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| Just a tin can? |
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| I don't think so |
Sunday morning
Yancey and I set out on quest for the counties of the southwest quadrant of Colorado heading south
on Highway 67. Once we got out of the Denver traffic we had
beautiful riding. One of our first
caches was a very interesting one in the community of Woodland.
What looked like just a rusted and flattened tin can actually had a pill
bottle attached to its bottom fitted into a recess in the ground. I doubt if I would have found this one but
Yancey did.
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| Snair Cabin |
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| Hartsel Days |
At Woodland we turned west
on Highway 24. We stopped to get a cache
at the “Snair Cabin” which was a cabin furnished just as it had been over 100
years ago when it was sturdily built and crafted by a wagon maker. We stopped in Hartsel to get one at the old
Hartsel school. It just so happened that
they were having Hartsel Days this weekend and things were really hopping. We had to leave hurriedly to avoid being part
of the parade which was about ready to start.
Just before reaching the town of Buena
Vista we logged a cache called “John Denver’s
Motorcycle”. John’s motorcycle had been
sold at auction but there was an interesting piece of machinery at the cache
location. We turned west on Highway 82
near Twin Lakes Reservoir and had lunch at a beautiful cache site called
“Rushing Waters”.
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| NOT John Denver's motorcycle |
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| Rushing Waters |
We continued
northwest picking up a cache or two before stopping in El Jebel to get one for Eagle County. I had found a cache in this county long ago
but it was before the date that the 64 County Challenge
was posted so by its rules I had to get another one. At Carbondale
we turned south on Highway 133. As it
was getting late we didn’t stop again (except to put on rain gear) until
Hotchkiss where we got our Delta
County cache. As it was now raining and we had our cache
for Delta County we didn’t stop again until we
reached our motel in Delta. If you have
proper gear riding in the rain isn’t too bad but stopping to get geocaches is.
It was raining in
earnest when we reached the Rodeway Inn in Delta. I had always thought that Rodeways were
fairly high quality motels but this one was somewhat of a dump. We did find a covered walkway at the end of
the building to park our bikes out of the rain.
In view of the weather we had pizza delivered. It was Philly Cheesecake and really
good. We had enough left over for our
lunch the next day.
The rain quit
during the night and it was dry in the morning as we headed northwest on
Highway 50 toward Whitewater and Mesa
County. At Whitewater we turned south on Highway 141
all the way down to Dove Creek. We saw
some truly spectacular scenery on this road.
Much of it reminded us of our Utah
trip a couple of years earlier. We
stopped for lunch at a cache called “Gyp Gap Rockshelter” that required a hike
up a boulder strewn hill. There was a
small tree at the cache site that gave us shade for our lunch. After we passed through Naturita and turned
south toward Dove Creek we wisely returned to Naturita to gas up. We were in desolate sparsely populated country.
We picked up
several caches along this route and just past Lewis we turned east on Highway
184. At Mancos Highway 184 merged into
Highway 160 which took us southeast into Durango.
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| Bolts gone |
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| Bolts replaced |
We stopped in Durango for gas and I
always have to remove my tank bag in order to access my gas tank. After doing so I noticed the two bolts that
hold down the front of my gas tank were missing. Before leaving home I had loosened those
bolts in order to raise the tank just a bit to run my GPS cable under it. Either I hadn’t tightened them back enough or
more likely had forgotten altogether. I
inquired of a local and was told there was a hardware store just down the
street. I removed a bolt from one of my
blinker lights that I thought was the same size as the ones I lost and took that
into the hardware to find a match.
Luckily, in short order I found just what I needed and we were on our
way.
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| Bear Creek Falls |
As we headed north
on Highway 550 out of Durango
toward Silverton it began to rain. We
discovered this was pretty much an everyday afternoon occurrence. Highway 550 between Durango and Ouray is called the million
dollar highway. It is a fantastic piece
of highway and a local told is it was rated the 5th best
motorcycling road in the US. Unfortunately the rain ruined most of the
uphill part for us. However, it dried
enough on the back side to allow some aggressive and fun riding. On the way down we stopped at Bear Creek
Falls which was
absolutely spectacular. We stopped at
the bottom in Silverton to get a cache called “The Tree Farm”. Incidentally, the big mine spill disaster occurred
the day after we left Silverton. We
stayed at the Timber Ridge Lodge and were treated like royalty. They gave us a thank you card, a small box of
candy and called me a few days later to thank me for staying there. That guy really knows his PR.
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| Ouray |
Ouray is very much
a tourist town and reminded me a little of Red Lodge, Montana.
We hiked down town to a restaurant the lodge owner had recommended and
had a very good meal. It was dark by the
time we got back to the lodge and we had no trouble sleeping that night. Yancey even gave me a break on the snoring. [To be continued] M/W
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