Black Bear Pass

Much to my surprise and delight, I awoke this morning to clear skies and no rain in sight. This was all our small group of jeepers needed to take off for the mountains. If there is one trail in the area whose fearsome reputation scares away a lot of off-road enthusiasts, it is Black Bear. Death, dismemberment, worse than listening to Nancy Pelosi are just some of the words used to describe it...

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Fortunately, in my opinion, it is not nearly as bad as it is made out to be. Any relatively experienced driver, who does not have a paralyzing fear of heights, can make it as long as they take it slow and easy. There are a couple of switchbacks that will get your attention as you pay a severe penalty for making a mistake...

If you do make the ride, you are rewarded with awesome scenery...

Oh, and there are some mountains and other stuff...

My dash cam recorded the entire ride but it was over 2 hours long so I edited it to show what I believe is the more interesting section between "the steps" and the big waterfalls near the end. Run time is ~33 minutes...

If you have the bandwidth, I recommend watching it at 1080p resolution

Click here to listen to C.W. McCall's Black Bear Road.

Monsoon Season

The first three weeks in southwestern Colorado, I did not see a drop of rain; it was sunny every day. However, starting last week it began to rain just about every afternoon and has slowly gotten worse. Here's the forecast for the next ten days...

I think I will buy a new Xbox One S with a bunch of video games and put Domino's Pizza on speed dial.

Grand Imperial Hotel

We took Ken and Faye's friends from Mississippi up over Corkscrew...

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Hiking at ~12,400 feet is a little hard on the lungs

 And into Silverton for lunch at the Grand Imperial Hotel (est. 1883)...

World Famous Lacey Black
(www.laceyblackmusic.com)

My kind of fine art

Visiting these old mining towns is like stepping back in time.

Yankee Boy & Governor Basins

Ken, Faye and I took the jeeps up Yankee Boy and then Governor Basin hoping to see the mountain wildflowers in bloom. It turns out they do not plow Governor Basin and we ran into an impassible snow drift near the top. It also appears that the heavy snowfall this past winter and spring have delayed the flowers.

Food/Fun/Friends

One of the things I enjoy about the RV lifestyle is making new friends and sharing a common experience. Tonight, I joined my park neighbors for pizza at a local micro brewery...

Corkscrew/Hurricane/California Passes

As you can tell from previous posts, the San Juan Mountains south of Ouray, CO are a postcard factory. Everywhere you look is a "Kodak moment"...

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