Day Three: May 22, 2013

I woke up from a crazy dream. SUPing in the biggest gorge with the most MASSIVE whirlpool waves. It was a competition. I opted out of it, because I was scared. Weird. I had a sweet SUP though, wish that part was real.

My sleeping bag was wet. I either had a super sweaty sleep, or the tent had a lot of condensation over the night. It was ok though, because the day is beautiful. Blue sky and warm. I unzipped the tent and pulled my sleeping bag out, placed it on a fence and let it dry out. Ben slept.

This morning, I felt DIRTY. I needed some kind of bathing method. Since I am far away from humans,  I decided to strip down and quickly rinse myself in the stream that was behind our tent. COLD. The water was cold. It felt refreshing and numbed my entire body. There is something liberating about being naked in a canyon with no one around…. Washing yourself in glacier fed rivers and listening to the morning birds sing their songs. Ben woke up to my screams (from the cold water, of course). I saw his head pop-up over the fence with a camera in hand. Yes, there are naked photos of me bathing in the Fire Gorge river. No, they will not be posted on this blog. Haha.

After packing up the truck, we started to drive again. Climbing up to 8000ft we reached the high plateau. The landscape is quite barren, other than scattered popular trees, Lodgepole pine and Pondsarosa pine. I really like this type of landscape. That high alpine/dessert mountainous environment. I enjoyed the drive. We stopped at a local coffee shop in Vernal, UT for some local brew and a quick internet check-up. It was interesting sitting in a local coffee shop, listening to the community chatting about things I didn’t find interesting at all. The accent on their voices was awesome. I love cultures.

After about 30mins, we were away again.

We drove through Utah and entered into Colorado around noon. We decided we would skip through the craziness of the city (Salt Lake) and just head to Colorado to mountain bike in Frutia.

Once we arrived, we headed to the local bike shop. Best way to find out the knowledge of the area: ask the locals. We stepped into ‘The Edge” bike shop and started asking questions. You know, I must say, this world is VERY small. I randomly ran into my physiotherapist, from Whistler, in this small bike shop in Frutia, Colorado. CRAZY! I haven’t seen him in probably 4 years. It was funny to catch up and chat about our biking plans. I love how small this planet can be…..

After gathering local knowledge of the bike trails, we headed to Road 18 trail area. It’s about 7kms to the campsite and it’s scattered with single track goodness. Immediately, ben and I got excited. YES! Finally, biking in the dessert!!!!!

We quickly picked out a campsite, after much discussion on which one was better (we picked camp #8) and set up shop. After about 30mins of organizing, we hopped on our bikes and headed to the single track. We rode down a trail called Zippity-Do-Da. Winding ups and downs, through desert shrubbery and dusty single track. It was AWESOME.  We pounded up and down the trail, and I actually ended up having a mini asthma attack on the top of a ridge. Silly me, forgot my puffer in the truck. I took a couple minutes to catch my breath (I blame it on the allergies I was experiencing a day ago), we were off again. At the bottom of the trail, we had to bike back up the road to our campsite. We decided that it was time to go get food and relax a little. After a short drive into Frutia (about 20mins through desert and farm lands), we stopped at the grocery store and grabbed our grub. It only cost us about $65 on groceries, and that is to last us the next three days. BUDGET BUDGET BUDGET!

We needed firewood. Ben suggested stealing pallets from a local church. I suggested that that may not be a good idea and we should maybe try elsewhere. We ended up finding a Colorado dude chopping wood and throwing it into his truck. We pulled over and kindly (very Canadianly) asked if we could snag a couple pieces and use if for our fire. He obviously said ‘Sure’ and gave us about 15 pieces… perfect!

That brings me to this moment RIGHT NOW. I’m currently sitting at the stone picnic table on our campsite, enjoying some white wine, the evening heat from the sun and watching Ben cook dinner on our fire. I couldn’t ask for anything more at this moment.. it’s pretty rad.

I love the desert. I feel good in this climate. The sunshine always seems to shine. Everything is dry. It’s easier for me to breath here. There is hardly any moisture in the air. It’s a comfortable climate for me. I think, because of my childhood and spending a lot of time in California, I have grown custom to this climate and have a place in my heart for it. I always enjoy coming back to this area. It’s awesome to find out that Utah and Colorado are similar to my California childhood. These parts of the USA are quite familiar to me, only because I spent time in similar environments...

So far, the trip has been great. We are only on day Three, and we have so many more days ahead of us.. it's exciting. :)

Night!