Sunday, August 3, 2008

Goodbye Copper, Hello Park City

This morning Stephen, Nate, and I got up early to make the most of our remaining time in Copper with a mountain bike ride. We rode a ways up (lots of up) the Colorado Trail. It had some nice tricky technical sections, and it was very scenic, much like everything else in the area. I managed to stay upright the whole time, including some really fast descents. I'd venture to officially say that I have good bike handling skills off-road.



We posed for some tree-mounted timer shots with a camera, including this nice shot after crossing a stream.



Also worth mentioning was Stephen's near-crash (technically a crash, I suppose). He went over the handlebars on a steep downhill and managed to land on his feet and take 4-5 hops down the trail with the bike between his legs. It looked painful, but I really couldn't help but laugh.

After the ride I finished packing up and Molly and I headed out West from Copper with our destination being her hometown of Park City, Utah. Along the way it was really fascinating to see the change from the mountains into canyons and eventually into desert country.



I hadn't realized how close I-70 came to the Moab/Arches NP/Canyonlands area, but it definitely renewed my interest in visiting those parks again (and mountain biking in Moab).

Along the way, we continued to have to baby the truck along. It has a tendency to get a little testy (overheat) when the weather is warm and we're going uphill. We only had to stop once to let it cool off, and after lots of encouragement it started behaving a little better. This is definitely the truck with the personality. Hopefully a shop in Salt Lake can fix some of the behavioral problems.



After arriving in Park City, I had a tasty dinner with Molly's parents and got to meet her family. They're definitely a nice bunch and I get the impression they want to make sure I enjoy Park City.

The next few days hold in store:
-Taking the truck in for service
-Seeing my long-lost sort of sister
-Making some keys
-Mountain biking
-More mountain biking
-Pretty much whatever else comes my way

5 comments:

  1. From the your description of Stephen's "crash," sounds like he has some pretty good off-road bike handling skills also!

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  2. One trick to fend off over heating engines is to turn the heat on full blast. I know the passengers don't enjoy it but it does cool off the engine because cabin heaters pull heat from the engine. Just open the windows and live a little bit!

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  3. Yeah, we were blowing the heater full with the windows down struggling to make it up a hill at 25 at one point.

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  4. What's your route out of Park City? If you go thru Winnemucca, NV, you MUST eat (and perhaps stay?) at the Martin Hotel. The dinner is an experience.

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