Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I wanna move to Steamboat Springs!

So we leave Adam in Kremtucky after a wonderful night of sleeping outdoors on the trampoline (not sarcasm, trampolines are comforatble as shit!) and head off to Rabbit Ears Pass that goes down into Steamboat Springs. It would be a 60 mile day, and still a great ride up to the pass. The only thing we were bothered about was there not being any water stops for a good part of the trip. Our fears were resolved when we passed a bike race heading the opposite direction, from Steamboat, about 20 or 30 miles down the road. We stopped at one of the race's pit stops and they were kind enoug to give us food, water, and energy fuel. That shit is good! They were going over a hundred miles in a loop back to steamboat that night.

So we were fine and topped the pass, where we met the continantal divide, yet again. By this time I'm pretty tired of crossing the divide and ready to be west of it, but what can you do? While I was sitting waiting for the girls to peak and group of hikers pulled up to start a trip and I noticed that they had a Play Ultimate sticker on the back of their car. They were cool, and offered me some food and stuff. I had just eaten, but the girls came up while they were still there and we all kind of needed some water so we talked to them a lttile bit and they were heading to Steamboat that weekend as well. They told us about this place they had booked for the weekend at the Strawberry Hot Springs, a great little place right on the mountain in Steamboat. Turns out they could only stay one night and offered to throw the cabin at us Sunday night, free of charge! Hell yeah we took 'em up on that, on the condition that we pass it on sometime in the future, which I can say I definitely don't mind doing. The place was about $100 a night so we were extremely grateful for it. More on that later.

So we ride down Rabbit Ears Pass, and awesome 7 miles of scenery and no pedaling, down into Steamboat a couple of hours ahead of schedule. I got there early so rode into downtown to check out the scene and ran into the bike race people again. Iris and Laura met up with Austin, so I had to ride back out of town to meet up with them and passed the number one guy in the race. They made it in no time! Anyway they give me directions to ride up the mountain a little bit to where we were going to stay that night, which wasn't Austin's but some friends of his, Bill and Dori, who own an amazing house overlooking town with a meditation pond out back, fire pit, hot tub... the works. The home was truly beautiful, and Bill and Dori had done most of the work themselves because they are awesome!

We showered up there and went out to dinner (thanks again Austin!) at a nice little Italian place on the main Street. Then we went to a bar on the river that was very nice where I learned of a new drink... forgot the name,Russian something or other... but made with ginger beer and vodka, and it was delicious! From there we popped in the liquor store and met one of Austin's friends who we bought a bottle of double espresso vodka from. That stuff is tasty. We went back to Bill and Dori's and hangout with Bill until all of the vodka is gone and then until all of the gin is gone as well... Good times. Bill has got crazy stories, hopefully you can hear them sometime.

We say goodbye to Bill and Dori and recover to go to the hot springs later that night. This place was amazing. You can get naked past dark, which some of us did, and they have hot and cold pools you can jump back and forth in. We cooked some good chicken outside of our tiny yet awesome cabin and met up with Austin's friend form the liquor store. We ate and drank and were merry. Austin's friend danced all night to make sure the terrorists didn't win, and we found him in the morning still grooving out on the balcony. I'm glad too, we can't let those damn terrorists win.

We were then off for Craig, America!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

wahoo! I LOVE Strawberry Springs!
I was there a loooong time ago, when there was only a tepee, and it was AWESOME!
Then 3 years ago Wayne and I went and there were all those buildings and cabins and walkways... but it was still AWESOME! I'm glad you got to experience it, especially after dark :)