Having spent the last six days on the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route (NMBDR), there were a few things that needed our attention before we knew exactly what our next move would be. Pulled over where the last of the dirt hit CO-17, we each had one bar of LTE service and we set to work. I made a quick call to Alcan Spring - in Grand Junction, CO - to check in with Lew, the new owner. Having very much liked my first set of leaf springs, I'd ordered my second set several weeks earlier. Before leaving on the…
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Stage 7 of the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route - Cuba to Colorado. We'd entered Cuba from the south on NM-550, and we exited the same direction - though on different pavement - for the first 20 miles of the stage. Cuba then, is a stop for fuel - and a good one at that, as the price is quite reasonable - but not much more than that, route wise, anyway. In 1769, Spanish Governor Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta made the San Joaquin del Nacimiento land grant to 35 pioneering families who had settled the headwaters of the Rio Puerco…
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We awoke as we usually did, just before the sun spilled over our camp - the beginning of our last day on the trail. It would also be the day that we ran two of the most beautiful trails we'd encounter over the course of the entire trip. And - to tilt the scale in the favor of good, as far as the day was concerned - it was the second time we'd make a group breakfast on the trip - a last-day-tradition that I hope continues forever. We each easily ate over a pound of breakfast. Bacon alone was…
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Morning was beautiful at the mouth of Cunningham Gulch, though we were in the shade for a while as the sun worked its way over the ridge to our east. I forget if it was Monte @Blackdawg or Dan @drr that asked, but one of them mentioned the small ponds across the way - some large-for-the-size-of-the-ponds fish inhabiting the cold waters. Intrigued, I headed that way, while Dan - because I'm pretty sure it was Dan who mentioned it - headed to the Old Hundred Mill that I mentioned as rather interesting as well. Breakfast followed, my milk turning to…
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Having gone to bed at elevation, and a little worried about how cool it would get, I'd placed a Little Hottie warmer in each of my socks as I climbed into bed. For anyone wanting to keep warm at night, I can't recommend these enough - they have made nights much more comfortable for me - and more importantly, @mrs.turbodb, on several occasions! In fact, so warm were the hotties that I woke in the middle of the night with my feet - and therefore the rest of me - too hot! A good problem to have at 10,000 feet…
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We were up bright an early the next morning - all of us having gotten a good sleep at our "low" elevation of 8500 feet - so we could get out of camp by 8:00am. Mike @Digiratus was even up early enough to make himself a cup of coffee before packing up - quite the feat, when Dan @drr, Monte @Blackdawg, Devin @MissBlackdawg and I were up as late as we could possibly be in order to still be ready to roll! The reason for our early departure was that we had an actual plan for the day. Actually, we'd…
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It was cold when we woke up the next morning, but who the hell cares when a breakfast like this is in the works? Let's take a minute to appreciate exactly what we're looking at here. That's a ½ lb of some of the best - only available in Montana - bacon, two Yukon Gold potatoes all diced up and cooked with onions, and a few eggs scrambled up in bacon grease. All on a plate in the shining sun with a mountainous backdrop to die for. Yep, none of us cared about a little cold when we got up…
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We literally woke up in the shadow of Mt. Antero, to temperatures in the mid-20°F's. Despite the cold, I'd slept well - as did the rest of the crew - except for a bit of rustling during the night - little critters having discovered the open bag of chips that we'd left next to the camp fire by accident. Out of the tent around the same time as Mike @Digiratus, I wandered off - moving to stay warm - while he prepped a hot cup of coffee to achieve the same result. Wandering up the road from camp toward Baldwin…
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We were up bright and early... Ha! No we weren't, this was not a trip where early mornings were "a thing," with one exception that I'll get to eventually. In fact, I think I as the first one out of bed - a bit after 8:00am - and only because the sun was streaming in through the door of my tent, blinding, rather than warming me, as it had on previous mornings. Familiar. Have I been here before? Our plan for the day was one that I'd been looking forward to for the entire trip - and I know Mike…
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The sun hit camp earlier than it had the previous few mornings, bringing a welcome warmth to our tents after the only night that would result in frost on their fabric. Breakfast of Honey Bunches of Oats and refreshingly cold milk in hand, I decided to explore the stream that ran beside our camp. A few hundred feet upstream, I ran into a beaver dam - and hut - a cool discovery, even if it was obviously long-abandoned due to the lack of fresh cuttings and build-up of sediment in the pond. As if to prove how cold it had…
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Having arrived at camp well after dark, it was nice to get a look at the place as the sun came up the next morning. Nestled in the aspen, Mike @Digiratus and I were the first two out of our tents, and as he prepped his traditional cup of coffee, I wandered off to get a view of our surroundings. Perched near the top of a ravine overlooking Brush Creek, a short trek up the bluff behind camp yielded expansive views of the mountains around us, and as the early morning sun crested one to our east, the yellows and…
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If there was a drawback to our primo camp site, it was that being in a valley meant that the sun didn't reach our position until sometime around 9:30am, two hours after sunrise. Of course, at that point, it was once again beautiful and warm, Dan @drr taking full advantage as he ate breakfast in front of his GFC. Within about 15 minutes I'd changed into shorts and a t-shirt, it was so pleasant. The larger the group, the harder it is to get going in the morning, and with six trucks and nine people, we finally rolled out of…
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Well, that's an ominous title to the day. Guess we'd better get started. As we'd become accustomed to, the night was chilly - somewhere in the high-20°Fs or so - cold enough that the fridge cooled down again overnight without ever turning on. Being our second night, we were all much more prepared for the situation, and an extra layer of clothing here and there seemed to do the trick, everyone sleeping relatively well until the sun warmed our tents in the morning. Dan @drr and I were up first, and as we ate breakfast, remarked at how quickly the…
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I should preface the title to this post with a bit of a caveat. Our perfect timing had nothing to do with when we all showed up at the camp site. In fact, only Dan @drr and Mike @Digiratus were really "on time." See, Mark @IDTrucks had coordinated a meeting with Monte @Blackdawg in Grand Junction where he'd gotten a local shop to open up on a Sunday evening in order to help swap a coil spring from one of Monte's old front shocks to replace the broken one he'd discovered less than two days before the trip started. Monte…
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Still unsure exactly what the day would hold, we were up before 9:00am to get an early start on figuring out how to get the Redhead home. As we broke down camp, I happened to notice that if I stood in just the right place, I got a single bar of Internet on my phone, and soon enough we'd done a bunch of research that made us all feel quite a bit better. The Internet is better up here. I was able to download my 1st gen Tacoma parts list and to our surprise, shock towers were a separately orderable…
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The day started out like any other. I was up a little before sunrise looking for color, and while there wasn't much, I did get a little splash on the horizon that seemed to mimic the angle of Brett @Squeaky Penguin's GFC. While the clear skies may have minimized the colorful sunrise, they did mean that morning in camp was a rather pleasant affair, the views back towards the Collegiate Peaks a striking way to enjoy the warming sun. And then - just as we were enjoying the peace and tranquility and our trucks and tents were thawing out -…
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Having gone to bed late, and camped at the bottom of a valley between two, 13,000' peaks that kept the sun from hitting camp, everyone was up relatively late the next morning. Mostly. I just happened to wake up and look out the tent door when the sun was in that special place below the horizon and lucked out capturing what I think was probably the best - or at least most colorful - sunrise of the trip! But I was then back in the tent for another couple hours, doing my darnedest to keep warm as the cloud cover…
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Without a fire, it was another cold night and I was glad for my Little Hotties, their 8-hour life just long enough to keep my toes toasty until it was time to get up. And - at least for me - toasty toes are a key factor to the rest of my body being warm through the night, so I slept soundly as the surface of the beaver pond we'd parked by froze over night. Of course, as the sun rose to our east - it's warmth streaming down on our camp - we all ventured out of our cocoons…
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As it seems many of our nights in Colorado were, this one was a cold one. Camped at 10,400', that was probably to be expected, but I didn't expect my packaged of baby wipes to be frozen in the morning, and my morning clean-up wasn't a pleasant experience given that they were. But the elevation did make for a nice sky at sunrise - for that, I was grateful. And, with another day - or morning as it'd turn out - of clear blue skies above, it didn't take long for the sun to warm camp up enough that we all ventured…
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Everyone was up around about the usual time, our spot in the trees giving us a bit more shade than normal, but also helping to keep the frost at bay during the night. As everyone made breakfast, I headed over and asked Mike @Digiratus one of the strangest questions I think I've ever asked. Did you bring your toothbrush charger? See, for the first time ever, I brought my Sonicare toothbrush, knowing that I'd be away from home for over two weeks, and that my teeth just felt better when I used it. Anyway, it turns out that he had brought his…
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