Ride - Turned 4-Wheelin'

We had planned another long ride today and decided we should scout out the territory first, to make sure we could get the rig parked somewhere – and back out. Pretty good decision. We took the truck, knowing the road would turn into a 4 – wheel drive road, just to see how far we could pull a trailer. When we got to the end of the “normal” road, there was a nice turn-around, so we continued up the 4 – wheeler path to locate the trailhead we remembered. It didn’t take long to become true 4 – wheelin’; shift to 4 wheel drive low. We found the trailhead we wanted and even scouted out another that we thought would make a great circuit, with a lake at the halfway point. Sure glad we didn’t have a trailer behind us! The F350 barely made some of the turns and because of the wheel base length barely cleared the rocks/ridges (no side-to-side maneuvering, trees brushing the truck). I don’t think we collected any CO mountain pin-striping, but it was close. One large, fallen tree in particular, was laying with its root base poking into the tracks, right at a sharp turn at the top of a steep section. Bill did a great job driving!

Found the upper trailhead, turned around and headed down. Bill tried turning the truck in the turn-around, only to find we were just too long to make it in one shot. With a trailer behind, we wouldn’t be able to turn around without jack-knifing the trailer. So…the only solution to riding this area in the near future will be to ride the horses over, like we did previously. The only downfall is it’s a two hour ride to get there cross-country, to ride a 1 ½ hour trail ride. We could ride along the highway quicker, then along a lot of gravel road, which is not fun for our horse’s unshod feet. I guess we will just have to do this trail later in the year when we can do much longer rides, but we still had a great time being out in the Forest.

P.S. – Still no camera with us…it was in Bill’s saddle bag, all ready to go!