Road Rides that Don't Suck

After a long week in the car I was finally free to do a nice long ride. I decided to go for about 4 hours or so from town down to the town of Almont up to Taylor Resevoir and back. I had no clue what the ride from Almont to Taylor was like so I was just going to take it easy knowing the whole ride is above 8000ft. Turns out it was the most scenic ride I have ever done with a long steady climb (20 miles) from Almont up through Taylor Canyon to the Resevoir. These are some shots I took from the canyon.



Coming back down would have been fast except for a really stubborn headwind so I'll have to go back again to satisfy my speed jones.
After descending for about 14 miles I took a right onto a forest service road for a 2 mile dirt climb and short cut back to Rt. 135 and the 12 mile trip back to CB. This was the view looking back down the climb. The final 12 miles were sheer misery with a 30-40 mph headwind and steady uphill back to town.

After the ride Kim and I went for lunch a Pitas in Paradise and we will have our walkthrough in another hour. I'll post more afterwards.

Santa Fe to CB

We spent the night in Santa Fe at the Eldorado Inn and Spa which was the most dog friendly place we've ever been. Gibson was treated better than we were with a constant supply of treats and endless petting by staff which made it tough to get through the lobby. Here's Gibson hamming it up for the crew.

Just a random shot from historic downtown Santa Fe taken before we pulled out of town and headed to our new home.

Views of Mt. Crested Butte taken from the car (never mind the pregnant woman hanging out the passenger window) a few miles South of town.

2500 miles later and we still aren't finished. It is going to take us two days to travel the block and a half to our new house. Stay tuned for photos from the walk through.

Some Pics of Gibson that Kim Wants Posted

Oklahoma City and Beyond

After leaving Graceland we beelined for OK City to visit the new National Memorial at the bomb site. Pictures don't do the memorial justice and I would encourage everyone to visit this site. It is every bit as poignant as the Vietnam Memorial but even more so because of the chairs representing the children killed. The site is set into the remains of the foundation of the Murrah building and you can pretty much walk anywhere within the memorial grounds. One thing that astounded me was the sheer destructive force of the blast. There were so many buildings (literally dozens) damaged by the blast that had to be torn down that the whole downtown are is revitalized, clean, and brand new.
The memorial itself is so striking and elegant with 2 large gates inscribed with the time before and after the blast standing at each end of a large reflecting pool. On the site of the building sits the more than 200 chairs inscribed with the name of each victim (the smaller chairs are the children).

We spent the night a couple of hours West of the city near the Texas border and made our way to Santa Fe today but not before viewing the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere (not that impressive compared to the giant wind farms across OK, TX, and NM). More pics from Santa Fe tomorrow - provided we have internet access in Crested Butte.

Elvis Lives

So being the huge Elvis dork that I am, I woke early and joined the faithful for the 7:30 pre-opening of the gates to Graceland and the solemn walk to his gravesite and meditation garden. Women were literally crying and reaching out to touch his tombstone while grown men delivered roses and handwritten notes. The mansion didn't open until 9 but Kim and I went to get tickets when the office opened at 8:30 because the lines were going to be huge. Basically the place is nearly as crowded as Disneyworld in about 1/167th of the space and even with our early arrival we only managed to score the fourth tour of the day. Before we headed out on the tour bus I stocked up on my Elvis kitsch and will take a picture with it on sometime in the next few days. The mansion is kitschy enough and here are some photos from inside.

Elvis' wall of late 70's hits (formerly a racquetball court)

Funky table monkey in the TV room

Furry chair in the jungle room (the carpet covered the ceiling too)

After Graceland we loaded up the truck and headed out to Oklahoma...

The road to Elvis

I am going to break up our last few days into separate posts to keep them somewhat coherent. On Tuesday the 25th we headed out from Canton, CT and made our way to Kim's sister's house in Purcellville, VA. Along the way we stopped at Gettysburgh for an abbreviated auto tour around the battlefield. I can only imagine the utter horror of the battle that took place. The scale was utterly unbelievable. We snapped a few photos including this highly sarcastic one...


After a night of Mexican food and playtime with our niece, Kate, and nephew, Asher, we woke early for the twelve hour trip to Memphis. The ride South through the Shenandoah was pretty spectacular and very reminiscent of Southern VT. The ride through Tennessee was also quite pretty and much more enjoyable than the run through Western PA and Ohio that we would have had to endure going the Northern route. We arrived in Memphis only to discover that Graceland is pretty much smack dab in the ghetto and didn't offer a lot of dining options. We were too tired to drive downtown to Beale street for BBQ and instead settled for road food of the Taco Bell variety (yuck) and a restless nights sleep waiting for Graceland to open.