So this is one of my new favorite places on earth: Crested Butte, CO. My brother did his doctoral research near here; that’s how I heard of it. We camped on the banks of a lovely creek…could it have been Lead Creek? That doesn’t sound very lovely. Maybe it was Cement Creek. Anyway, it was much lovelier than its name suggests.

I hiked up out of the valley to see what I could see. The trail was punishing, and even though I’d been riding my trike a great deal (I put at least 300 miles on it over the winter), I could barely stagger up the trail. Perhaps the fact that we were camped at 9,000 feet didn’t help, but still. How annoying. It was only a mile or so for crying out loud, and I’d been riding at 7500 or 8000 feet the week before. Anyway, as I huffed and puffed and wondered if I was going to make it to the top, this young guy on a mountain bike came screaming past me…IN THIRD GEAR!!!! How demoralizing. I was so disgusted with myself I could hardly stand it. I did manage to hobble up to the top of the ridge, but not much further, and really, I barely made it back down to the campsite (going down is actually more difficult for me than climbing — I’d rather climb both ways but for reasons I don’t fully understand, if one way is uphill the other way is invariably downhill. It doesn't seem right, but that has been my experience over many years).

In any case, it was lush and green and the weather was perfect. I simply adore Colorado in the Spring, and the higher the altitude, the better I like it.

View from beside the RV. This is the mountain I would have LIKED to hike to.

And here’s the view looking the other way.