upwithit
-
June 5
We broke camp and drove into Abiquiu to have breakfast and meet up with Susan who had been tied up with a radio broadcast and missed the feast.
-
June 4
We left the hotel in Grants and proceeded up through a variety of ecosystems. We were mostly in high altitudes where there were desert plants and lush trees. At two points during the day we could not locate the Continental Divide trail. We had been using small Garmin units to which we had downloaded “breadcrumbs” –…
-
June 3
After breakfast in Pie Town, Frank Floyd and I went out searching for a wireless signal and found one about ½ mile away at the top of a hill. We completed some correspondence while the rest of the group went ahead to Grants – the plan being to eat in a restaurant, have a few…
-
June 1 – 2
Day 1 – I finally got my bags and was able to depart Tucson by 3:30 p.m. (about 7 hours after the guys left) Catching up was a comparatively boring superhighway trip most of the way – – leaving cell phone messages back and forth as to the gang’s current location. I ended up in…
-
June 1
BACKGROUND In the summer of 2008 a group of Silk Road alumni and several others took a magnificent trip up through British Columbia, heading north to Whistler then east through the Monashee and Selkirk mountain ranges. Before the trip was over we concluded that we needed a plan for the next year. That plan was…
-
June 15-19
Dunhuang, Jiayuguan, Wuwei, Lanzhou, Pingliang My delay in providing this blog has had to do with not being able to get an Internet connection at some of these small hotels. At Dunhuang we stayed at an elaborate hotel shaped like a pagoda with many meetings rooms. Most interesting was the way the dunes of the…
-
June 13-14
The Ride to Jiayuguan & a Day of Touring We left in the morning for Jiayuguan, an oasis in the Gobi Desert that originally marked the eastern border of the Chinese Empire. Jiayuguan has a fortress, part of the Great Wall, that stretches between two mountains making it impossible to use the mountain pass without…
-
June 10-11
Hami and Dunhuang China We left our hotel each morning expecting miserably hot Gobi Desert weather, but were pleasantly surprised in both cases. Part of it was due to the high altitude – we reached a height of 6,000 ft. – and the rest was due to uncommonly cool weather. The winds were blowing up…
-
June 7-9
Ride from Urumqi China Kentucky Fried Chicken has been a favorite of the group. There are several who are addicted to the fried chicken, the potatoes and just hanging out at the place. Before leaving Urumqi, Dennis and I stopped in to get our grease/fat fix, and we were very amused at a large troop…
-
June 5-6
Yining Kuytun and Urumqi China We left Sasha, our Central Asian guide, when we crossed the border into China. Sasha turned out to be “one of the boys.” Sim, our Chinese guide, is more serious, less relaxed, more absolute, and clearly has more pressure working with China than Sasha had with the other republics. We…