Getting Away with Something

The weather here was sunny and pleasant at the end of January; Chris and I had the feeling that we were getting away with something when we loaded up a bike and headed to Moab on the last Saturday of the month. Usually going to Moab means mountain biking, but this time we did something a little different:

Cailan and Grandma Bobbie went along on the trip. They dropped us off at a scenic overlook, where they stayed for three hours having a picnic and playing with dinosaurs in the snow. Chris and I biked up the road towards Dead Horse Point State Park.

It was quite a bit of climbing for the first 10 miles - strenuous but not so exhausting as to prevent us from admiring the views of red mesas, brown sandstone, and snowy mountains. Then we turned on to the road to the park and went gradually downhill for 8 miles until the road ends at a famous overlook.

We retraced our path back to the drop-off point; most of that went by very quickly in a big downhill blur. I tried not to look at the spedometer. From there we headed into the town of Moab to find Cailan and Grandma Bobbie. It got uncomfortably cold on the way, especially when the winter sun sank below the level of the canyon walls and we were zooming downhill on a snow-covered bike path, but we were able to warm up with big plates of pizza and pasta at Pasta Jay's.

The weather smiled for us again on the first Saturday of February. Once again we felt like we were getting away with something. This time we took the mountain tandem to our familiar but beloved trails just west of Fruita. We started the ride in warm sunshine, but it did cloud up when we reached our turn-around point and we even got hit with a few snow flurries on the way back.

Most of the trail we rode was free of snow, but the sandy surface of the trail was very soft, saturated like a sponge, which made the going pretty slow. We decided to stick to the main trail, Mary's Loop, because all of the side trails go through small canyons and would probably be snowy, icy, muddy, or some combination of the three.

Three days after that ride, though, we woke up to this:

a fluffy white reminder that we're not out of winter yet.