Monday, June 19, 2006

Ridgway

Sunday. Ride the Rockies. Two thousand bicycles riding from town to town through the mountains all over Colorado for a week. This year it starts in Cortez. An easy day for them today, just fifty miles or so from Cortez to Durango. We saw them off (Have a good ride, Nancy).

But enough of Cortez. On to Ridgway. We had our routing choices: east to Durango then north over Red Mountain Pass, or north to Dolores then Lizard Head Pass past Telluride, or east almost to Utah, then north through Slick Rock down into Disappointment Valley and east over Dallas Divide into Ridgway. The Durango route was clogged with bicycles and goes over the highest passes. The Dolores/Lizard head route goes right past Telluride, but they’re having their Bluegrass Festival (attendance 10,000) this weekend and traffic should be a mess. We opted for the desolate route, performing an end-run around the mountains to approach Ridgway by the back way through arid canyons instead of mountain passes. Saw about six cars along the way.

Settled in at the State Park in our usual spot. No cellphone signal. Judy found a good satellite dish technician while we were in Las Vegas and he got our dish running again, so we have a good internet connection.

Happy Fathers Day.