o we did skip a day (or two) on the blog. I apologize about that. The weather so far has not been the greatest. We stayed the night at the Holiday Inn Monday because I have an ear infection (yuck!!) and frankly, I was not up for sleeping in the car. Thanks Mom and Dad for making the hotel possible!

Tuesday was filled with on and off showers of rain/snow and some gusty winds. It was pretty chilly ( at least for me – I think Ryan was more okay with it than I was) and somewhat frustrating. But we definitely didn’t let the weather stop us from getting out and having fun. We found an 18 hole frisbee golf course in Grand Junction and spent a couple hours playing that. The course was a little over two miles and set back in a desert like area. Ryan and I were pretty neck in neck score wise until about hole 11, then he totally kicked my butt from there!

After that we drove up to Colorado National Monument, which was gorgeous! There is a nice 23 mile loop to ride all around the park with a climb of around 2,300 feet. It looked like so much fun! Most of the climbing was right off the bat and with the way I was feeling it seemed a bit too much. Ryan drove us up past the hardest of the climbing and we pulled over where it started to flatten out more. From there we rode our road bikes across most of the top portion of the monument.

It was absolutely beautiful and so much better to ride through it on a bike instead of driving. I was feeling pretty fatigued so we turned around before we reached the bottom. Unfortunately I have been lacking a lot of energy and find it hard to keep going for too long without feeling light headed. Ryan rode all the way down to the bottom and I drove the car down. I was happy he kept riding. I don’t like to take away from his training time.

After our ride we took off to find some mountain bike trails. We stopped on the side of the road at an intersection, looking like total tourists, with out big maps out trying to figure out where the heck we were headed, when a local pulled up and asked if we needed help. Fortunately enough, he must’ve known we were looking for trails because he was headed to the exact place we were trying to find. We followed him to a set of trails (and I don’t know the names – I will have to ask Ryan) and he gave Ryan some good loops and figure eight paths to do. I could tell Ryan was pretty excited to get out on the trails, but it was getting late so he decided to do them the next morning. Our stomachs were growling so we found a Famous Dave’s BBQ and settled in there. We had a very filling and tasty dinner there – with plenty of leftovers to feed us for the rest of the trip!

So that basically leads us up to now – I am at the hotel trying to rest up and Ryan went out early this morning to hit up those mt. bike trails. The weather is chilly and cloudy once again. We will head to Fruita this afternoon to do more trails. Then it is on to Moab!