June 8—Baker Creek, Galena Lodge

This morning was especially chilly. It was only 36 degrees inside the motorhome when we woke up to start the day. Needless to say, we didn’t start the day very quickly. Instead, we decided to drift in and out of sleep until it was at least 45 degrees inside the motorhome. We made hot cocoa like normal and started the practiced routine for bike riding. Only, I jumped back in bed and delayed the start by another hour or so. By 10 am the clouds were looking a little scary and we questioned whether we would be able to ride at all. We took extra precautions of rain coats, long sleeves and plenty of food and water. Baker Creek is a ride that has a leisurely uphill along an old forest service road. At the top, there are lovely views, but nothing too special. At first, we were super psyched about the winding downhill, but it soon got very steep we had to stop to let our braking hands have a rest. At the end of the ride, both Eric and I felt like we hadn’t accomplished much. The climbing was so easy and the downhill was over in minutes. Not to worry, Eric had heard of another area near by that promised fabulous single track on looping cross country ski trails. Galena Lodge has a nice little café and picnic tables. There is camping around the area, which we did not utilize. Eric chatted with the staff while I took a nap in the car. Eric returned with a map showing many loops that were all 10 miles or less, but could be linked to cover a lot of ground. We opted for a 10 mile loop that had the most single track riding. We hopped on the bikes and took off. Once riding, we realized much of the trail was actually double track or unmaintained dirt road. We were a little disappointed. We have found that the Ketchum, Id area is not very good at putting in switch backs to avoid long rocky, unsustainable climbs (and decents). There is a race on July 25 around this trail system, but Eric and I thought it would be a strange place to hold a race. We ended up truncated our planned route because neither one of us was really into it. Back at the motorhome, we cooked up chicken and rice with pineapple. We followed up this meal with ice cream!

June 9 – Prairie Lake hike

My neck has really been bothering me. Last night I couldn’t sleep because every time I turned over my neck shot pain through the top of my head. Very strange. I got up in the middle of the night for some pain-killers and jumped back in bed. It is going to be another very chilly morning. Instead of riding, we decided to hike a suggested ride that visited 2 lakes, Prairie and Miner. It was pretty cool, starting with a couple creek crossings. The whole time, Eric talked about how easy the ride would have been. Why didn’t we bring our bikes? I was happy to be walking. The lakes were your typical alpine lakes with emerald green water and some picturesque mountains as landscape. Bugs weren’t really that bad either, but were pretty much the only wildlife we saw. The “downhill” section was a ragging rock garden that was super steep with water problems. Again, I was pretty stoked not to be on my bike. What was supposed to be a ~9.6 mile hike, was actually 11.2 miles based on our GPS. Always a nice surprise. My favorite part of the day was riding the motorcycle. We left the camper at the campsite and drove up to the trailhead on our scooter. I drove Eric! This had to be hilarious! It was to me! I was very pleased that Eric trusted my driving abilities, but I did turn over the wheel when we reached the highway. One thing that was awesome about the hike, we didn’t see a single other person the entire time on the trail or at the trailhead. No one.

June 10 – Fisher Creek

Last night, we committed to driving away from the Ketchum area and drove North to Stanley, ID. We had one bite on our signs, but nothing all that promising. It was worth a shot. Although Stanley is much smaller than Ketchum, the amount of people recreating was exponentially higher. Stanley is a hub of rafters, fishers, bikers and campers. Finding a campsite proved much more difficult. We ended up camping at the trailhead for our ride in the morning. We figured, we aren’t really camping, we’re just parking. It was fine. This morning we awoke once again to chilly temps and proceeded to get ready for a ride advertised as Idaho’s best bike trail. All 3 times we drove past this parking lot, it had been jam packers with cars and trailers. Needless to say, we were excited. At first, we put on long sleeves and cycling tights to fend off the cold, but as numerous other groups showed up and the sun announced herself, we found we were over dressed. The first stretch is on the highway for 2 miles and then a dirt road for several more. Eric and I considered shuttling to avoid boring riding, but when children were out there doing it, we decided we couldn’t shuttle it. Reluctantly, we headed out on the pavement, which as it turned out was pretty pleasant for me. I think I miss road biking. Soon we saw a sign for Fisher creek road and turned off to start our climb up to the trail. Shuttling would have saved us over 1500 vertical feet of dirt road climbing. We passed pastures with grazing horses and people out waking their dogs. We traveled next to a creek and butterflies scattered as we rode up the path. It was actually pretty nice even though we were climbing on a road. We hit one long miserable steep section before arriving at the trail. A fellow cyclist was taking a break at the top before the awesome, Idaho’s best, trail. He was a PE teacher from CA. His wife taught the first grade. Eric thinks that is the coolest thing ever and is now considering going back to school for some sort of teaching certification. Having the summers to travel, wow, that would be amazing. We pushed off down a windy single track that twisted and turned smoothly through a burnt forest. It was really fun and beautiful in a creepy sort of way. At the bottom of the hill, Eric, myself, and Greg (the school teacher) discussed how cool the decent was and chatted about other rides in the area. We decided to do a short out and back that goes to the biggest meadow ever. Greg came along too. The meadow was actually 3 miles away and required crossing a couple creeks. We came to an intersection to either Robinson Bar or Born Lakes (or back the way we came). We decided that it was early enough in the day to do some exploring. We chose the route to Born lakes because it is closed to motor cycles. The trail was great and led out into the open meadow. We had to cross a serious looking creek. There was a little log, but neither Eric or I felt real comfortable crossing on it. To be honest, I don’t really feel all that comfortable crossing on much larger logs either. Eric found another log to add to the bridge and we continued on our way. Amazingly, the trail wasn’t much more than some pushed over grass through the meadow, but we managed to follow it for several miles. We thought that is was an unused trail due to the lack of a trail and several down trees that Eric and I took effort in moving out of the trail. Eric wishes he brought a small foldable saw to do more trail maintenance stuff. We have ridden so many trails and many of them could use our help. It was the least we could do and I got to feel exceptionally strong, moving trees all on my own. We ended up running into 5 other people on the trail that had come from 4th of July road and were making a loop of it (so the trail is actually ridden much more frequently than originally thought). If we were to continue out on this trail we would eventually come to a trailhead and have to take forest service road back to our car. That didn’t sound like much fun, so we turned back towards the Fisher creek loop. We were glad we did, because the next section of Fisher creek was awesome. Although we had another little climb, it was fun and beautiful. It really was an amazing trail. Once at the top, we had a screaming fun decent with views of the Sawtooth Mtns to boot. We could hardly bring ourselves to stop and take pictures. By the end, we had covered over 29 miles and both felt like we could have had someone. It was that fun. We had hamburgers in the motorhome and took a quick trip on the motorcycle. We ran out of gas, which I thought was terrifying, but as it turns out, we have a reserve tank, so we really hadn’t run out of gas. Funny, huh? We then took to town, grabbed groceries, checked the email and headed out in search of a new campsite. We are really testing our ability to sleep crooked. We are parked a little sideways, but we didn’t have a lot of options.

June 11—Rafting the Salmon

Today, we did laundry in town and are planning to run the Salmon. I will keep ya posted on how that turns out. Signing out!

Ketchum ID

We left SLC and headed straight up to Idaho. Eric has been itching to get back to cooler weather for awhile now. I am not sure if he was really thinking lows in the upper 40s, but hey, who's complaining? We set up camp just out of town. For 4th of July weekend, you would think the camping would be at its limit when actually they were probably more available sites than sites taken. On Friday, we scoped out town, stopped into bike shops and basically planned our next 10 days or so. On Saturday, we went on our first big biking adventure. We decided on a trail system, close to town, called Fox Creek. Here we saw many joggers, hikers, bikers, equestrians, dogs, you name its. It wasn't until we got a few miles away from the trailhead did the number of recreationalists drop off. What did we expect for 4th of July on a Saturday? Unfortunately, we were having too much fun and took a wrong turn which could have shortened our riding day by 10 miles. Although we were disappointed with our error in navigation, we decided to do the big loop in reverse of what everyone had told us. This started out as and a-okay decision. Later though, it was questionable. The reason most people recommend riding the Oregon Gulch trail in one direction and not the other is because one direction is too steep to ride up. Oh well, once we made it to the top, all the downhill was super fun. Instead of being super steep (what we had just pushed our bikes up) it was smooth and turning. I would almost suggest doing this ride as an out and back. During our big decent, dark clouds were gathering overhead. I was glad to be off the ridge, but the rumbling from the heavens was disturbing. In the trees, it was a little less frightening. The trail crossed through treed sections out into meadows. The sky was never silent, it just kept rumbling. Soon, we were on trail that we had ridden on before, but the GPS batteries died. We weren't sure how much further down the trail the car was. Eric stopped to change the batteries. I waited until he said to go, but he actually may not have said to go. I took off on the trail for the car, but we weren't fast enough. The sky split open and rain crashed down on us. We had rain coats with us, but we were already soaked. It would still have been worth putting them on because the next burst from the sky came as bee-bee sized hail, which stung when it hit my bare arms. I stopped and turned around, but Eric wasn't right behind me as I had thought. Panic! Panic! Panic! Did I miss the turn? Is Eric okay? More grumbling from the sky. Finally, Eric appeared. He didn't understand my hysteria. We made it back to the car wet and muddy, but safe. Phew! We sat in the car for, mmmm, five minutes and the sun was already back out. Seriously, that was the difference, 5 minutes! During our ride I had managed to break another rear spoke. I had been replacing spokes, but it was now time to question a new wheel. We changed into dry clothes and went to the Sturdos bike shop. The mechanic, Todd, said he could rebuild my wheel instead of buying a new one. Great! Back at the motorhome, we cooked up some dinner, showered and got ready for day 3 in Sun Valley.

I was pretty much counting on my wheel not being ready by the time we were ready to hit the trail. We considered demoing a bike for me, but instead I opted to switch it up with a trail run. We headed to an area called Adam's Gulch which has many loops in various lengths, which was pretty optimal for Eric to ride and me to run. My adventure was fairly short due to side stitches and trail closures. Eric's ride was pretty extreme due to rugged trails. I made it back to the car and headed into town for some reading at my favorite place (Starbucks, duh!). I had a coffee frap and an ice water and snuggled into some good reading. I met Eric back at the motorhome later with a new wheel in hand. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Relaxing included a motorcycle ride to the top of the pass. It was beautiful, but both our bums were happy to be off the motorcycle 40 miles later. HA!

Yesterday, we rode at the Greenhorn Gulch Area. When we arrived, a fire fighter approached us and told us that a woman was up of the mountain somewhere with a broken leg. She had her cell phone and had called her husband who had called in the emergency. The only problem was they didn't know exactly where she was. (I thought the directions were quite clear, but if you are dispatching several rescue personnel, you better be right on the money) No one that was returning to the parking lot had seen her. He asked us to take the Imperial trail up and call if we happened upon her. Honestly, I would hope that if I were stranded up on a mountain with a broken leg, that the rescue team wouldn't be waiting for 2 recreational bikers to find me before sending up the squad. Luckily, they were already on the way with 4-wheelers and gurnies. Quite the production. When we finally crossed paths (~1500-1800 vertical feet later), she was calmly waiting for the transportation down with a medical officer and her dog. The dog seemed much more concerned than the lady did. We had not planned on taking this route in the beginning, but the views were spectacular! Just amazing! We were not disappointed with the change of plans, but it did mean that we were planning a new route as we were riding. I am opposed to doing this for several reasons. The main being that I like to know how much further I have to climb and how much further we have to go. If we are still improvising a route, this isn't possible. We made it to what seemed like the top of the world, with great effort. These trails are open to motorcycles, which does a number on the trails. A lot of the climbs were too loose to ride and we had to push our bikes (seems like the usual for this area, hike-a-biking). When we finally found downhill, we were both ready to let it fly. Unfortunately, I can't handle this and went too hard around a banked corner. My wheels slipped of the top edge and I went splat! Again! We had maybe gone 20 vertical feet down and I am already rolling around in the dirt. Skinned my elbow and my knee. No real damage though. Just sore. I took it easy for the rest of the way down. We went through some really neat burn sections. Washouts had claimed some of the trail and we had to traverse large shale areas. Finally we made it to some easy (that's what I like these days) downhill. Gentle turns and minor whoopties back to the car. All the emergency vehicles were long gone and we headed back to the motorhome for showers. Oh, but we didn't actually. We just ate and then headed back to a new trail. This one was just right up my alley. It was easy climbing with fun easy downhill. It added about 10 miles to our day for a total of 25 miles and over 5000 vertical feet. Now it was shower time and ice cream time. I sure deserve it!

Today, we drove to Stanley Idaho to see about the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. This stretch is permitted, so we printed off some signs requesting help filling spots on a trip leaving in the next couple days. There are not very many places in Stanley to hang such flyers, but we managed to litter the town pretty well. Now we just sit back and wait for the phone to ring. It is a long shot, but it would mean a break from riding, which would be welcome. There is a day stretch up there too that Eric and I checked out. The river looked super fun with safe rapids and no super slow spots. If we don't get on the Middle Fork, we are definitely going to do this stretch. Eric called in on the Selway and they had a cancellation! This is the river we have been dreaming about. We have been calling in daily for cancellation permits on the Selway. We were hoping for the next couple days, but this permit is for July 28th. Anyone want to go? The water level is probably going to be so low that we will have to do a backpack style trip with the mini-me and maybe a ducky. Our gear will be minimal. The trip is 5ish days, so it isn't roughing for a long time, just a short time. Consider that they only let one trip on the river a day (16 people max). About half of the permits go to commercial outfits and many of the permits go unused do to dangerously high waters or too low to float. What it boils down to is, you have to be really, super-mega lucky to get on a Selway trip. If we are lucky, Idaho will get a little more rain in the next couple weeks and we will be able to go. Yeah! Eric noticed that one of our tires was flat (14psi) on the Explorer, so we had to skip our planned ride and head to the Dean's Tire for repair. Both of us are pretty excited about the Selway possibility or even Middle Fork. My bike says she is tired of dumping me too.

Pictures from Flagstaff and North Rim

Sorry Pictures to Follow Later!!!!

June 27-28 Flagstaff
Mt. Eldon. Wow. Flagstaff has a fun little downtown area with shops, an Amtrak station, free parking, and many restaurants. Eric and I didn’t spend much time there. Instead, we headed to recreation central aka Mt. Eldon. There are runners, equestrians, hikers, and many, MANY bikers. We started out riding the Schultz Creek trail. It was fairly flat with some technical sections and climbed an amazing amount of vertical without much noticing. We had printed off some maps from the forest service, but we found there are many more trails that weren’t on our map. Navigating was a little difficult. We cruised down the Arizona trail to Little Bear. LB climbs for 3.5 miles with nice overlooks of the area. We were impressed! The temps began to rise as my strength wore out. This was our first time riding on the weekend, so there were a few more people out than what we use to. We were fortunate that everyone we encountered on the trail was friendly and helpful with finding trails. We decided to take Brookbank down. After a little decent Eric noticed a small rogue trail heading off into the forest. He decided that it would be more fun to explore this unnamed trail than to continue on the somewhat rocky wide decent that Brookbank had become. This offshoot trail was for crazy people only. We didn’t know that at first. Eric did a sweet jump off the first large boulder, but they got bigger and steeper and both Eric and I got a little nervous. The trail ended up connecting back with Brookbank, but before this intersection was one last crazy person obstacle. A giant tree. This tree had fallen across the trail and modified to ride with chicken wire across the top for traction and a pile of rocks and dirt for the exit. I was happy to make it back to the somewhat wide and boring Brookbank. We later found out this crazy trail was called Prom Night, “ya know, it finishes with a bang . . . get it? Hahah!” Yeah hilarious, dude. Because Eric and I find enjoyment in pain, we decided to ride up the logging road in the afternoon sun to the very top. We were passed by several truck loads of guys and their bikes being shuttled to the top. I started cursing myself for not carrying ten bucks with me. Next time. We got to the top and rode the Catwalk across the ridge. If I wasn’t ready to quit, mmm, yesterday, it might have been one of the cooler portions of trail of the day. To finish, we rode Sunset to Schultz creek down to the motorhome. We BBQed in a small grove of trees before heading up the road to camp for the night. Oh, but we didn’t just camp for the night. We decided to go for a night ride. We have hauled our bike headlamps all over AZ with the intention of riding when its cooler, at night. So far, we have been so lucky with the mild temps that we haven’t even considered skipping the day ride for a night ride. Although we had already ridden over 26 miles and 5700 vertical feet, we headed out for some more riding. It was pretty fun and the moon was pretty cool. We added about 6 miles with no wildlife encounters. Exhausted, we slept soundly. On Sunday, we planned a shorter ride so that we would have enough time to drive to the Grand Canyon. On this ride, we got lost and ended up on Sunset again, which was fine by us because it was so much fun the first time. We had been hearing a lot of chatter about a trail called Secret and had accidentally ridden a portion of it on Saturday. Our final loop in Flagstaff was up Secret and down the moto-trails. Secret was in prime condition. The trail was fun to ride up and consistently climbed and dipped to our surprise. Towards the end, we stopped to consider 2 signs and 2 trails. One trail was labeled Easy and the other Hard. Although I am not a sissy pants, I preferred to take Easy. I told Eric he should take the Hard trail. We both thought the two trails would rejoin on the other side a giant rock formation. Once on my own, I cruised through a meadow and around some sweet trees. I climbed up a little and dropped a little. Then I dropped an extremely technical boulder garden and found myself wondering when the trails would reconnect. I frightened a baby elk when flew through some loose rocks. I had thought maybe Eric was just ahead of me, and we had missed the reconnection, but the baby elk was clearly disturbed by my presence and so Eric couldn’t be ahead of me. It turns out, I was lost. Not to worry though, I backtracked all the way to Easy/Hard intersection where Eric had left me a giant arrow and messages scratched in the dirt. I descended the hard stuff by myself and soon encountered a tired, worried, hungry husband who was in a near panic state with my absence. We called it a day! We drove to the Grand Canyon. As it turns out, I had never been there before. It truly is grand! I knew this, but we didn’t arrive in Marble Canyon until after the sun had already set. We stopped at the bridge anyhow, walked out to the middle and looked down. The canyon was mystical at night and gave me the heebee-jeebees.

June 29 Grand Canyon –North Rim

In the morning, we took the motorcycle for a spin to Lees Ferry to watch as the lucky rafters loaded their gear for trips down the GC. Eric and I both felt pangs of jealousy. We motored up to the bridge so that I could witness its grandeur of the canyon in the light of day. I wasn’t nearly as creeped out in daylight with other passing motorists. As we were leaving, a man came flying into the parking lot in his pick up. He grabbed binoculars and ran out to the bridge. He asked, “Are they here? Are the condors here?” Eric and I shrugged. We hadn’t noticed any giant birds with wingspans of 9.5 feet. To our surprise, he pointed out 3 giant birds roosting in a nearby cliff face. The enormity of the canyon had dwarfed these magnificent creatures so that we had missed them. Even when one flew across the canyon, we could tell it was big, but it didn’t really look that big. We were able to get a photograph of one of the condours stretching out its wings, but missed the flight. (Today, we saw one soaring above the canyon, so it made up for it) We hung out on the bridge perhaps a little too long waiting for another condor to decide to fly. I was getting sunburned and tourists began arriving by the bus-load! Our intentions for the area were to ride the Rainbow Rim trail of the North Rim. After talking with the lady at the forest ranger station, we decided to drive the 21 miles of gravel road to Parissawampits point, which is at the far end of the 18 mile out and back ride. It pretty much took all afternoon to make the drive, but the difficult access and remoteness limited the number of other visitors to the area. We cruised around some forest roads on the motorcycle exploring the area. The North rim is very scenic and the views are just as breath taking as anything I have ever seen. We enjoyed outdoor showers in the company of nature alone. Later in the evening, we met a lovely woman and her two boys. We enjoyed s’mores around their campfire and chatted about our different vacations. Back at the motorhome, we set an alarm for 5AM. If we were going to ride 36 miles in upper 80s, we had to get an early start and bring lots of supplies.

June 30 Rainbow Rim

5AM was a little early. The sun had not even considered getting up yet, but Eric and I managed to pull out of bed with only two snoozes. There was a little confusion about what time it actually was because our cell phones may have been picking up a cell tower in Utah. Even so, we struck to the plan, eating yogurt and granola for breakfast with hot cocoa to manage the chilly morning. By the time we had finished our mugs, the trees backlit by the dark sky and by the time we had our riding gear on, the birds were chirping. We left the comfort of the motorhome and headed out on the trail. Eric was wearing long johns and a long sleeve shirt. I couldn’t bring myself to wear leggings given it is the middle of the summer at the grand canyon. I mean, come on! The views of the canyon were spectacular all across the rim and we took several dozen pictures. We didn’t see a whole lot of wild life, but I actually was okay with not encountering a bear at dawn. Call me crazy! We rode quickly over the somewhat non-technical trail and ended up at 18 miles away still wearing long johns and long sleeve shirts. It was just getting warm enough to not need them. We sat at the far end of the trail and ate snacks that we probably weren’t hungry for yet, but we had packed so much because we thought it was going to be a somewhat epic ride. As we snacked, we could see a giant bird soaring in the distance. It was a condor! For the next 45 minutes, we were glued to the binoculars. He would wait for air currents to rise up over the canyon and then continue to soar. The distance that could be covered by a bird like that was incredible. Eric and I turned back towards the motorhome thinking that the sun would surely slow us down. As it turns out, the trail was equally fun in the opposite direction at 80 degrees. We took a little more time to take pictures and appreciate the views. About 34 miles into our trip (2 miles to go) we heard a strange buzzing noise that increased in volume as we continued down the trail. We flew around a corner and nearly took out a forest service worker who was weed-wacking an overgrown section. We smiled and continued, stupidly, down the trail covered in the fallen debris. We went a little further and Eric realized his front tire was going flat. Because this was an especially long day, we had packed 2 spare tubes, which was lucky because I had a flat a few miles back. Eric took one look at his wheel and said, “Holy ****!” Our tires were full of goat head thorns left behind in the trail by the forest service jerk. We were about to have 4 flat tires. I ended up making a run for it while mine were holding air, but assessing the number of punctures in my wheels lead me to believe it was only a matter of time. By the time I reached the trailhead I was riding mushy tires. Eric had to change his before booking it back. Forget doing a ride by Bryce Canyon, we had to get to Salt Lake to get our equipment fixed. Eric had also just broken his cable that moves his rear derailer, so getting to a bike shop became a priority. We packed up and moved out. Back down the 22 miles of gravel forest service road and on to SLC. We made to Utah and camped just outside Bryce Canyon. We planned to make a run into the park because I had seen a postcard in a gas station and decided that it was important to see this park.

July 1—Bryce Canyon—Salt Lake

Again, we awoke at the crack of dawn to view the park. I had told my future mentor that I be in SLC around 2pm. If you know me, then you realize that I got a little nervous about making to the city. I don’t like to be late or behind schedule. We cruised into the park before they were checking passes (again, why did we buy the pass?) and stopped at the first overlook. The Bryce Canyon amphitheater was amazing at Sunrise Point! The spires were just starting to see the sun. We traveled further into the park, but realized there wasn’t anything quite as spectacular as the amphitheater. Soon we turned around for the motorhome and the long drive to SLC. We were on the road before 8AM. There isn’t a lot on the road between Bryce and SLC, so it was boring, but we made it to the valley around 1 and Barbara’s around 2, on schedule as planned. Eric and I got the bikes fixed at REI, which was pretty funny with 4 flats. We ended up changing them in front of the bike shop in the middle of REI while the awesome mechanic, Ben, took care of the more challenging parts of bike repair. Later, we met up with some folks from my future lab for dinner. They are a friendly bunch and I am looking forward to working with them this fall.

July 2—Working in the Lab

I know, I know. I’m on vacation, but there are things that need to get going now. I went to work with Barbara at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and began thinking over projects and fellowship writing. I spent most of my day printing papers, updating my CV, and chatting with Barbara while Eric worked on finding trails and figuring out new routes. He also did the laundry. What a good husband! Barbara and her husband, Bob, took us out for dinner at the Red Iguana. We waited about 45-60 minutes to be seated, which seemed pretty typical given the number of people waiting for tables even after we were finished. Barbara and Bob said it is usually only 25 minutes, but there are always people waiting outside. It is a very popular place to eat and has been for as long as they have lived here (>20years). We stayed up pretty late chit-chatting about anything and everything and finally hit the sack around midnight. Tomorrow, we are back on the road enroute to Idaho. This was a good break for me. My bruises are fading and my neck is less stiff. We’re clean and have clean clothes . .. life is great!