There is this ability for the human mind to forget how difficult/painful an experience can be. This has to be why women have more than one child and, in my case (and six friends), I decided to ride my mountain bike over 200 miles from Telluride to Moab over a week.
Dean, Johnny B and I did the San Juan Huts: Durango to Moab trip back in August of 2016. In the fall of 2022, I started putting out inquiries to friends about doing the Telluride to Moab option for 2023. It didn’t take long to get a committed group confirmed so we booked a late July start date. Dean was the organizer/mastermind behind the 2016 trip, and I told him I would handle the logistics/planning for this one.
There were some lessons learned from the 2016 trip. I most definitely paired down the amount of stuff I was carrying on my bike. Gone was the 6 days of clothes, replaced instead with 3 pairs of riding clothes and 1 set of “hut clothes”. I left my down quilt at home and swapped it out with a simple sleeping bag liner. I also completely dropped the handlebar roll for a small and simple bag.
The biggest personal lesson I got from 2016 was to NOT drive from PDX to Moab in one fell swoop. instead, I opted to leave on Wednesday, July 19th, after work and drive to Moab over three days. This allowed me to play a little bit along the way. Carl opted to leave with me and the two of us had our bikes and shuttle two more bikes for the group that was leaving PDX early Friday morning.
Dinner in The Dalles preceded a late arrival at our campsite for Wednesday night. We opted for Emigrant Springs CG, the same place I stayed on night two of my solo trip in June.
Thursday morning Carl and I rode the Mount Emily Recreation Area (MERA) trails before a decent day of driving to our next campground in Idaho at The City of Rocks in Almo, ID.
The riding at City of Rocks was not overly technical, mostly just sand and a few rough patches where free range cattle had potholed the heck out of the trail. The rock formations along our ride were pretty cool though.
The City of Rocks is a designated international dark sky area. Carl and I enjoyed a nice night of stargazing the one night we camped. Adding to the experience was that the moon phase was just coming out of the new moon, so the sky was nice and dark while we were there.
After a quick ride on Friday morning, we jumped into Clifford the Big Red Van for another long drive to Green River, UT where most of the rest of the group would all meet up before heading to Moab on Saturday morning. The drive was pleasantly uneventful with just a bit of slowdown as we passed through Salt Lake & Provo.
Dean, John, John and Colby all drove straight through from PDX to meet up with Carl and I at the Budget Inn in Green River and a text from Mia pretty much summed up this particular lodging option…..she said “It looks like you could have been killed overnight.”
I’ll politely refer to the Budget Inn here as “adequate”. It had A/C, shower and beds. It was fine for one night passing through. In all honesty, the whole Green River area is rather sad and worn looking. There is some new development going on but there were also plenty of closed up shop windows and dilapidated buildings on the main drag through town. A decent find for dinning was the Tamarisk about a mile away from our hotel.
Saturday, we had to be in Moab for a 2pm shuttle pickup by Hazard County Shuttle. This allowed for a lazy morning and chill vibe. Geoff the owner of Hazard County Shuttle was fantastic to work with and our driver (sorry I totally spaced her name) was fun and had some interesting stories to share on the drive to Telluride.
It was just under a three hour drive to Telluride from Moab. We arrived a little bit past 5pm and bid adieu to our shuttle driver.
As I stood at the registration desk for the Mountain Lodge Resort the guy behind the counter leads with “Our manager had to make some changes to your reservation”. The first thought into my head was “oh crap, now what?”. However, the next words out of his mouth were “My manager had to switch some things around, your three bedroom suite has been upgraded to a four bedroom cabin at no additional charge.” Well Hot Damn! Thank you very much.
I’ve not really spent all that much time in my life in a world-class mountain resort. Mia and I drove through Aspen, CO last year, otherwise my “ski resort” town experiences are limited to Waterville Valley, NH and Lincoln, NH for the most part.
The seventh member of our group, Matt, drove up from Durango after visiting family there for a few days prior to launch. The group was now fully together and ready to go!
Saturday night would be the last night for the next week that we would have running water, showers, flushing toilets and a nice comfy bed. Once we started the hut-to-hut riding life would get much more basic.
The cabin sat at a smidge over 9,500′ in elevation. The general consensus all around on Sunday morning was that all of us flat landers slept like garbage. I know personally from the last trip that once we go over 9,000′ in elevation, I start to feel it. If I had a 7-10 day lead up I could acclimate better but there is no chance of that happening.
Up next…..Day 1 of our San Juan Huts adventure 2023.
Thanks for reading,
-Pete
ON & OFF RHODES 
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