Water pockets reflecting the clouds on our favorite mountain bike trail, Navajo Rocks.

Here’s a little factoid: There are five counties in Utah where Mormons are in the minority: San Juan, Carbon, surprisingly Salt Lake, Summit, home to Park City, and Grand, home to Moab which makes perfect sense to me.

Our friends Chrissy, Mike, and Marlene joined us. We spent three nights at Utah’s newest state park, Utahraptor and five nights up on the mesa at our favorite BLM primitive pit toilet campground, Horsethief.

Just like last year, we had some crazy wind and rain. I guess we should start expecting it. We finally rode Capt. Ahab. Never again! It was hellish. Overall, there were no mechanicals, no injuries, and just a little blood, so all in all it was a successful six days of riding with one hike thrown in.

I hope you can view the pictures on something other than a phone. I don’t mind saying so myself, some of them are amazing.

Utahraptor, site 303. They did a great job developing this campground…pull throughs, water and power, and tons of room between sites. In the evening when the lighting was just right you could see Turret Arch and the North and South Windows at Arches National Park.

A dark period in American history. There were three Citizen Isolation Areas. Moab was the first. This is where they put the so called “troublemakers” from the internment camps.

Chrissy, Amelia, and Marlene all giddy for the first ride.

Chrissy following Amelia on one of the Klondike Trails.

Marlene all smiles

Perfect form by Amelia

Mike and Marlene reflection

A Great Basin Gopher Snake slithered through our campsite for a sip of water.

Apparently they don’t want you crapping in the desert anymore.

Morning at Utahraptor

Harvest moon at Utahraptor

Site #46 at Horsethief Campground, same site as last year!

Chrissy on Rodeo, one of the trails right from the campground.

Mike climbing the incredible rock.

San Diego riding partners

Mike and Chrissy

A little too much for this old guy. Marlene and Amelia are better technical riders than me, but the double black diamond rating had them doing a lot of hike a bike. Mike nearly rode all of it! Chrissy was smart and didn’t ride it! The views were amazing, I’ll give it that.

Capt. Ahab

You can only ride so many days in a row. After one of the big rain nights we hiked the West Rim at Dead Horse Point State Park. It was awe inspiring.

Walking along the edge

The clouds were drifting up from the bottom and changing by the minute.

It truly was one of those hikes we won’t ever forget.

Heart shaped water pocket

I really dig the reflections.

Rising clouds

It was an amazing five mile hike.

Spectacular

We timed it well, this is the end of the hike.

Our first Navajo Rocks ride it started raining hard so we aborted. On Saturday we went back and rode the half we missed.

Beautiful ridable rock

I’m running out adjectives to describe the beauty and enendorphins from being this close to the rock wall.

Mike and Chrissy dwarfed by the rock.

Adios Moab, see you in April when we do the White Rim Trail!

A downhiller’s delight

Our first stop in Utah was Richfield to ride Spinal Tap. There’s been a lot of chatter in mountain bike circles about Spinal Tap. It’s on our way to Moab, so why not stop and give it a go. When we arrived at Venture RV Park we were greeted with 40 mph winds, not fun. Sometimes the iPhone weather is correct: it said the wind would die down in the evening and it did.

While taking my evening stroll through the campground an old codger started chewing my ear off. He was telling me a storm was brewing and he expected it to hit at 4am. I told him where we were going to ride in the morning, he said, “Good luck partner, it’s 9,600 feet at the start.” Then I had to hear the tale of him trying to cross the Pahvant Range in his side by side last May, only to get snowed out. The old codger liked talking.

I was finally able to escape, got back to Opal and told Amelia the old timer’s weather report. The iPhone had no indication of rain. So we went to our go to site, noaa.gov, duh, it was shutdown…

Sure as shit it started raining at 4am! And up in the Pahvant Range where Spinal Tap is located the lightning was going off.

At 8am, when nine guys, Amelia, and myself got into the shuttle van it was cold and cloudy. Amelia was stoked because the driver was a chick, so she wouldn’t be the only one on the van. Her name was Karlie, and also happened to be co-owner of Richmond Bike Shuttle.  Amelia called shotgun and the two chicks talked non stop for the hour long ride. I was two rows back, between two groups that were also talking non stop. I didn’t utter a word the entire trip. We were both happy!

Spinal Tap is an expert level one-way trail with 4,000 feet of elevation loss. If you plan on riding it we suggest using Richfield Bike Shuttle.

We had a beer handoff at the San Diego/Riverside county line on our way out of town. My buddy Acomb’s kid works at Mother Road Brewing in Flagstaff. Whenever he visits he brings beer and Acomb always shares the booty.

Site 12 at the windy Venture RV Park. It’s new and plenty of space between sites, unlike most RV Parks.

Loading up at the bottom. Karlie was quick and efficient loading the bikes. She told us there was no precipitation in the forecast.

Brrr…at the top it started snowing! Karlie couldn’t believe it. She kept on saying, “It isn’t even November yet!”

Stoked to still have some fall color.

Hairpin turns amongst the aspens.

Endorphin fueled happiness with flurries. It was pretty cold and we had to stop multiple times to warm our hands.

Gorgeous fall colors

On the second leg, we finally got out of the flurries, hail and rain into a cycle of dark clouds, blue skies, and puffy white clouds.

Amelia shredding the corner.

Looking down on Richfield.

On to Moab!

Sharon and Mark’s neighborhood.

I swear we still have an Airstream. In a few weeks she’s going on an adventure to Utah. This was a quick three night jaunt south of the border to visit our expat friends Sharon and Mark. They’ve been living in Mexico for four years. We left our truck at Amelia’s mom’s house. She drove us to the border and Sharon drove us across.

We’ve known Sharon for years and just recently met Mark. Here’s a little story you can file under it’s a small world. Sharon and Mark were coming to our place for dinner. It had been awhile since we’d seen Sharon and it was an opportunity to meet Mark. Sharon said Mark was a big fan of my book and really wanted to talk about it. So of course that pleased me. It turns out he is from Idaho Falls! Just a year older than me. We didn’t know any of the same people, but still had a lot to talk about, it was an instant bond.

Playa Santa Monica is part of Rosarito Beach, an easy 30 minutes south of the border. The population is 120,000, of which 15,000 are expats. Buying a home in Mexico has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. How it’s done depends on various factors. Sharon and Mark’s neighborhood is a campo. The land has been owned by a Mexican family for generations. Currently four siblings have split the property in equal quadrants.  They own their home, but not the land. They pay one of the siblings $500 per month to lease the land. It’s a 10 year lease with incremental increases. They bought their sweet little two story home for just a little over 100k and it’s only 120 paces from the beach! The neighborhood has 80 homes, less than half are full timers. It’s is a mix of expats and Mexicans. Not all expats are retired. Their neighbor is a young gringo family with two kids. He’s a longshoreman and commutes to National City on his Harley. The oldest kid attends a Waldorf school a few miles away.

We ate and drank a lot, swam in the ocean, and were able to work in a siesta everyday! Sharon and Mark were the consummate hosts. Night times were peaceful. Laying in bed the sound of the waves put us right to sleep. No need whatsoever to use the evening crickets on my Calm app. A couple of things from all our conversations really struck me. Mark said he feels safer walking around Rosarito Beach than he did in Escondido, where he used to live. And I think this perfectly sums up Sharon: she brings all her recyclables north across the border instead of throwing them away.

A view of Coronado Islands and the breakers from their deck.

Downstairs, most of their living is upstairs.

Our first stop was Sonja’s for lunch. One of the specialties is a burrito with napolito pieces inside. That’s Sonja working the flat grill.

Highlight of every Baja trip is the 75 foot Jesus at Kilometer 38 between Rosarito and Ensenada. The second pic I stole from the internet.

Sharon knows the proprietor of the Black Cross Winery in Cantamar. It’s out in the sticks. We navigated dirt roads and farm land and had to have Amelia ask a farm worker where the winery was, of course it was just another quarter mile down the road. We had a delightful private afternoon tasting.

Sharon, Mark, and Amelia

A couple of their offerings

Evening stroll on the beach

The most shell-crusted sea anemones we’ve ever seen.

Heading north, the pristine shoreline of Baja is really starting to be developed with high-rise condos. We got a little carried away and stayed out until it was dark, next thing we knew we were locked out of the neighborhood! Around 8pm they lock all the gates to the beach. It was quite a predicament. Sharon eventually got hold of a neighbor by texting. The neighbor got security to come unlock the gate.

I was up early the first morning and went for a stroll. This is a fancy Little Free Library.

On the main drag there’s a cinderblock wall with inspirational murals. Amelia translated for the folks who aren’t bilingual.

The greatest inheritance we can leave our children is: love, knowledge and a planet on which they can live.

Teach your children to put trash in its place.

Education begins in the family.                                               Sterilize your pets.

Mark and Sharon believe in giving back to the community. They contribute to Friends of the Rosarito Library, Baja Scholarship Foundation, and Baja Spay and Neuter where they help the veterinarians, mostly observing the animals while in recovery. 

Flock of Brown Pelicans, affectionally known as Mexico’s Air Force.

We must’ve hit five or six taco stands. Tacos Daniela was my favorite.

Playa Santa Monica walkway

They have nice art work in their home. This piece called The Queen by Vincent Wray was my favorite. Vincent is a Brit living in Valle de Guadalupe. He uses metal, fabric, discarded farm stuff, and wine barrels in his art. The queen’s headdress utilizes old plastic cap nails and roofing paper.

Bob, the neighborhood cat.

A dramatic evening sky

I never thought I’d say this, but we all got tired of Mexican food, so we went to Manny’s Place for Italian. Calling Manny a character is an understatement.

I don’t remember what I said, but it sure got the girls laughing! Mark makes a perfect margarita. When he offered us one last one for the road before we heading into TJ, how could we say no?

TJ is a completely different vibe than Rosarito Beach. A big congested city. This tattooed, dreadlocked, ear gauge wearing dude spent over five hours on his chalk art with only a handful of pesos in his tip tray.

Our last meal was old school cool Caesar’s Hotel in Tijuana.  The dude in the big frame gets credit for inventing the Caesar salad in 1927. Back in the day Amelia’s grandparents ate here often after watching  jai alai games.

We knew Mexican Independence Day is September 16th, what we didn’t know was the celebration begins the night before. Roads were closed, traffic was complete hell, instead of minutes to get to the border crossing after dinner it took over an hour and a half. We’ve never seen or been in that kind of gridlock. It was stressful as all hell. Mark was extremely patient. We said our goodbyes at the Ped East crossing entrance. A quick walk and we were back in the United States. Amelia ordered up an Uber (we are fairly new to this stuff), it was dark and we had a hard time locating the driver. When we finally did, we loaded the luggage in the trunk and jumped in the back. The Uber car wouldn’t start. It was completely dead. We just laughed and ordered up another one.

It’s easy to take things for granted and even grumble a little. Traveling is enlightening and always reinforces how blessed we really are with our life in San Diego.

Sitting at home one evening, we stumbled upon “Bono: Stories of Surrender” on Apple TV. The film is an adaption of Bono’s one-man show and best selling memoir. It was captivating, personal and intense. Watching it brought back the memory of the first panic attack I remember having.

It’s funny and strange the little things our minds remember that people tell us. Oftentimes our friends can’t even recall saying it, but it impacts us. Sometimes it’s criticism, or a nice complement, or nothing important at all. Yet, our minds, even decades later just won’t let it go.

I remember a college friend, William F., in early 1981 adamantly claiming U2 was going to be the next big thing. I always thought of myself as being musically savvy. I had no idea who U2 was and I thought it was a stupid name. William F. is Irish so I assumed that was one of the reasons he was selling them so hard. Their fifth album, Joshua Tree, came out March 7, 1987. William F. was correct, U2 had become big.

That was the era of AIDS. It was a scary time to be in your twenties and single. Disinformation was rampant, which just elevated the fear factor. I remember being at a social gathering and some of the more ignorant being afraid to open a sliding glass door because my buddy, a known womanizer, had just touched it. The hysteria was so bad some people no longer hugged. Then there was the theory that if you had unprotected sex with someone it was the same as sleeping with everyone they had ever slept with. If you let that get into your head, the number became huge. 

I wasn’t the most promiscuous guy. I’d say my reputation was worse than the reality, but still…I’m a worrier by nature. I’ve been told I buy worry by the truckload. I had myself convinced I had contracted AIDS.

According to the Google machine, U2 played the San Diego Sports Arena on April 13 and 14, 1987. I don’t know which date Kim and I attended. This was the tail end of our five years or so relationship. The last couple of years were more off than on. We both cared deeply about each other, it just wasn’t to be.

I was so worked up about thinking I had AIDS that I experienced a full on panic attack and we had to leave the concert. To be honest, I don’t remember if we even made it through the first song. Kim was very understanding.

Soon after that, we all started getting tested for AIDS. It was agonizing waiting multiple days for the test results. 

Sometime after we finally ended our relationship, Kim said to me when she hears the Pretenders song Back on the Chain Gang it reminds her of me. I like to think it’s the verse:

I found a picture of you, o-o-oh, o-o-oh

Those were the happiest days of my life

Like a break in the battle was your part, o-o-oh, o-o-oh

In the wretched life of a lonely heart 

Long, long time ago…

Myself, Kim, and House heading to some wedding in 1987.

Needles and Tracee, our gracious and generous hosts

The Double E Ranch was our base for five nights in Colorado. We might have to change the name of our website to Greg & Amelia’s Adventures as this was another non Airstream trip.

If you recall our blog post First Came the Thunder, we are big Chuck Prophet fans. Amelia is fanatical about his latest release Wake the Dead. She’s calling it her favorite album of the decade. We’ve been dying to see Chuck live, sure as shit, he was in San Diego while we were in Alaska. So we checked the upcoming tour dates. He had two gigs in August in Denver and Boulder. And we have friends that recently moved to Fort Collins. It was the proverbial killing two birds with one stone. We booked our flights, bought our tickets to the shows, and reserved a hotel room in Denver for one night.

The agenda was take the shuttle from Denver to Fort Collins, spend Wednesday night at the Double E Ranch. Needles and Tracee were kind enough to let us use their new Audi Q7 and on Thursday afternoon we drove back down to Denver, checked into our hotel, and caught the show Thursday night at Globe Hall. On Friday we had time to kill so we did a few things around Boulder before the 7pm show at eTown Hall. After the show we returned to the Double E for the weekend, and departed Monday.

Chuck Prophet and his Cumbia Shoes did not disappoint. It’s rare nowadays when something exceeds your high expectations. The first show at the Globe Hall in Denver blew us away. The energy was amazing. The second show in Boulder was quite a bit different. It wasn’t really a show, it was a taping for eTown. The sound quality was perfect and we were in the front row for this seated show where the hosts also interviewed the artists. 

The Double E is on a nice little 120 acre spread west of Fort Collins. They’ve just started raising Dexter cattle. They have five cows and one Aberdeen Angus bull. They are all short and stocky, just like Needles and me, since I’ve been shrinking. 

We’ve known Needles for decades. Never in our wildest dreams did any of us think he’d end up as a rancher in Colorado. 

It seems like all of us have nicknames. Needles real name is Doug. Back in the early 90s we were all calling him Neidermeyer, because of the character in Animal House, Douglas C. Neidermeyer. The classic story from back then involves Rheinhardt. Dave House had a condo in Mammoth where we all hung out. If you stayed there you left your season pass on one of the jacket pegs in the foyer. One day Rheinhardt was looking at all the passes and had Doug’s in his hand. With a perplexed look on his face, he said, “Doug Hoffee? I thought his name was Neidermeyer!” Neidermeyer eventually evolved to Needles and now he’s stuck with that name.

The ranch house and shop

The view north from the second level looking at the cattle grazing.

They are just like dogs. Shake the treat container and they come running.

Petey, the bull with Buttercup

Amelia ready to drive the side by side for the first time!

A field of Blue Chicory

I absolutely love the fact Needles has a urinal in his home!

Smoky sunset on Wednesday

In Denver we stayed at Catbird, a boutique hotel in the RINO (River North) district.

I thought for sure I’d kill myself getting out of the bed and down to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Chuck and Amelia pre show

Yes, Globe Hall is kind of a dive bar. If you’re familiar with San Diego it’s a cross between the Casbah and the Belly Up.

Amelia with Alejandro “Flaco” Gomez. He shreds the 12 string acoustic and keyboards.

Look at Chuck’s shoes!

A 38 second clip to give you an idea how fun Cumbia music is.

Showmanship

There’s always a funny guy adding an F to ART.

An interesting apartment building in the RINO district.

While killing time on Friday we drove up Boulder Canyon and spent some time on Boulder Creek.

Then we killed more time at Sanitas. Of all the breweries in town we picked this one because my mom loved owls.

The eTown hosts and the artists that perform for the evening always come out together and do a final song. They have a strict no videoing or picture taking policy while the artists are preforming.  Alysha Brilla, in the dress, was the other artist performing. She was really great.

Chuck was happy to see Amelia again. He said, “You’re beautiful, singing along to all my songs.”

The wrinkle brothers Saturday day drinking.

I’m doing exactly what it looks like I’m doing, and what a great view. That weekend we saw White-tailed deer, Pronghorn, and a Great Horned owl on his property.

Mabel and Lu the Pug. Lu can be a real shit ass, in a lovable way.

Beautiful glow on Saturday night

We all took a Sunday drive up Poudre Canyon and made numerous stops along the Poudre River before having lunch at Mishawaka. Poudre is pronounced “poo-der.”

Our generous hosts busted out some incredible wine for our last evening.

A storm came in with rolling thunder and hail. It was pretty exciting for us San Diego folk.

As quick as the storm rolled in, then it was gone.

All in all it was a fabulous trip, but one can always find something to complain about, commercial air travel is a drag. If you’re not a fan of people, then you are going to have a tough time with the busy airport terminals, and being packed like sardines on the plane. We are looking forward to our next big Airstream trip in October.