We had another nice weekend at the cabin. Randy and Sandra joined us on Thursday evening and Amy and Vince came up on Friday evening.
We received the call from the tree guy just as we were pulling into Cloud Country on Thursday night that he would be ready to take the tree down on Friday morning, but that we could not be in the cabin while they were working due to safety concerns. We left our poor kitties in the cabin on Friday morning and drove to Cloudcroft with Randy and Sandra for a full day of mountain biking. We arrived in town, got Sandra's MTB rented and set up at the bike store, and were preparing to leave when a storm developed overhead. We took shelter in the bakery, ate some great pastries and were able to take off relatively quickly. Sandra had not really mountain biked before, so we took it easy and rode the single track, the Switchback Trail, Bailey Canyon climb and La Luz Canyon climb. On the Bailey Canyon ridge top, we hit rain and continued on until a very close lightning strike persuaded us to take a break on the ground for a while. There were three close lightning strikes and some rain before the storm moved on, and we continued down the mountain. We hadn't ridden far when we saw the first tree shattered by the lightning and a little farther down the road, we found a second tree which was blown apart all over the road. It was more than a little scary to see what a lightning strike will do! The storms cleared, and we finally made it back into town after a very long and muddy day of mountain biking. We went back to the cabin to check on the tree, Amy and Vince arrived, and we had dinner at the Western Bar.
On Saturday, (Sandra and Randy had enough mountain biking the day before) Vince, Rick and I got ready and headed out to ride on James Ridge near our cabin. We parked, looked at the clouds, checked the radar and saw major storms headed our way. We then drove into town, met up the the others, shopped, tried to stay dry, waited, waited, ate lunch at the BBQ place, headed back to the cabin, waited... Then the clouds cleared so we went out for a late afternoon ride with stomachs full of BBQ. We survived, returned to the cabin to clean up, and drove to the pizza place for dinner. The owner met us in the parking lot and said a class reunion had taken all of their dough, so no pizza! We reluctantly went to Big Daddy's for an ok dinner.
Randy and Sandra took off Sunday morning, and Rick, Vince, Amy and I rode from Cloudcroft. We did the usual Sunday ride and left Amy's car down in Bailey Canyon so she didn't have to do the brutal climb back into town. We rode back up to Cloudcroft via the always challenging Old Cloudcroft Highway Trail for the first time in a while and had lunch at the pizza place before returning home.
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| One last look at the large pine tree going thru the back deck |
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| Sandra and Randy on the very muddy and treacherous single track on Friday |
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| Rest stop on the Switchback Trail with Rick, Randy and Sandra |
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| A lightning and rain break at the ridge top with 3 very close lightning strikes |
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| Ridge top lightning break |
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| The reason we took a lightning break--a large tree took one of the lightning bolts |
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| A little farther down the road another large tree had been hit and was blown apart by lightning onto the road--scary |
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| More carnage from the second tree hit by lightning and blown out into the road |
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| More tree carnage |
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| A couple of miles down the road on the La Luz Canyon climb it had cleared up |
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| Tired and muddy after a very long day of mountain biking |
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| Remnants of the large pine tree |
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| Only the bottom stump remained when we arrived back at the cabin |
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| Sunday mountain biking on the Switchback trail |
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| Switchback trail near High Rolls |
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| The cabin minus the large pine tree--the roof is next |
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