We took off from Durango with our first stop at Palisade, Colorado. (Delicious peaches, by the way.) We rented a couple of mountain bikes and headed up to the top of Grand Mesa to spend a couple of days.
Oh, Grand Mesa. Perhaps not surprisingly, the views are stunning. It's also lovely because, though it was 90 degrees down in Grand Junction, it topped out near 70 upon the mesa. Excellent weather for mountain biking. We rented from Rapid Creek Cycles in Palisade, and the guys there were great. They gave us their cell phone numbers in case we needed anything after hours, set us up with a dropoff in case we wanted to leave the bikes when the shop was closed, and gave us maps and tips on where to go. Plus we got a free half-day rental.
The bikes we rented, unfortunately, were not so awesome. We were both on Ibex Mojos, and neither of us felt like we had good control over the bike. I really struggled with the tracking; I couldn't pick a line to save my life. Even if I could manage to get my front tire between two boulders, I always seemed to slam dead into one of them with my back tire, and just couldn't get over them. So that was clearly not the bike for me. Or S, whose comment was "'responsive' and 'agile' are not the words I would use to describe them."
We did, however, see some lovely things. For our free half-day ride, we did a trail near the base of one of the local ski areas. The wildflowers were amazing, but as twilight grew closer, the mosquitoes came out in force, so we turned around and headed back to the car a bit shy of the end of the trial.
We had a beautiful campsite atop the mesa that night -- cool breezes and sweeping views could not be beat!
The following day, after a delicious breakfast of Pop Tarts and peaches, we rode the Mesa Top and Indian Point trails. On the way out, the trail was quite muddy, which was lots of fun. (Rentals, right?) Once you get a bit farther into the ride, the trail takes you right out to the edge of the world. There were some really fun swoopy sections of singletrack through the meadows, but again we were disappointing by the Mojo's ability to best even the smallest of obstacles. By the time we were on the return leg, the trail had dried out significantly (love that mountain sunshine!), and the bikes were much cleaner, after 14 miles of having the mud bounced off of them.
We had another beautiful campsite, and it was cool enough that it made sense to build a fire. This is me, cooking over the fire.
We decided to forego another day of biking, each being sufficiently convinced that the Mojo was not a good choice. We ventured back into Palisade to return the bikes, and discovered that the only place in town open for breakfast on a Sunday morning is the local bar. Nothin' wrong with that.
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