Royal Pains and Highly Places

I wake up around 8am (Joe's alarm for 7am didn't work), and I am grateful for the extra hour (sorry blog, you come after sleep). Then I open the shades,

and we realize that we have the river from the Royal Gorge running through the backyard! Then we talk with the owners for a while. They were so nice! They let Joe park the bike under the awning to their lobby to keep it out of the rain, they started the space heater in the room for us while we ate at the cafe (they gave the waitress her tip for us the next morning),and they talked to us about where we should camp next. They said that we were going to pass through the Blue Mesa Park, and that camping there next to the lake is beautiful.

They also took a pic of us in front of their sign:

We ate breakfast on their patio overlooking the river,

and then headed for the dreadful Monarch Pass!

When we finally made it out of the snow (we had to take a few breaks getting up the mountain to release the pressure on the radiator), we stopped at the first store to buy some soup. Joe got the homemade Italian, and I got the homemade Chicken Noodle with macaroni noodles (and it was the best frigging soup ever! Creamy and noodly at the same time). And the bar/ restaurant was probably run by women b/c there were all sorts of feminist signs everywhere like "If a man says something, and a woman's not there, is he still wrong?" and "Man is proof that woman has a sense of humor." I'm obviously quoting these things wrong b/c I read them over a week ago, but you get the gist.

After melting we headed back out and eventually hit the Blue Mesa.

Then it was time to stop and put some ooze in the engine (we believe that there has always been a bit of a leak around the water pump that seals the water from the radiator away from the oil in the engine, but now its worse). So instead of using regular motor oil, we use super thick ooze that makes up for the water leakage (something that we will hopefully fix it we ever get to the Black Canyon). However, slight miss-communication, I was having trouble tightening the cap to the engine oil, I thought Joe told me to to let him handle it, and he doesn't really remember that, and so in the end Joe dumped more motor oil on us than ever before, and realized that it was because the cap fell out! I got off the bike and started re-walking our path, and Joe drove off to retrace our path the way that ends before the sun sets.

(You can kinda see the sleeping bag on the back of the bike going around the corner as Joe drove away)

I walked for about 10min. and I got to see a better view of the damn that made Blue Mesa Lake, and as I was taking pics of the damn I found some deer.

But no oil cap. Then another 10min. of walking, and I finally see Joe's one headlight. He had made it all the way back to where we put the ooze in, searched around, and then was on his way back when he saw 1/2 the cap off the side of the road on one of the tighter curves. It had fallen out as the bike tipped to the side to make the turn. As expected, a car, or more likely a truck or semi (not very many cars out west), had hit it and broke the dipstick off the inside of the cap. But Joe says that bikes don't need dipsticks b/c you can just tip the engine sideways and watch the oil slosh around. Good point. Anyhow, now it was really getting dark, and we were again, not making it to the Black Canyon. Joe wanted to camp at the Blue Mesa Lake like the motel owners were telling us, but it was way too cold by the lake, so we kept on. Then we passed a sign that said "Motorcyclists Use Extreme Caution!" and I was sold when Joe pulled off at the next truck stop. It wasn't really a stop, so much as an area between tight curves where there was space enough for maybe 2 semis to pull off the road. There was a national park about 5 miles away, but we agreed that 5 miles on these windy roads at night in the cold did not sound like fun. The river that was damned to make the Blue Mesa Lake ran right with the road, but about 15" below it to the right. So Joe and I climbed down from the pull off to the river, found a nice flat spot to camp, and we did.

The river was calming and set the two of us right to sleep, and we were also camped on a bed of spearmint, so again, very soothing. However, I was scared most of the night. Something was scratching at our tent, and Joe would yell at it to go away, but then it would come back. It was persistent! And in a tent, you have no idea what it looks like! Now I'm claustrophobic, so this is getting on my last nerve. I would rather open up the tent and get mauled by the thing than sit here not knowing what it is another minute. Joe, being much more sensible than I (yet still less sensible than anyone who is probably reading this), made a fist, and punched the tent hitting the thing in the face! "What is it!?" was my first reaction. "It isn't big, don't worry about it, probably a gopher and we're camping on its hole, go back to sleep." Well I tried, but it came back! Even after being punched in the face! And just last night I was listening to someone talk about this old woman who was attacked by a raccoon b/c she shewed it away from her back door while it was near its young. It clawed her right to the bone! And here we are, probably punching a raccoon in the face! Now I'm scared to be inside and to go outside (claustrophobia at its best). So, Joe tried one more time, and punched the thing in the face. This time, thank God! (yes, capital G) the thing did not come back.

The next morning we woke up to a frosted over tent, and I think we silently agreed right then that we were going to get a motel once we finally hit the Black Canyon. I collected some of the spearmint (thank you Tiffany from Kung Fu for teaching me about spearmint plants, those work parties were sometimes educational), and then we climbed back up to the road and packed the bike like we just needed some reorganizing, not because we were sleeping next to the road.