3,687m - Crossing the Rockies with our bikes.

Our bikes can boast they have crossed the Rocky Mountains. We weren't actually riding them. I regard myself as fairly fit and trim for a 50-something girl, (D could lose a few kilos - lol), but neither of us are up to the challenge of a 12,000 ft climb. Only 7,000 if you start in Denver!

The drive from Denver to Aspen via Independence Pass is one of the prettiest in Nth America. The highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide, the Pass is closed in winter and opens early June. David insists that the US National Parks Service drop dynamite from helicopters to clear the snow each year. It sounds crazy to me but Americans do some pretty weird things and maybe this is one of them.

High Altitude Cycling - 600 vertical feet

Bringing our bikes over Independence Pass must have gone to our heads. We live at sea level and neither of us cope well at high altitudes. Last year we tried cycling at Telluride (click here for the story). Telluride clocks in at 9540 ft (2907 m). The cycling was hard, very hard  - even hiking was difficult.

Beware the bears!

No I'm not talking about those bears - the ones that jump out when the stockmarket bulls feel complacent. I mean the real bears - the furry ones which populate the American wilderness.

The nice lady who served us at the Aspen supermarket today says if you are in town at 4 o'clock in the morning there are bears everywhere - black bears. There aren't any grizzlies in Colorado. They come to scavenge for food. I'd love to see them but I'm not sure it's worth getting up in the middle of the night.

Independence Pass 12,095ft

'Independence Pass'  - Don't you just love the way Americans name things. They are proud of their country and they show it. There is nothing shy and retiring in a name like Independence Pass. It is out there and it is patriotic with a capital 'P'.

Sometimes, I think we, Australians that is, should be a little more vocal in our pride.  Lets face it, we all love our country and really there is no place on earth we would rather live, but just occasionally maybe we should say so. Not as loudly as the Yanks perhaps but something slightly above the almost embarrassed whisper in we historically cloak our nationalism.

They drive on the right over here!

D will drive anywhere in the world.  He's the only person I have ever met who has hired a car in Macau. The rental car guy didn't seem fazed, but just about everyone else thought we were crazy.  Navigating was a nightmare.

Whenever non-travelling friends ask us about driving in the US, the first thing they want to know about is how hard it is to drive on the right hand side of the road. Our answer is always the same - Be careful at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly and it is just not that difficult. What we don't tell them, and what you never get used to, is walking and cycling on the right - instinct just seems to take over and you find yourself constantly moving to the left.   To all those very nice Americans who I ran off the Rio Grande trail today because I just cannot get used to cycling on the right - I am really, really sorry.

Maroon Bells - The most photographed mountains in the US

Maroon Bells are the most photographed mountains in the US - and it is easy to see why. We spent the day hiking, first around Maroon Lake and then up (and I mean UP) to Crater Lake.

One for the Twitter Traders and the Rio Grande Trail

Doc Holliday came to Glenwood Springs to 'take the waters' in the hope that it would help his consumption (tuberculosis). It didn't. A few months later he died - in bed with his boots off - not, apparently, the way he had expected to go. He was buried in Linwood Cemetery. The exact location of his grave has been lost but the local Chamber of Commerce erected a memorial to him. D and I made the trek up to Linwood today. The temperature was in the high 90s Fahrenheit. It was about a half a mile from where we were able to park the car, along a reasonably strenuous track, in a beautiful mountain setting.

9,540 ft - High altitude living

Mountain Village, Telluride clocks in at 9540 ft (2907 m), more than 2,000 ft (609 m) above our own, diminutive, Kosciuszko. Nestled in the magnificent San Juan Mountains, Telluride is charming and breathtaking at the same time.

Mesa Verde and the Thousand Mile Mark

In about 1200 AD the Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblo people) who had lived since 550 AD in the area of Mesa Verde moved from the flat land of the mesa tops. For reasons that can only be guessed at they began to build their homes in alcoves clinging to the precipitous sides of the mesas. Less than 100 years later, and just as inexplicably, they abandoned the area. The National Parks Service ('NPS') now administers Mesa Verde and conducts tours of the cliff dwellings they left behind.

I think we have found the middle of nowhere.

I always thought Australia had a monopoly on the middle of nowhere. I'm pretty sure we lived there for a couple of years when we were younger. Today we discovered that the US has a middle of nowhere too.

We drove from Durango, Colorado to Vernal, Utah. After the first hour it was five hours of nothing -  it just about drove D mad. Personally I quite like 'middle of nowhere' landscapes. There were a few, time forgotten towns, you have to wonder what draws people to make their lives in them, but mostly just miles and miles of nothing, a bit like being on the moon.

Of Dinosaurs, Petroglyphs and Pictographs

150 million years ago, give or take a bit, a whole lot of dinosaurs died, in what is now Utah.  Their bones were swept along a river and deposited together in a dinosaur graveyard.  Along came Earl Douglass who discovered and began excavating the bones. He was followed some years later by the National Parks Service ('NPS'). The NPS built an exhibit hall around the main dinosaur quarry and commenced a people-mover tram service from the carpark at the bottom of the canyon leading up the hill to the quarry.

The Grand Tetons - was it a moose or an elk?

The Grand Tetons are the less well-known cousin of Yellowstone National Park.  We 'did' Yellowstone a couple of years ago with No.2 son. This year we thought we would knock off the Tetons.

At Yellowstone we saw elk, bison and a grizzly bear as well as bubbling mud and geysers.  We didn't see any moose. Someone told us that the Tetons were the place for moose, so here we are.

This time it was definitely a moose!

Day Two - Did I see a moose today? Yes.

It was definitely a moose. Much bigger than an elk, partly hidden by trees, exciting, brief - a fleeting glimpse of a magnificent animal. I have discovered that moose are shy and elusive. I looked at her, she looked at me, and then she was gone. David didn't see her at all.

The Craters of the Moon National Monument

Just the name makes you want to visit. It kind of proves my point about Americans giving things great names, don't you think?

The Craters of the Moon National Monument is a vast landscape of dried lava flows. Surreal and eerie - I loved it. David, being more of a bucolic countryside person, thought it could have done with a good landscape gardener - level the whole lot off, bring in a couple of thousand truckloads of soil and plant a nice lawn with neat rows of flowers.

Some days you win and some you lose.

Today's plan was to cycle. We are in Boise, the capital of Idaho, passing through on our way to Oregon. Apparently Oregon is green and pretty. Have I said that David likes bucolic countryside? How can he call himself an Australian? Give me a good honest desert any day.

The Boise River winds through the city. There is a  25 mile (40 km) cycle path following the river's greenbelt. On a sunny day it would have been idyllic. Today it rained. We got wet. Fortunately, not too wet. Many years of experience at the cutting edge of tourism have taught us that some days work out better than others. Today was one of the less exciting days, but we've had worse and we've learnt to take the good with the bad.