After a brief but excellent time in Salt Lake City, we were finally heading south -- the right direction for us most of the time! The scenery on the drive was absolutely gorgeous. I just love the dramatic, rocky topography of this area, probably because it is so very different from the green, tree-covered east and midwest I'm so used to. Rather abruptly, the rock formations changed from a sandy tan color to the brilliant red that this area is so well-known for. Ahhhhhhh....gorgeous! We took a quick pit stop at the "Hole in the Rock" rest stop south of Moab where we remember stopping (heading north) on our southwest trip in 2006. Back then, we spent quite awhile there watching many birds in the trees, including brilliant orange orioles. But that was in the spring, and today was much less "birdy". Before long, we were in Colorado. In contrast to southern Utah, the topography of this part of the state was much greener, with huge stands of evergreen trees flanked by distant snow-capped mountain peaks. Where there were deciduous trees, they were starting to get some fall color -- but nothing like what we'd see in just a day later. This was our first time in Durango, a very pretty city. That evening we met another former Nortel co-worker and cycling buddy from North Carolina for dinner at Zia Taqueria, right across the road from our hotel. Carson and his wife Carol have recently become traveling nomads like us and are spending the month of October in Durango in a rental home. It was an unexpected surprise to find that we would be crossing paths with them briefly as we zipped through town. We really liked this spot, with its "fresh Mex" style food, featuring plenty of unique, flavorful salsas. My fish tacos (below) were some of the best I've had, especially when topped with hot mango-habanero salsa. Barry went with a massive chicken/bean burrito, his favorite. And we had a trio of salsas to dip our chips into. The white one is a pineapple cream cheese variety that I dubbed a "dessert salsa". Yummy! Carol was feeling a little under the weather, unfortunately, so it was just us and Carson for dinner. It was a lot of fun to catch up, talk about traveling, and plan a bike ride for the next day. More to come from beautiful Durango!
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We only had one full day to check out Salt Lake City, but we packed a lot in. We rode a plethora of bike trails this day. Although a bit chilly, we had a nice clear day for riding and viewing the gorgeous Utah scenery. We started the morning riding from our hotel on the Airport Trail over to the Jordan River Parkway Trail. The Jordan River Parkway Trail led us to the Legacy Parkway Trail, a lovely trail that took us north of the city. The Legacy trail has no road crossings for miles, which makes it really fast and fun. After going quite a few miles, we missed a hard right turn on the Legacy Trail and ended up on a rail trail up in the Farmington area. This one was also nice but had a lot of road crossings, every one with a gate to go around. We continued on this trail until we finally decided to stop so we'd have enough time to ride around downtown. Barry had read about a "Cycle the City" loop that sounded fun. So, we turned around and headed south to downtown Salt Lake City. These signs marked the cycle route, but they weren't always quite as easy to find as we'd hoped. We took a few wrong turns but managed to get back on course pretty quickly. There was a fair amount of traffic and some construction in areas where we couldn't ride bike lanes, but overall, the city was more bike friendly than I expected. And there were plenty of sights to see. You'll have to squint to see me in this photo of the capital building. Can you find me? We walked our bikes respectfully through Temple Square, the centerpiece of the LDS church in Salt Lake City, but somehow did not get any photos of the main LDS temple. Here's a photo from Wikipedia. We had to cut our downtown exploration a little short as we realized that it was getting a bit late and we were already going to have 60 miles in by the time we got back to the hotel. So, we headed back. Looking beyond the airport, the majestic snow-capped peaks are evident. I can see why Utah is such a prime ski destination. After putting the bikes away and cleaning up, we met a co-worker from the old Nortel days in Research Triangle Park (North Carolina) at a Mexican restaurant he recommended. John is living and working in Salt Lake City now, and it was so much fun to see him again since we rarely have the opportunity to reconnect with friends while we are on the road. I love this photo he took of the two of us. Even though we are still holdouts, I gotta admit, those new-fangled iPhones (he has an iPhone 6) do take good photos! His photo is much crisper than the one our server took of us with my camera, but that may have just been a bad setting (I hope). The Red Iguana specializes in mole, so our server brought us out a small plate with a dab of each of the different moles so we could try them. They were all good, making for a very difficult choice. I ended up with pork enchiladas with mango mole, and Barry ordered chicken with their very spiciest mole! Both were very, very good. If you're in Salt Lake, don't miss the Red Iguana! A dinner out with an old friend was a wonderful way to wind up our time in Salt Lake City -- thanks John!
Next up, we point our car southward and land in Durango, Colorado, where we hook up with another old work friend and have another fantastic bike ride. Stay tuned! Our second day in Redding dawned overcast and cool, not nearly as nice as our first sunny afternoon in the city. But we wanted to do a longer ride, so we bundled up and headed out after breakfast. Since it was a Sunday, the Sacramento River Trail was pretty busy with people walking, cycling, and running. We first headed down to the fascinating Sundial Bridge for a couple of photos. Amazingly, I managed to catch this one of Barry with no other people in it! The greenish panels in bridge deck apparently have a natural luminescence at night, but we didn't get to see that, unfortunately. We headed east to make sure we rode all of the trail, including a few spurs over to shops and a neighborhood. This portion of the trail ran alongside the highway. We liked how they'd paid homage to bicycling in the artwork on the concrete wall separating trail and road. Below is a portion of the trail that climbs way up high to a hilltop access point. Once you get to the top, you can see much of the city down below, and all the green trees near the Sacramento River. It was a difficult climb up with several switchbacks, but a fun, fast descent, which I'm enjoying in this photo. If you look closely, you can see that I peeled off my blue vest after the tough climb -- I got warm! We discovered an arts and crafts show going on in a park alongside the river trail, but we didn't stop to look. We continued on the river trail until we reached the connecting Sacramento Rail Trail portion at Keswick Dam. I discussed this portion of the trail in the previous post. I found a review by a frequent Traillink reviewer, TrailBear, of the first section of this trail involving a very steep climb. Here is the part of his review that made me laugh out loud. It is very accurate! Start at the new trailhead at the base of what they call Heart Rate Hill. Apt name, that. If you time your ascent and measure your pulse at the upper sign, you can determine fitness. By that point, you probably knew: Could be better. If you cycle the Lower Rail Trail every other day for a month or two, you will be much fitter. It twists. It turns. It climbs. It descends. It repeats all the previous as it climbs up each ridge, descends the other side, crosses the creek and climbs again. So, we did this climb for the second time in two days, and I was seriously wondering what we were thinking. But once we got through the tough part, we reached the former rail corridor and had a lovely, much easier ride up to the Shasta Dam and were rewarded with beautiful views. Just wish it had been sunnier. The river was so green and smooth as glass -- no wind! There was a small campground at the Shasta Dam Trailhead, along with hiking and dirt biking trails. Unfortunately, with it being Sunday, the dirt bikers were out in force. Vrooom-vrooom! Not very peaceful. On the way back there are some climbs on the connector portion of the trail before reaching the steep downhill switchback portion. This is a serious workout! Once back on the Sacramento River Trail, we headed along the other side of the river and took the Middle Creek Trail. This spur trail is approximately 3 miles long and mostly uphill on the way to the town of Old Shasta. It was a challenge but lots of fun once we got to the end and turned around! Near the end it got really steep for a short ways -- and here I thought I was done with serious climbing for the day! But I was earning my food.... Coming back down was a lot more fun. I could breath easy! Once back on the river trail, we needed to cross back over to the other side. We saw that the bridge was blocked by a truck with huge crane and asked someone what was going on. Turns out they were doing a "duck drop" for prizes to help out the schools. There were tons of spectators on the other side of the river hoping their duck would win the "race" and they'd win a prize. It was fun to watch but the actual drop kept getting delayed for reasons unknown to us. At last, it was time, and down came the rubber duckies! And they're off! It looked like they were going to take quite awhile to reach their final destination downstream. We didn't stick around to find out who won the prizes, since we didn't know anyone and didn't buy any ducks ourselves. Because of all the spectators milling about and heading east to watch the ducks (just the direction we needed to go), it took a loooong time to pedal and walk the bikes around them all to get back to the arts and crafts fair. And we had to get back there because Barry had seen a pie stand on our way past in the morning, and well, WE LOVE PIE.These were mini-pies, although they look full-size in the photos. We bought FOUR! Cherry, pecan, boysenberry, and apricot. Yum! Next stop was the fresh tamale stand, where we bought a dozen (smallest quantity they sold) chicken tamales. They were nice and hot! I bet you can guess what we had for a very late lunch once we got back to the motel room. And yes, it was delicious! (Don't worry, we didn't eat all the pies at once; they kept for quite awhile.)
Stay tuned as we head to a very beautiful national park that we bet you've never heard of.... |
Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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