8-3-19 - (Day 10 - Vail Loop)

Lauren and Ferny Kat got up and left me lounging around in bed.  Ferny Kat insisted that he give her running water to drink, so he placed her bowl under a trickling water faucet.  A little bit later, Ferny Kat turned on the kitchen faucet wide open and was lapping water from it as Lauren was scurrying around to turn it off.  She is done with this water conservation.  That Dang Cat!!

We had another enjoyable cool, pretty morning drinking our coffee outside, watching Ferny Kat plunder around.

We took off on Amber around 10 am and headed North.  We took a ride to Turquoise Lake and looked at some potential future boondocking spots.  Turquoise Lake is very pretty and we found some spots we may like when we leave here.  The roads were very rough in the BLM campground so a spot near the entrance is best for riding Amber.

Main Street in Leadville was closed for an event. The only sign we saw was an Ice Fishing Derby sign.  Not cold enough for ice fishing, we are not sure what was going on.

We took Hwy. 91 to check out our possible drive to Granby.  It was gorgeous going up, and gorgeous going down the pass with a 7% grade.

We got on I-70 and went through Vail, Colorado.  OMG, we avoid interstates as much as possible, but it was the most enjoyable ride on an interstate that we have ever rode on Amber as we continued down the mountain.

There were 100's of bicyclist riding on bike paths near the interstate and then on Hwy 24.  There must have been a marathon going on.  The lowest number on a bike that I saw was in the 800's, the highest number I saw was in the 1100's.  Those folks are in really good shape.   Lauren said it tired him out watching them peddle up the mountain.

We toured through Minturn then continued on Hwy 24 for our other route option to travel to Granby.  It was a narrow road with drop offs on one side and the mountain on the other side.  We will probably avoid this route with Rap.

We finally stopped 3 hours later for a picnic lunch at Camp Hale.

The afternoon thunderstorms usually get going around 3 pm.  We thought we would get home before they started today.  We thought wrong.  They started around 2 pm.  Although, the roads were really wet in spots and we saw heavy rain in the horizon, we only got in light rain.  Whew!

Our 1st campfire of the trip.

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