Camping Weekend

This past long weekend in celebration of Independence Day brought Jen and I to Wyoming with tent, bikes and dog in tow.  We drove up to Wyoming Thursday afternoon right after work in order to find a good campsite in the Vedauwoo area; an area that is world renown for its great climbing, but also has great hiking and mountain biking trails.  Upon picking out a campsite, we quickly got the tent up and got a fire going in order to prepare a most excellent dinner.

After dinner it was time for a little fire-side reading while we were waiting for our good friends Don and Jodi to join us for the weekend.

Don and Jodi arrived after dark, and we sat around for a while by the fire; enjoying an adult beverage and catching up.  Don and Jodi also brought a playmate for Strelka:  Their wonderful retriever Milo.  The next morning all 6 of us headed out for a mountain bike ride.  At the first waterhole Strelka and Milo jumped into the water, and an exuberant wet Strelka ran straight into an exposed rigid tree root: BOOM.  Head first.  And as a result, she burst open her left eye browse.  She was quite surprised by her own actions, but shook it off pretty quickly.  Checking up on her, we were very happy to see that she hadn’t hurt her actual eye.  Silly puppy.

Unfortunately, Strelka’s little accident was not the only accident this weekend.   A little further down the trail, Jodi went over the handle bar.  A moment of paying more attention to Milo than the trail in front of her caused her front tire to get stuck and send her flying, head first into a cluster of extruding rocks.  Don quickly checked up on Jodi and decided that we needed to get back to camp as soon as possible.  Don, Jodi and Milo started hiking back the way we came.  Jen, Strelka and I hightailed it back to camp through the rest of the trail.  Back at camp we quickly gathered some ice out of a cooler and raced back out to Jodi to ease the visibly bruised and swelling upper lip.

By the time we got back to the camp, Jodi’s headache had abated a bit, and her eyes were still reacting normal to light, but we decided it was better for her to rest and hang low for a bit.   So while Jodi rested alongside the dogs, Don, Jen and I went out to explore a trail that we had seen splitting off the trail we had just been on.  The hope being that it would lead to some of the single track trail that is part of the Laramie Enduro race we have done several times before.

After crossing a few creeks and scrambling over some rocks we DID find single track trails.  The very same single track trails that make the Laramie Enduro such a great race and ride.

After a rocking descent I suddenly felt my rear wheel locking up.  Turns out that I had picked up a “little” stick which was now jammed in between wheel and chainstays!

While we could have kept going on the lengthy Laramie Enduro route, we wanted to get back to Jodi before too long.  So satisfied in knowing how to get to the single track from our campsite, we turned around and made it back to Jodi.  Back in camp, Jodi was feeling a little better, but the swelling had gotten worse and she was very nervous about how the cheekbone didn’t feel quite right.  With that, she and Don decided to head down to Laramie to visit the ER and get a doctor to check it out.  As it turns out, Jodi’s fall was very unfortunate and resulted in multiple fractures that will need surgery within the next few days.  I am sending the best of healing vibes to Jodi and hope she will recover quickly and soon be back on the bike.  Jodi was a trooper through the whole ordeal and while in pain she still looked around and made a comment about what a beautiful and wonderful place Vedauwoo is…

Saturday morning, after a yummy breakfast (why is it that food tastes so much better in the open?), Jen and I headed out to Curt Gowdy State Park for some more riding.  Curt Gowdy is not far from where we were camping and it offers some amazingly well built flowy trails.

The trails at Curt Gowdy offer buff flowy sections mixed with technical rocky sections all tying big rocky playground areas together.  Here is Jen working it through a rock garden with a little body english.

Oh by the way.  We absolutely have no fun when we are out on the bikes as illustrated by the following picture

Here is Jen literally rolling off one of the big rock playgrounds.

While Jen and I were playing around on the rocks at Curt Gowdy, Strelka was gathering energy for a near camp excursion of scrambling around on the massive Turtle Rock.  We started climbing up Turtle Rock, but even with “4-wheel drive” a dog can only climb so much.  Here is Strelka puzzled by the fact that we want her to squeeze through an opening in the rocks.  She opted to go up and around them.

Sunday morning after breakfast and breaking camp we went out for one more lap on the Turtle Rock trail with Strelka.  The Turtle Rock trail circumnavigates Turtle Rock and is a great neat little trail, perfect for bringing a dog along.

The views here are fantastic and the terrain quite varying for its relatively short distance.

Much like at Curt Gowdy, there are lots of rocky playground areas on the Turtle Rock Trail as well.  Here is Jen riding up one of them, right next to a tree that seems to be growing right out of the rock!

Back at the campsite, we packed everything into the car and then headed west towards the Snowy Range for one more bike ride, on the North Fork Trail.  Apparently, it is normal to shuttle the North Fork Trail, but since we only had one car, and we both wanted to ride the trail, we instead chose to ride it all as one big loop, making sure we would start with a climb and more importantly end with an exhilarating descent.

The climb up the road wasn’t that bad.  We took our time and enjoyed the views as we passed by the Snowy Range Ski Area.

Its funny how even on the road you can appreciate being in the high country.  The air smells good.  The wildflowers are right next to you.  Not too bad at all.

As we gained altitude, the air got colder – or is that fresher? – and we started seeing snowbanks on the side of the road.  I was surprised.  Its early July after all!  Anyway,  we finally found the start of our pristine little single track.  It was super narrow and didn’t look like it had seen much traffic at all.  We got on it with great anticipation.

It started out good, but barely had we gotten onto the trail, before we ran upon snowbanks all the way across the trail.   We hiked over them, hoping that it would soon get better.  As Dave says:  “Its not mountain biking, unless you are hiking!”

It did get better.  After a few more snowbanks and snow melt laden trails we finally got to fun dry Sourdough-like buff trail.

The trails then dumped us out into this beautiful open meadow.   We were really liking this trail and its diversity.

Well, as it turns out – we hadn’t seen the last of the snow.  The open meadow dumped us right into a huge snowbank.  It will definitely take a while before all this snow melts.  Heck, it may not even melt before the snow starts flying again.  Talk about a small window of opportunity to ride this trail!

A little bit further down the trail it seemed like the water finally had figured out to head for the North Fork Little Laramie River and leave the trail alone.

From here the trail meanders through the forest with super-yummy-fast-silent-on-top-of-pine-needle sections, plus the occasional rocky and rooty sections thrown in for good measure.

The bottom of the trail intersects with the gravel road we had parked on, and from here we quickly descended down to the car.  At the car, we cleaned up as good as we could and rolled down the hill to Centennial to grab dinner before driving all the way back to Boulder after a fun filled satisfying long camp weekend; our thoughts still going out to Jody, wishing her a speedy recovery and no pain.