Moab Goodness

The crew at the Lookout on Porcupine: Chris Peterson, Abby, me, James, Chris Baddick

Chris making good use of his play bike!

Chris, James, and I packed up my car and headed out to Moab round 6:00 last Friday. We made excellent time to Moab only to have to drive around for over an hour to try and find somewhere to camp...Ugghhh!!! We ended up camping in the Poison Spider trailhead parking lot. It was flat and quite, all that I needed for a good night's sleep! :)

So tired we didn't care that our campsite was a parking lot!

We had big plans for Saturday...DESCENDING!!! Andy broke his wrist racing on the road, so he was kind enough to shuttle 5 of us up to the top of the Kokopelli trail on the La Sal Mtn Loop. This translated into negligible climbing and some amazing descending for several hours! I can't think of a much better way to spend the day! :) We did have to trudge through some snow at the beginning, but it was well worth it in the end! GREAT DAY #1 of riding! (Plus there was an amazing sunset to top the day off!)

Andy aka Virginia Slim: Our broken but awesome shuttle driver!

Off to a great start...haha.
Abby and I trudging through the snow on the Kokopelli Trail.

This Part of the rail had recently burned.
With the snow, it was pretty surreal to ride through.

This is DEFINITELY going to be the new hotness for '09:
Sleeveless jersey with arm warmers!!

Desert sunsets are amazing!!

On Sunday we headed over to Amasa Back for more fun in the desert. Unfortunately James took a pretty scary digger right at the beginning of the ride, giving me a pretty big scare! He headed back to out campsite to take it easy for the day and the rest of us head off to enjoy the riding and the scenery! Again, we were not disappointed! Unfortunately our day was a little hampered by a nasty sand storm for a few hours. The sand tried its hardest to put a damper on our fantastic squash curry dinner, but Chris' cooking is just too good. Score: Chris' cooking - 1 sand storm - 0!

Chris up to his normal antics on Amasa Back

On Sunday, we headed up to the Sovereign Trail on our way out of town. This trail is a lot of fun, and a lot of work at the same time! I like it because it makes me really work on my uphill technical skills, which, quite honestly, suck! I made some progress yesterday, though, so that was good. The boys were riding really well all day. I think we all must have been tired, as we took almost no pictures on this ride. :( Oh well, sometimes you just gotta pedal!

We enjoyed a few tasty beverages at the campsite :)

Since we had such a good weekend with only minor injuries and no broken bikes, we obviously needed something to go wrong on the way home! Well, I guess it didn't really go wrong, but the further we got into Colorado, the more signs we saw for I-70 being closed...what?!?! Vail pass got completely slammed with snow and they ended up closing the pass. Boo!! We holed up in a Mexican restaurant for a bit and had some nachos before heading out and getting to Vail just as they were opening up the pass. The roads sucked over the pass, but Chris kept my mind off the sketchy roads with some German quizzing and tutoring!

So, all in all, it was a GREAT weekend of riding in the desert. I love Moab!