Blogs from United States, North America - page 4774

May 23 Day 9 Durango to Silverton to Teluride to Grand Junction, Co. Durango 9:30 and out the door ready for our next adventure. I take highway 550, the San Juan Skyway which mostly follows the Animas river up the canyon. We climb about 3,000 feet and reach the Molas Pass at 11,000 feet. These ancient mountains were created by a huge volcano. When the volcano exploded it sent huge amounts of rocks into the air. The vacated and sunken area is called a caldera and is a huge valley surrounded by majestic mountain soaring 13,000 feet above us, the rim of the old volcano. I get out of the car and find out the outside temperature is 43 degrees. Duhh, the snow should have been a clue. I exchange my flip flops for shoes and ... read more

Day 20: Dolores, CO to Telluride, CO Total Miles: 81.1 (1348.9 mi total) I'm sitting here in an library in Telluride, one of the most beautiful towns ever, contemplating whether we'll continue on this evening - we'll either bivy here in the park or truck on out to Placerville to ease the miles for tomorrow (we've been riding short days lately, we get the brunt of it done by 1 or 2 then we take a long break - and sometimes fail to continue - eating makes us tired and stuffing our faces seems to be inevitable while off the saddle). We awoke refreshed from our hotel stay and flew up Lizard Head pass. I believe this may be the highest elevation we've hit so far, about 10,500 or so feet. The ride was beautiful, winding ... read more

The California Zephyr is the 2,422-mile train line that connects Chicago and San Francisco it is the most picturesque rail journey in the States and is marked by contrast. Travelling out of the suburbs of Chicago it heads through the Great Plains and then winds its way into the Rocky Mountains in the heart of Colorado before finally heading out to the Pacific coast. The journey takes some 53 hours in total and there is only one train per day. To break the journey up and to provide ourselves with a fabulous opportunity to explore some of these remote yet beautiful landscapes, we planned to stop at Fraser-Winter Park, a ski resort village high up in the Rockies, and Salt Lake City, our gateway to Yellowstone Park, Deadwood and Mount Rushmore. We boarded the train at ... read more

Stopped for a minute to see the coast at Cresent City. The weather wasnt very good and it poured the whole drive. But we made the best of it.... read more

We have arrived safely, albeit warily, in San Francisco. Today was quite an adventure! Our plane arrived on time, but not before we had at least one student lose his boarding pass and another student get patted down for plastic explosives - really! I wish I were making it up. Then, as we took our transport (by bus) from the Oakland airport to the subway station, our bus driver hit a pedestrian. Does this seem crazy enough yet?? Luckily, there was no real damage done. Since then we've checked into our hostel, discovered that catching a bus can take an hour, and reminisced over the fact that if you walk the 2 miles one way on the Golden Gate Bridge you have to WALK back as well; no, there's not a bus. Oh, and in case ... read more

Alright by now most of you realise that we came home early!! We cam back for a few reasons; 1. To surprise everyone 2. Save money 3. To be back in time for the world cup :-P!! 4. I was getting annoyed with Kim’s relentless smoking and drinking binges!! :-P While we were away our plan to come home early was pretty hard to keep from everyone so we had to slow down our blog entries and tell a few white lies so people thought we were in different locations than we really were! Writing a New York blog before coming home would have given the hint that we were coming home early especially as our final flight was from JFK airport. We had a lot riding on NY and hoped it would live up to ... read more

Setting off early yet again, myself and Marcus drove from Cody to the east entrance of Yellowstone, to encounter a bizarre change in weather; it must have dropped 20 degrees F as soon as you went across the checkpoint and there was alot of fog and snow still left from the winter. Unfortunately there were roadworks for the first 6 miles or so into the park, so we and about 6 cars had to be taken through with a convoy vehicle before we descended onto the north of Yellowstone Lake. The weather improved as we drove across the park and we did get to see some wildlife, Bison and deer in particular. Yellowstone is amazing and there are two loops you can take the north and the south, we chose the south as you get to ... read more