Tuesday, July 15, 2014

July 7, 2014


Amy, Vince, Randy and Sandra joined us for July 4th weekend in the mountains.  The July 4th parade was nice in typical Cloudcroft style, and the daily monsoon showers and cool temps were a welcome break from the Texas heat.

Rick, Vince and I took on an adventure and rode our mountain bikes from the cabin to town via carrying the bikes over a fence, riding some very lightly traveled trails, pushing the bikes up the side of a mountain and across some mountain tops without a trail and finally finding the gravel road to Cloudcroft.  It was raining some and the altitude varied from about 7700' to over 9100', but our Gaia navigation app came through.  We ended up with over 3000' feet total of climbing and rode back to the cabin via highway 82 with a nice downhill run.  It was 15 miles and 3 hours to town and 12.5 miles back for a long and difficult 27.5 mile trip.  

Randy, Sandra, Rick and I hiked the Switchback Loop trail on Sunday (a little over 5 miles).  And Randy, Sandra and I hiked 6.5 miles on Monday in the forest near the cabin by following elk trails up and down the mountains.  The six of us also walked 4-5 miles in the subdivision on Friday evening.

The annual POA meeting was Saturday morning, so Rick and I got to meet a lot of the neighbors. We also cut down a few dead and poorly placed trees and will do some more clean-up next trip.  A new wood-fired pizza restaurant has opened in the restaurant at the ski area.  The pizza is wonderful!

A large elk is located just to the right of Rick's right handlebar in the distance just as we reach the top of the mountain.
Rick rescues an alligator juniper tree
Pedestrian bridge over Highway 82 between Cloudcroft and High Rolls
Springs near the water tank in the forest near our subdivision.
A view from the top of the mountain on an elk trail.

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