Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Day 2: Phil's World and Animas Trail

Today we loaded up and drove about 40 miles west to the town of Cortez in search of Phil's World.  The scenery along the drive was gorgeous as usual.  We did see a huge section of land on the side of a mountain that had burned in the recent past.  There were several nice houses that looked like the burn line stopped right at their backdoors.  Crazy.

The trails were definitely unique, much different than yesterday.  Cortez sits on partial desert land, so the trail was more open, less up and down, and had more sage brush than tall trees.  The flow of the trail was unbelievable.  Parts of it reminded me of Buck Creek Trail in Abilene, and other sections made me think it might be similar to Fruita or Moab, even though I've never been to either of those (a local told us we were only 2 hours from Moab).






Aaron took a picture of this guy.  

After a nice 10 mile jaunt and lunch, we headed back to Durango to rest.  Aaron swapped out his bike for a full-suspension 29er Intense.  After a cruise down Main St., we decided to check out one of the trails that connected to town.  From our hotel, we rode our bikes about a mile up the road and hit the Animas trail.

The trail started with climbing, including some tight and technical switchbacks.  It was around 6:00 p.m. in the evening when we headed out to ride, and as soon as we got on the upper part of trail we noticed some dark clouds rolling over.  Not wanted to get caught in a storm or the dark (or both), we cut our ride shorter than we wanted and headed back down.  Nevertheless, our outing was a lot of fun and we saw even more incredible views of the town.

You can tell this trail is right out of the backyard.

Aaron heading off into the sunset.
Great view of the Animas river flowing through town.  If you look directly above where the river curves,
you can barely see Fort Lewis College campus on the top of the plateau.  

This was where we turned around.  You can see the dark clouds behind Aaron,
and how windy it was by looking at his shirt and shorts.





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