Princess Corner Makes Its Debut

The Halloween costumes are out, the sounds of hundreds of bicycle shoe clips are heard, my schedule now revolves around bikes, eating, rehydrating, sleeping (repeat process daily). It must be that time of year again! Yes folks, Ride the Rockies 2008 has arrived!

The Coach and Hammer have it made with their support represented by myself, Nancy and Wendy (the Hammer's mom and sister). Of course, we all get to enjoy the beauty of Colorado together so I do believe that we are all winners.

The boys can update you with all of those pesky details, facts, and figures of their bicycle rides. I, on the other hand, like to give updates to the non-bike-knerds out there about the other world - the non bicycle world.

The ladies and I visited Mesa Verde outside of Cortez although we did our visits on separate days. I was there to enjoy the amazing construction of the ancient Pueblo's cliff dwellings. I was hoping to even pick up some of the Indian spirit vibes while there. It was a bit difficult to do that with the crowds also visiting but I managed to find some areas off of the beaten path. The picture below shows one of these cliff dwellings out of the many in the area. It was just me and the park ranger due to the mile walk to get to this one. Unfortunately, no Indian vibes were picked up. There was just a lot of huffing and puffing (due to the altitude - clearly not due to my fitness level), intense glistening because I DO NOT sweat, and many of Gods creatures either flying in my face, into my mouth, or scurrying in front of me and scaring the bejesus out of me.

Here is an example of Xero-scaping, aka xeriscaping in the wild. It is amazing to see beautiful flowers growing out of the conditions that were there - dry heat, rocks, and a bit of sand for soil.

Onto Telluride where it was blessedly cooler. I caught a picture of the traveling bike camp on the way into town. Not a bad camping site really.

A beautiful river flowing rapidly through town from the snow melting from the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately our time was short-lived here in Telluride. Today we traveled onto Montrose where it was HOT! I'm very happy to have our time short-lived here. The official temperature here was mid-90's although my temperature reading from my car was at 100. I did not drive that long drive from Dallas for these temperatures! Tomorrow we are going to Crested Butte which is expected to have a high tomorrow of 74 - much more like it! We will be there over the next two days with the boys having a day off while there. I'm sure they will still manage to get a ride in on that day or at the very least lovingly stroke their babies which have got them to this point - with the help of months of training and strong-like-bull tree trunk legs.

More updates soon! Love to all,

Lisa (Princess)