*you are now about to witness the strenth of street knowledge

BA- bam! Some bike rides are bigger than others. Some bike rides' mothers are bigger then other bike rides' mothers.

The boys and I took a little jaunt up the hill and down again. Lots of trails to be had. So there was that.


Recently, while riding in that neck of the woods, I came across a blazed trail which was new to me so I followed it in the hopes of finding more rideable sections, only to come across this:

Which was very surprising to me. It looked like a small scale operation, compared to some. Anyhow- what the heck is going on around here?



So It has been back to Arroyo Seco/Indians Road for bike camping a couple times lately. The rope swing has been a big impetus. Here's some photos of the most recent:





Good thing I traveled with the Hamm's Beer Bear...







J, just before spending 3 hours in the river herding crawdads into shallow water with his feet so's he could catch them for the campers down there. They'd bemoaned their lack of crawdad catching prowess and that's all he had to hear. They ended up with 8 or so good sized for their dinner pot.

We saw a snapping turtle drift by, a dinner plate sized dinosaur with the thick long neck and triangular grey head. A similarly sized slider slid by, along with multiple 12-19" steelhead, and countless crawdads. Upon reaching into the beer cache in the evening, I noticed another 8"x4" slider parked right next to the stash. Maybe the shiny cans drew him in?



I traveled a ways up that one interesting trail. It's not so interesting after all. The surface deteriorates quickly into bushwacking, which wouldn't be so bad except that the steepness is ridiculous. And slippy. I was hiking, using the bike as a brake/support. It would be impassable with any load at all. Perhaps worth doing unloaded if someone met us at the other end, but I doubt it.

It was quite sweet to be so out there in the quiet wilderness, though. You forget how that is.



We hiked quite a waaaaays up the river. It just kept getting sweeter. Pool, rapid, pool, and on. That's a raft with a built in mask(!) someone abandoned because of a tiny hole. I brought it out and will be fixing that.




Breakfast was grilled portobellos and grits, with plenty of coffee. I love cooking on the fire! {which fire we put out. dead. out. by the way...no forest fires are welcome! When we arrived at camp, the embers from the previous inhabitants were still hot enough to ignite small twigs unaided. That is bad. Take care with fire, y'all.}



This spot is being revealed to be the jump off point for awesome river fun more and more each time we go.