and a small parking area where I pitched my tent. I am not sure if camping is allowed there, but I came and went before anyone else came down the road, so it worked out fine for me. I am hoping to make it to Crested Butte, Co tonight, which is my first real stop of the trip. Hopefully I can make it to the Rockies before dark so I can enjoy the scenery. I may need to get a new jacket though, the low for tonight in Crested Butte is 39oF.

The View from Java Break

The Plan

Here is a working list of places I hope to hit on my road trip:

Crested Butte, CO
Rocky Mountain National Park
Badlands National Park
Black Hills National Forest
Yellowstone National Park
Grand Tetons National Park
Glacier National Park
Seattle, WA
Vancouver
Portland, OR
Bend, OR
Crater Lake National Park
Lake Tahoe
Yosemite National Park
San Francisco/Bay Area, CA
Big Sur, CA
Los Angeles, CA
San Diego, CA
Sequoia National Park
Death Valley National Park
Las Vegas, NV
Grand Canyon
Sedona, AZ
Phoenix, AZ
Zion National Park
Moab, UT
Arches National PArk
Fruita, CO
Salt Lake City, UT
Dinosaur National Monument