Friday and Saturday

Well Friday was the last ride for Scott and Rick, they needed to take off by 7am the next morning so the plan was to hit something close then get back and take down the swamp and they would just use the two cots in the garage area of the camper Friday nite. They wanted to do the Cassidy trail again so we did an out n back on it to Casto canyon, turned out to be a great ride although by the time we were done, so were they.

Saturday morning we packed up the RV and headed for Fruita CO, just across the boarder with Ho as the remaining survivor. The ride was quite nice, just up a river valley to I-70 then a surprisingly scenic ride across, not as flat as I had anticipated but not bad at all. 5 hours later and a couple of extra pit stops due to Ho’s tiny bladder, we were pulling into the Monument RV park. Howie got us another pull through site so no issues in getting the RV placed. We got hooked up including cable TV this time and off we went to the Bookcliffs aka 18 road area to ride. This was actually the first or second ride I did on my first western trip with Howie 7 years ago and was really looking forward to the return. We got out there about 4pm, still 93 degrees out. There were a few other silly people out riding in that heat but not many, especially for a Saturday. We headed up Prime cut towards the cliffs, a nice gentle climb in and out of a wash along 18 road. It started to get a little steeper as we reached Chutes and Ladders, think the game when you were a kid, up and down and up and down. Really fun tight twisty stuff with a few ups steeper than our tired eastern legs could muster but what’s a ride without at least a little hike a bike. A fun blast across the desert with a stop for pictures, the lighting was really sweet that late in the afternoon/evening

And we were back at the parking lot ready to make our next ascent to the cliffs. We did a similar climb up the other side of 18 road to frontside. I had a recollection of a really cool spot where you are in and out of these spines without much of a vista for a while and the all of a sudden you come around one corner on a bench cut and things just totally open up and I remember coming to a stop with an audible WOW. Im pretty sure I found the spot of 7 years of doing this has spoiled me and it was not quite as impressive as I remember, but still pretty darn cool. We were keeping and eye on some rain in the distance

And modified our plan a bit incase it made it too us, skipping Joes Ridge for the moment after doing our out n back to Western Zippity and just heading down Zippty Do Dah. This is one trail that anybody that rides it will never forget, it starts down one of these spines, I would say 45 degrees on each side, maybe 100 feet to the desert floor. At the end of the first spine you make a 90 degree turn and head straight down. I actually got a series of pictures of Howie wrecking on it last time but to his credit, after I successfully made it down, he conquered it this time. Down and up another spine with another 90 degreeish turn into the downhill, this time both Ho and Howie bailed, it was a little more tricky as the turn was more into the downhill, hard to describe but I got a little worried as I went through it but once I got her pointed straight downhill I knew I was home free. It had cooled down a bit by that point, about 7pm, some clouds etc. We were pretty much done by the time that put us back at the parking lot so we headed into town for what turned out to be pretty sub standard Mexican but we were really hungry so it was OK. A quick walk through “downtown” made us realize there was no ice cream store to be had so we ended up stopping at the grocery store for Bryers.