Week 5     BLOG

Monday June 2, 2014

Non-Travel Day

 

This morning we headed south on US 550 to just north of the town of Ridgway, to the Dennis Weaver Memorial Park . This is a good size park that was donated by the family of Dennis Weaver, from the TV show “Gunsmoke”. We were told that there were some fabulous
bike trails in the park, so we took our bikes to check it out. Like so much of this area it is hilly, but there was one concrete path that ran along the side of a stream, but with the snow melt it was more like a raging river. We rode about 2 miles into the town of Ridgway, where we rode up and down some of the main streets of the town; it was a small but very well kept town. Returning to where we left the truck we decided to continue over the trail in the opposite direction. After we both struggled, with the altitude and the length of the hill, we reached the
top of a hill, and from there the trail leveled off and we were going to proceed down the road to a state park. Unfortunately Valerie had a tire blow out, but luckily she had not
mounted the bike when it happened. We were lucky to find an outdoor outfitter store in Ridgway that had a tire that would fit Valerie’s bike, all the other tires were the mountain bike tires with the aggressive tread, and he agreed to replace the tire and tube within the hour. While we waited we had a picnic lunch in the town square. After picking up the bike we headed for our next destination, no more bike riding today. We spent the afternoon relaxing at one of the local hot springs, there were several pools at the facility and we sampled
several, but our favorite was the outdoor 5 foot deep pool, the temperature of the water was near 103 degrees, and it felt great. A dinner out at a local restaurant specializing in Costa Rican food topped off the day. Centennial R.V. Park has been a very nice campground, from the views of the mountains to the large camp sites; it is definitely a place we would recommend.