Day 14!!

Well, my current thoughts sound like this: "I only have 2 more days left? I have to go into the o f f i c e (and actually hit a rather big deadline Monday afternoon) in 2 more days?" Oh-man.

So. In light of that thought (which I started to have this morning), Ed and I made the most of the brilliantly warm day, January 2, 2009.

One of the higher moments, both Inside MyMtbSelf and Out:

I'm noticing that truthfully, this mountain and it's surrounding grandeur are showing up in pretty much ALL of my pictures. Same set of massive objects and mind-blowing views ... different perspective each time. And, each time I think to myself: not a bad view to revisit on a daily basis. Not a bad view at all.


We started the day with an enormous breakfast. I will not go into details, but consider our adventures for the rest of the day an effort to compensate for that breakfast. It was LOVELY. (Super interesting stuff to read about, eh? I'm sure this is why you visit ;-0).

After brekki Ed and I scoped out previous exploratory routes in-around-through-above Evergreen proper, and decided upon ONE goal: to hook up: Home, Downtown, some random stupid-steep far-away roads, ONE PRIME PIECE OF UNmtbTRAVELED SINGLE TRACK, figure it out from there, then home from the other direction. One Big Loop.

CHECK. ;-) Done, and in spades, with very, very few pictures ... and I'm sure only a few seconds worth of "sneakyness"-attack.

Somewhere in the the first 1/3 of our exploration, we found (to our very deeply merry surprise), at the 'end' of an otherwise dirty and steep road, the following:

a.) COWGIRLS: hehehehe...... even SpaceCowgirls!!
b.) How many people do we know who would jump with glee and giddyness at such a sign? Oooohhhyeah....

While this lit me on absolute FIRE, we are till trying to figure out what, exactly, they were being so open to sharing. That said, it still allowed us to complete the Giant Hookup and we were blessed with some very, very special (all downhill) this:


and this:

Note: The single track was NOT right behind that lovely sign. There was some pretty confusing, sneaky, convoluted, typically EdandJeny-style MtbAction getting from there to there... but still: It's possible. And THAT made my day ;-)

The snow looks... soft and slippery. The cool thing was: it wasn't. It was tacky, and only in small sections. How odd!!! LOVELY little sneak attack to our day -- one of 3 ;-)

At the bottom of the Sneaky Trail, which I have now named Windless Cove, we bombed down to a familiar little town, and climbed our slow ponies up, up, up (passed by 4 roadies no less) to the top ... whereupon we snuck across the Big Road and delighted ourselves with another little dirty single track connector trail. Ohmygawd. It's just too perfect of a thing to do. No pictures, sorry.

Then the liquor store and the bike shop (just to say hi) on the way to our third little sneak attack (no pictures).... and then the climb home -- from the opposite direction from when we left.

Perfect.

All in all, it was just a LOVELY day to be outside wandering and exploring around in the sunshine and warmth ... in shorts. I think we hit a measly 23 miles, 3,500' up ... quite a bit of 'back roads', a solid amount of 'untraveled' old dirt roads, and a luscious amount of single track just as icing on the cake ... and in the middle of the cake ;-)

Siiiigggghhhh!!!!

Jj