Saturday, July 11th
We got up on Saturday morning, broke camp, and headed back down. The ride down felt easier than climbing up the night before, but I guess downhill should be easier. Gravity is on your side going downhill. Our plan was to head back to Moab and then over to Arches National Park. We wanted to get there before the day heated up. We were delayed a little by the beautiful views along the road dropping out of the mountains. We had to stop and take pictures.
By the time we got to Arches, it was already hot, even though it was just 9 am. There are a lot of things to see in Arches, but we only wanted to spend a few hours there. We decided to hike out to Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch. That would give us two hikes and a good flavor of what the park had to offer. We took a bunch of pictures along the way on each hike.
While hiking and riding between each trailhead, we chose to ride without ATGATT. We when had had enough, we reluctantly put all of our gear back on to head out of the park, despite the heat. The good news is that the sun was blocked by some heavy thunderstorm clouds that were dumping lots of rain east of us. We weren’t sure if our route out and south was under the clouds or not. Turns out we missed the rain after all. A little bit of rain would have been nice to keep us cool.
From Moab, we headed south and then took Hwy 46 across to Colorado. We’ll claim this as our official entrance into the fourth Four Corners state.
As we worked our way towards Ridgeway, we did get caught by a thunderstorm. The water somehow got in and shorted the wiring in my heated grips, which turned on as a result. The good news is that they helped keep my hands warm in the cold rain and later helped dry out my gloves. Once the wiring dried, the grips returned to normal operation.
We eventually made it through the rain and started seeing the high mountains around Ouray, CO that we were headed for.
We stayed at the KOA in Ouray, which I highly recommend. They had a great bunch of folks working there, a nice facility, and a nice cafe serving food – the Kreekside Kafe. We had a big plate of ribs and baked beans and slaw and potato salad while we listened to a local country/folk band perform. Afterward, we did a load of laundry and settled in for another night of good sleep.
| Mileage | |
| Today | 225.6 |
| Trip Total | 2,895.4 |
