Wildflowers Galore

Yesterday, I talked about arriving at our Crested Butte campsite and being so happy to see the sunshine. Even better, the sun was lighting up one of the most incredible wildflower displays I've ever seen.

I went for a mountain bike ride on a classic route, while the Runner took both dogs for a high mountain run. Unfortunately, it wasn't a place where I could take Shyla mountain biking with me.

But, the flowers on my mountain bike route blew my mind. The Aspen Sunflowers were taller than me.

They lined the high part of the trail. I literally stopped at least a dozen times to take photos of them. I got a moderately early start on each day we spent there, and I had the trails all to myself. Lucky me!

In some places, purple Fireweed mixed in with the sunflowers. The trail was smooth and tacky - lined with flowers the whole way.

As I look through these photos, I am reminded, yet again, why we try so hard to seize each summer day in the high mountains. Mountain wildflowers have fleeting lives at high elevations. I'd bet that this display is almost finished by now. I feel so lucky to have seen it.

We spent three glorious days enjoying this heavenly wildflower capitol. We'd run/bike/swim in the morning, and recline in the sun in the afternoons.

After those blissful days, we awakened to a change in the weather one morning. Because we were camped so high, we were literally *in* the clouds. We headed down about 3000' in elevation for some exercise. I rode on this pretty trail at about 8000' in the rain.

And then we visited the town and its wifi to research the weather again. We discovered that a stretch of clear and beautiful weather was approaching out in the San Juan Mountains. We immediately hit the road to get there as fast as we could!

We had a super stroke of luck. Normally, we spend the first night in the San Juans camped near a main road, and then I ride a cross-country route to our favorite campsite, meeting the pack there (they drive a 4wd road). For some reason, I started thinking that we should drive directly to our campsite that night, even though it would be a bumpy and painful van ride for me.

As we drove up the 4wd road toward our campsite, we reached a "road closed" sign after about 10 miles. At first, we were morose. Then, we read the sign more carefully, and we saw that the road was closed for the following day - all day long. So, we went around the blockade and made it to our campsite that night.

That was a fabulous stroke of luck because, if we'd followed our usual plan, I would've arrived at our campsite, after 5 hours of hard mountain biking, to discover that the pack wasn't there due to the closed road. We did have satellite communication devices (DeLorme) so I'm sure we would have figured out a solution but it would have been a very rough day. Thank goodness that we decided to break with tradition and go straight to our campsite!

When we arrived at the campsite perched on an overlook, the moonlit view was incredible.

What a great trip we were having!