Waiting on the rain…: Steamboat to Steamboat
Sunday July 28, 2013
It rains all night. It rains all morning. The tent campground clears out as everyone heads home early, since the rain and fog are truly settled in. There’s no reason to stick around when it’s wet and 58 F.
The four people I talked to yesterday were all from Denver. It’s about a three hour drive from there to here. It makes sense that the throngs of people are all weekend escapees from the big city. Maybe the last time I was here in 2000 was not on a weekend. Still, the feel now in town, even after all the people have gone home is very different to thirteen years ago. The town has gone upscale and grown substantially. I used to think this would be a nice place to live – not anymore.
I do go for a ride into town in the afternoon between passing showers. The oddest and coolest thing I see, perhaps in all of Colorado, is an old Toyota ute that has the colours, emblems and text for “New South Wales fire brigade” on it. What is it doing here?! I don’t have my camera with me, and sadly, it’s not there when we are leaving town the next morning. Ahh… it even made me a teeny bit homesick for a second.
In the late afternoon, while sitting near the toilets to pick up the wifi, a guy comes in on an unloaded touring bike. He’s just there to steal a shower. Once he comes out, we have a short chat. He’s living up on Rabbit Ears Pass in the forest. He rides down the big-ass hill, and back up, every day to come into town to work construction. That is bad-ass, I tell you. That is not a small climb out of town. He lives and works here in summer, and then rides over to Moab to live and work there over winter. Good on him.
He warns me to stay off the Colorado River Road if it’s very wet, though. It was so muddy on his way back from Moab this year that he couldn’t even get his wheels to roll. He spent quite a few miles just pushing his bike down the railroad tracks instead. I thank him for the tips and wish him well as he heads off to try to beat the rain up the mountain.