I woke up to the sound of rain on tent at 6 something, and the thought went through my head that I might have to stay in Sargent ANOTHER night. Luckily, it only rained for a few minutes off and on. When I got up, I got to work on replacing my tire. I was about halfway through when Joe walked up and offered to help me. Together, we got the old tire off and the new one on without too much trouble. They took off on a ride soon after and I went to take a shower to warm up. It was really cold out, but not too long after my shower, the clouds parted, the sun came out, and it instantly got at least 20 degrees warmer. I finally got all my stuff packed up (including my old tire, which I thought might be prudent to take along given that I just installed a used tire), gassed up, and hit the road. A few miles down the highway from Sargents I turned onto a dirt road and the fun began. At one point I was supposed to turn again, but the turn had no trespassing/no motorcycle signs, but I eventually figured out a way to reroute around it. After I while, I came to the split in the trail where the ‘hard’ option was. Turns out it was an old wagon route from the 1800’s that had been a toll road. I decided to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did. It wasn’t as hard as the ‘normal’ riding I’d done a few days ago, and it was beautiful. There were definitely some tricky rocky climbs but I figured it out. That part was maybe 10 or 15 miles long, then I reconnected with the road I had originally been on and continued. It was well taken care of dirt road, so I flew down it pretty good and eventually made my way to Lake City, CO, where I had been on a family vacation about 20 years ago. I can’t really remember much, but it’s a beautiful mountain town. I had a great lunch there of chicken tenders and fried okra and some southern cooking place, and I knew it would be good because they had an A&M flag flying up front. Apparently the owner went to Tarleton but he had family that went to A&M or something. I got this from an employee since the owner wasn’t there. I looked into staying in Lake City, but a tent spot at a RV campground was north of $25, so I’m sure a motel room was ridiculous too. So, I rode up onto the next segment about 10 miles to Mill Creek Campground (http://www.fourcornersgeotourism.com/content/mill-creek-blm-campground/fca10BB61B244EF98B32), which was $7 since it was BLM campground, but didn’t have a shower. Oh well, it’s been so cold I haven’t really been sweating, and the view here of this creek/river is great. On another note, the BLM website is even worse than the Forest Service. I can’t find any mention of this campground on their website. It’s terrible. There needs to be a google map type thing to see all the FS and BLM campgrounds in the US….
dude, these views are nuts! what an awesome segment.