Day 13:
- Took Tom to drop off his truck for repairs
- Left camp around 11:30am
- Offroading near camp
- Lunch on the trail
- More offroading and geocaching
First thing in the morning, I ran with Tom to drop off his truck in Divide at a shop. He had discovered some u-joints that were bad and encountered some stubborn parts attempting to replace them. The trip was pretty quick, even though we went a few miles the wrong way on US-24 at first.
We returned to camp, and the group got stuck in a “I dunno, what do YOU want to do?†mode. We decided to do some offroading and geocaching nearby, since a few of the guys had found some neat areas the night before. We left around 11:30am. Dusty was kind enough to let me ride along with the DML gang and she took Evan for the afternoon. The offroading group consisted of Adam’s rental jeep (with Jackie, Jayson and myself riding along), Jon’s rental jeep (with Ed and Tom as passengers), Mike’s Dakota (with Don riding along), Walt and Ingrid in their Ram, and Jason and Norah in their Dakota. I’m not entirely sure where we went, but Walt and Jason both were navigating with GPS maps.
At one point in the trail, we encountered a fun spot that was a little two deep and narrow for Jason and Walt, but the rest of us pressed on down the trail, which ceased to exist according to the maps. We turned around eventually and had our lunch on the trail. When we got to the fun section, Adam and Mike took a few runs up and down the path while Tom and Walt took video and a bunch of us took photos. Jason, Norah, Walt and Ingrid were parked right above that section. After that section the weather was starting to look bad so we figured we’d better get off that hill before the storm. We had some pretty heavy rain on the way down, but everyone made it down safely.
The rain passed and we found a couple of new areas to explore while looking for a couple of geocaches. Jason and Norah split off from the group. In the afternoon we climbed a couple of large steep hills on foot in search of geocaches, one of which was in a burn area that was gated off (though there was a sign asking us to shut the gate after passing through. We also traveled through a muddy area marked as a “flash flood area†(good idea, yes we know). We found another geocache that was placed near an old S-10 that had presumably been rolled off a small cliff into the woods. We also found a OHV playground, where a few shenanigans ensued. Adam got the front wheels of his jeep up on a large boulder, with Mike’s direction.
We returned to camp around 8:00pm and sat around the campfire. It was Jan’s birthday, so Dave surprised her with a cake and ice cream, which we all shared. We didn’t stay up too late, since we had early plans the next morning.
While we were gone, Dusty and Evan visited Old Colorado City and downtown Manitou Springs. They tasted the water from three of the springs in Manitou Springs, and Dusty reports that one was good and the others tasted like baking soda and sulfur. She got the oil in the truck changed while she was out and returned to camp where Evan played in the trailer, since it was raining unfortunately. After the rain stopped Evan got to play in the sandbox at the campground before dinner and bedtime. When Dusty put him to bed, he didn’t want to sleep, thereby revealing a flaw in our little wall we made for the bunk end. Evan got his head stuck between the wall and the side of the trailer (actually the lifters for the roof). He screamed, but Dusty rescued him without incident.
More stuff:
- Walt offroading in his show truck (which was cleaner after the trip than mine has ever been), complete with laptop, GPS, FRS radios, and webcam.
- Ingrid holding back a branch as Walt passed, and having to walk after the truck until his stopped in a large mud hole
- Jumping the jeep over a berm in the trail – too bad we didn’t tell Tom in time to videotape it
- Mike’s truck walking through the hardest line on most obstacles with little problems, except for having to reseat a coil spring once
- Finding an animal skull (actually more of a severed head) near the geocache in the burn area
- Putting pennies in the tread of Adam’s jeep’s spare tire
- Tom reporting many useful facts along the trail, including the fact that he had 4 bars of cellphone signal
- Jason’s parents visiting camp from Utah