Divide Ride, August 25, 2011

We had a relaxing morning in Crested Butte which probably has the prettiest looking mountains we've ever seen.  Riding along the local roads you'd swear you're looking at a painting behind the buildings.  The colours and textures look more like a painting in the dining room rather than real mountains.  Greens, reds, and earth tones contrast in impressive ways.

We booked our flight home this morning.  The milk run from El Paso - Phoenix - Minneapolis - Toronto will land us about 7pm Sunday night of the 28th.

We ran through heavy winds and some rain today with the twisty roads making it very exciting because as we swung easterly we headed towards dark clouds and obvious rain which you can see clearly pouring down a mountain side.  As the road swung south, west, north, west, south, east and south again it was a lot of fun thinking "hey it's sunny", "ut oh, that doesn't look good" and so on.  With every twist in the road came a change in the immediate outlook.  Kinda like life I suppose.

We drove into Pagossa Springs at the south end of Colorado thinking we'd just blow through and keep on making time into New Mexico, however, one look at the "springs" on the river and we pulled a U turn and within 20 minutes we were floating around in one of the 27 little hot springs pools that cascade into one another then empty into the San Juan river.  Spectacular.  As we watched the sunset we eyed a table up on a patio across the river at a fantastic little Mexican restaurant.  Turned out to be great and reminded us of Ajijic Mexico.

As far as the riding goes - we're officially done with the gravel and now we gotta book it to El Paso  - 500 miles to go tomorrow - but worth the rest time we've had.  

MnM