Well, with about fifteen hours of sleep under my belt, Monday morning dawned quite early. I picked up coffee for two at the local coffee shop...I love being in a destination where you can walk everywhere...and patiently waited (not) for JMac to rouse. After breakfast at the local diner (Camilla's Café), we moseyed over to Over the Edge Sports to pick up our bike rentals. We had looked into shipping our bikes but with most likely only having three days to ride (we also had hiking and backpacking on the agenda), it seemed like it would just be easier and cheaper to rent. And so we did. Jmac got a Pivot Mach 6 and I, a Juliana Furtado. Both have 27.5" wheels, which we wanted to check out since we're still rocking it old school with 26" wheels at home. I also wanted to check out a 1x set up, which may not have been the smartest decision out here when I would be at elevation, in the mountains, which my Ohio legs and lungs were most definitely not used to. Bikes sized and ready to go, we rode back to the AirBnB and loaded up for the day.
Ride #1 was on the 18 Road Trails, just a short drive north of Fruita. We could have actually ridden to the trails as the roads out there are pretty quiet. Immediately in the parking lot we noticed that we did not get the memo that the in fashion for Fruita riding appears to be baggies and not our spandex kits. If our sparkling rental bikes didn't give us away as out of towners, our apparel certainly did. Oh well.
After doing a few laps around the parking lot to try to figure out my SRAM shifting, I'm a Shimano girl in my Ohio life, we departed on Vegetarian trail, labelled as intermediate.
Mostly flowing, swoopy fun, it was a great introduction to the area. Fruita had seen more than it's normal share of rain recently and while the trails were dry, there were beautiful spring wildflowers and colorful grasses that we passed by. From Vegetarian, we turned on Chutes and Ladders, another fun intermediate route and then ended up on Edge Loop. I was surprised that these trails were labelled intermediate.
I think that by Ohio standards they would be closer to beginner...they were mostly smooth with little in the way of obstacles or other things to hurt yourself on. After a quick refuel at the car, JMac asked if I was ready for the second loop he had mapped out, which was more intermediate but with a couple of miles of difficult thrown in. I shrugged. Sure.
We left on Zippity to the beginner Zip Off to the intermediate Western Zippity and then Frontside.
Although we started to get a few more tight turns on these trails and little more exposure, they were very fun. And we still had very little in the way of rocks and other hard, sharp objects which would hurt when fallen upon. The final main trail of the loop was Zippity Do Da, a little more than two miles of difficult. And that's when we went from "easy" intermediate to gnarly ledgy, rocky, uphill riding. What?!? We hike a biked to the ridge but were then treated to some
fast rollers on a ridgeline, something I don't think I have experienced before.
Point the bike where you want to go, Marsita. Do not look over there at the pretty mountains in the distance, that's where your bike will go and you don't want to fall off the side of this trail. So it was a bit intense but exciting to be riding something new. We ended up taking a short cut on the road to skirt around the final section of ZDD and finished up on Zippity. Back at the car, we were now surrounded on three sides by rain clouds.
Rain had been moving in and moving out the whole time we had been riding but it had stuck to being north, south and west of us. With a final glance at the clouds, meh, it looks like it's still staying west, we departed for another loop where we started. This time we wanted to do Vegetarian to the intermediate Down Uppity. Just as we rode onto Down Uppity the wind picked up, the temperature dropped about ten degrees and the rain started. Still, it was a marvelously fun ride, exactly what you would expect on a trail called Down Uppity. There were lots of swoopy rollers and flowing turns with some punchy sections thrown in just to make sure your legs were still working. We made it back to the car, threw the gear in and called it a day.
After a shower at the cottage, we decided to check out Grand Junction for dinner. Our first stop was Kannah Creek Brewing for a beer. There, we met some very friendly bar patrons and quite possibly the most talkative guy in all of Grand Junction. Our brains now full of all knowledge Grand Junction, courtesy of The Most Talkative Guy in All of Grand Junction, we went downtown to see what was to see. Grand Junction has a nice walkable Main Street area with lots of places to spend money on things you probably don't need. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it was just after 5:00 and most of the shops were closed or closing. We did check out Summit Canyon Mountaineering, which was a nicely appointed outdoor gear shop. It seemed to have everything you might need for an outdoor adventure. Dinner was my choice, Nepal Restaurant, also on Main Street. Beside having lots of veggie-friendly options, the food was excellent. The rain had followed us on and off from Fruita so without much else to do in downtown Grand Junction, we returned to the cottage.
We took another look through our ride options for Tuesday. I believe we have settled on the Kokopelli trails near Loma. More on that later!
