During our normal morning routine, while drinking tea and coffee we check the weather forecast for the area we plan to ride to and, unfortunately, it didn’t look good. The weather radar was basically a sea of green – rain everywhere :-(. While a small shower is no big deal, continuous rain is a different matter. It’s not fun to ride in and camping in, even less so. What to do?
Diane has a brother she hasn’t seen in a while that lives near Denver, CO which was only 100 miles and one mountain pass away. Plus, that very morning as we were packing up we noticed that the seam on her waterproof duffle bag had separated – the same failure I had on my bag on our last trip – more on that later. So, we would need a new waterproof bag which is only available at specialized stores. Finally, Diane’s birthday would be the next day. All these factors made a strong case to spend the weekend at her brother’s place. Thankfully, he’s very laid back and was home for the weekend so after a quick exchange of text messages we were on our way to Denver.
We spent the weekend hanging out, updating our blog, shopping for a new waterproof bag and restocking our supplies. Most important, Diane got to spend her birthday with family. The plan is to leave Monday morning to head southwest towards Pagosa Springs, CO and work our way west towards Utah. There’s a 50% chance of afternoon and evening thunderstorms along our route so tonight we’ll get to test whether the flaking seams on our tent fly are something we need to worry about.