Hours of Dirt, Gravel, Snow, and Ice

Today’s ride took it out of me. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We spent just over 3 hours riding only 9 miles on a “road” that wound over the top of a ridge, and it was beautiful…but extremely challenging. The snow that had fallen in November and had prevented us from riding it about a month ago was still there in places. Also ice. Pretty much the whole thing outside of that dirt, gravel, and leaves. And hills.

But we saw a lot. Enough to get us thinking it’ll be a ride that we can do again once it gets warmer (and the road has dried out a bit — what was challenging as ice today, will probably be thick mud this spring. In any case, it will certainly take us less time. We crawled over the ice and snow, and we took a “wrong turn” — actually by not turning but going straight when we shouldn’t have. It also added a couple hundred extra feet of elevation. Still, it wasn’t a loss — we enjoyed the whole ride…although nearing the end it never seemed like we’d be off that mountain.

We spent over half the ride squiggling around on this section (the hilly part of the elevation profile).

Even though the weather was beautiful, there was still a lot of patches like this.

Came to a fork in the road. We’re going up…

A lot of sign for deer, footprints being one of them. I sent this picture to one of my grandsons. I thought he’d like it because he’s getting into nature and birds now, just like his dad did at that age.

Air quality was quite good. The views were wonderful. It wouldn’t be long before we were on that road to the left descending, but we actually had to go down the hill behind us first.

This was an expressway that tunneled through the ridge we had just crossed. We actually went over it…but it was underground at the time.

On the way home. I’ve had to have passed this building before (we did just a few hours earlier on the way out), but maybe the sun made it more interesting this time.

This year’s starting out well. I went back to look at my previous Januarys, and this has been the best one so far. Over 200 miles and 7,000 feet of climbing, and I’ve still got another week to add to it. I’m sore enough now though that it’s time for a little break. I was out for about 6 1/2 hours today. That’s a long time for a ride (especially in the cold), even if it was only 45 miles.