Valley View Hot Springs

I know, I know, you’re all like, “Jeez Claire, how many awesome things can you do in one month?” To which I respond, “INFINITELY AWESOME THINGS.” This was all Travis’ doing. The boy can certainly spend a lot of time looking at maps, but sometimes that pays off. One of these instances was finding a hot spring for us to camp at.

Valley View Hot Spring is a part of the Orient Land Trust. The springs have been here forever, and there even used to be a mining town nearby called Orient that dwindled away like all the other tiny mining towns. Back in the 70s, a couple bought the hot springs and turned it into a nice little mountain retreat. When it became clear that their kids weren’t interested in taking on the business, they turned the land over to a trust to ensure that their beloved springs wouldn’t be turned into a bougie, highly developed hell hole. As it is, wooded, secluded hideaway perfect for people to get naked and sit in really hot water.

Yes, Valley View is also clothing optional. However, unlike Orvis, the previous hot springs we visited, it feels a little more ok at Valley View. Orvis is like 50 feet from the highway, small, and enclosed in a privacy fence that makes it feel like a compound. Valley View feels like mountain summer camp for naked people. 

One morning in the communal kitchen, Travis and I discovered Nude & Natural Magazine, the official publication of the Naturist Society. Did you know there’s a Naturist Society?? I should have guessed, but I was not prepared for how comprehensive this lifestyle is. There was a piece on a nude 5K, which aging naturists are hoping will draw in the youthful running crowd to a naturist way of life. There was a personal essay written by a dude who only likes to be naked at home, complete with pictures of himself going about his normal naked life chopping vegetables and lounging in the sunroom. There were profiles for the candidates running for the board of the Naturist Society, which featured “get to know you” photos showing one election hopeful birdwatching nude, another raking leaves in his yard nude, and the last going to a brisk hike— nude except for hiking shoes.

I guess the Naturist thing started in the 70s, and it evolved from simply a clothing opt-out to a lifestyle choice. They claim that it is more healthy, not lascivious, and natural (clearly). They are quick to distance themselves from other raunchier lifestyles that involve lots of naked people in public, like gay cruisers or swingers. These people go to Naturist conferences where everyone is naked; they choose naked vacation destinations in Croatia and New Mexico; they are enticed by non-piercing body jewelry. Well, I’m not sold on the lifestyle. But I did get naked with strangers.

It is super weird having a totally normal conversation with someone you’ve never met while you can see his balls. That’s all I’m saying.

In any case, the hot springs were amazing. There were seven pools to soak in located all over the mountainside. Trees everywhere, clear sky view, LOTS of birds for Travis to ‘noc. It was relaxing. We just let it all hang out. Lololololol. 

On the second night, Travis’ brother Clint drove down from Denver and soaked with us for a bit ( NO ONE was naked for this, we aren’t WEIRDOS). Then we camped for the night outside the springs, ready to wake up for our last National Park visit.

West Elk Loop

The West Elk Loop was totally out of the way. Our final destination was in SE Colorado, and the West Elk Loop highway would take us NW before circling back to exactly where Kate picked us up to take us to Crested Butte. But we were really feeling these mountains. I had been intimidated by them for the whole trip lead up— The Rockies!! Who bikes through the Rockies!? Here’s the secret guys: the Rockies aren’t that bad.

Even when carrying 40 pounds of shit. Bring on the mountains.

This highway is amazing. No cars. Like one car every ten minutes. There was one real town. That’s it! It was called Crawford and it was another weird little mountain town, except this one clearly didnt get as much traffic and was in an economic downturn. I say “real town” because after the Cimarron incident we’ve come to realize that just because a town is listed on the map doesnt mean its going to contain more than a few trailers. No gas stations, no mini-marts, no shops. So after Crawford was when the real emptiness started. 

The other thing about this highway was that we got to see the Northern side of the Black Canyon. You would think that a giant gorge in the ground would mean that all the water in the are would be flowing down to it, right? Well in order to get the canyon overlook you have to climb up a huge plateau and THEN there’s the startling drop off to the canyon.

 We pedaled as much as our little legs could go then we realized we had been climbing for like five hours, hopped some barbed wire and settled down for the night.

I’m starting to feel repetitive talking about biking and climbing and pedaling and descending, but I don’t know what to do about it. On some days we really just ride our bikes from six to ten hours. Not continuously of course— there are snack breaks and lunch breaks and snack breaks and bird breaks and picture breaks. It’s not super exciting to write about but that’s what’s going on. It’s an amazing way to spend the day, especially when you’ve picked one of the most epic landscapes in the country to do it.

And it actually feels awesome to exercise that intensely. My little legs love it. I don’t think it would be as much fun cycling at 15 mph all day without a little climb up a mountain to set you back to 4 mph for a few hours. Where would the challenge be? 

Anyway we made it to the Black Canyon stretch. The canyon was at the peak of the climb, and we could see all of the landscapes we’d passed through during the past few days.

The scenery is so varied here that you’ll pass through two or three habitats in a single day, and once you get high enough you can see all of them at once— desert valley, sagebrush hills, verdant mountains, jagged canyon and blue blue reservoir. All at once! Didn’t I pick a great place to ride bikes for a month? My idea.

We descended and descended down this perfect highway. It started to rain again just as we were reaching a pit toilet. This was tolerable because it seemed like an actual “afternoon thunderstorm”. I’m ok with that, because that is a normal Colorado weather pattern.

We dressed for the rain, this time I did the classic Chicago homeless man move and rubber banded plastic bags over my shoes. I looked a mess but my shoes were DRY. Luckily I look great in my rainpants.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck. In the commotion of packing up from the pit toilet, I left my Lady Crocs. A LEGITIMATE tragedy. Those shoes were crucial to this trip. That added to the total of shit I lost, which at this point is up to over $100. Arm warmer, sock, shoes, gloves. That’s just my stuff. Travis lost a fair amount as well. The moral of the story: always put stuff back in the same place; always run the strap THROUGH your clothing item instead of just strapping it down to the bag; always do a site sweep EVERY TIME you stop anywhere. Now I have to wear these stupid athletic looking cycling shoes for the rest of the trip. Life is hard.

As we neared the valley, we passed over the Blue Mesa dam, which forms the Blue Mesa Reservoir.

They dammed the Gunnison River which runs through the Black Canyon in the mid-60s, flooding out three small towns. The reservoir provides water to the city of Montrose and area farms. And that reservoir is looooooow. Like 50 feet low. Like you can see on the banks where the water has been in the past and it is scary low. 

This is how Colorado gets its water. There is an average of 12 in of rain in most parts of the state, so all the water is stored from the spring snowmelt. And if there’s not a lot of snow in the winter… Then that’s it for the year. Have you heard the This American Life about climate change? A  good portion of the episode focuses on Colorado. You should listen to it.

The state’s population is expected to double in the next 15 years or so, and they are expecting 10-20% less water to be available. This is going to be the front lines of future water wars. And still people keep moving in, building fancy houses in the suburbs with fancy lawns which need watering. Kinda like another state I know… Except in Florida we’re changing our natural landscape by draining the Everglades to build fancy houses for people who aren’t from here, going deeper and deeper into the aquifer, overloading our waterways with agricultural runoff that pollutes the only water we have. So we can’t judge here, but we are equally fucked.

We rolled up at the Curecanti Recreation Park, which is situated right on the reservoir, which was perfect.

We ended up having a great camp night despite the RVs and other multiple campers and the ballsy little chipmunks.

Then we packed up and hit the road. 

We stopped in another part of the reservoir to jump off some cliffs and go swimming. 

Then we booked it to Gunnison to try and beat the rain. But then I got my first flat of the trip. Luckily I was wearing my pink tank top and we got picked up almost immediately by a nice lady whose husband owned an outdoor adventure outfit. He happened to know a bike shop owner who dropped off a spare tube for us even though his shop was closed on Sundays. People have been very kind to us. And it all worked out. 

Bye Bye Crested Butte, Hello Paonia

We had to tear ourselves away from Crested Butte. It was extremely difficult. We had been sleeping in a king size bed for three nights, there were a million restaurants to spend our money at, and hundreds of day hikes that we could have ventured on. But alas, we wanted to ride the West  Elk Loop route, and it was going to circle us around back West instead of East to our final destination, so we had to get going. 

Then it started to rain. FFUUUUUUUUUUUU.

I want to make sure you understand this rain. The temperature drops 20 degrees immediately. It drizzles steadily until your whole body is soaked. The clouds block out the sight of the mountains so you feel like you’re encapsulated in a space cloud. 

Also, the pass to Paonia is mostly gravel, and we know how fun gravel roads in the rain are. We scrambled to the thrift store to look for rain gear. Since Crested Butte is a rich outdoor sports town, the thrift store was packed with ski and hiking gear. We both found rain pants for about $20 each. I said earlier that my only regret for this trip was not bringing a Go Pro, I lied. I regret not bringing rain pants. And fenders. And lobster gloves. All of which I have at home.

After the shopping trip, it was still raining, which was a perfect excuse to go eat inordinate amounts of junk food. Which brings us to a note on food and eating.

It is insane the number of calories I’ve eaten on this trip. The very first day of riding in Arches my body freaked out and I made Travis stop for pizza and then I cried. I was that hungry. Travis never feels hungry when I am, so I always suggest eating and he’s like, “Naw, I’m good,” which makes me feel like a glutton. But at least as soon as I start eating, he realizes he’s hungry and then I feel redeemed. 

We eat pretty well when we’re on the road camping— granola with powdered milk and peanut butter for breakfast; tuna wraps for lunch; Indian packs or ramen noodles for dinner; cliff bars, summer sausage and cheese, beef jerky, apples, peaches, or PB&Js for snacks throughout the day.

But when we get into town it’s a totally different story. It’s like we have to eat all the fried things, and we normally do. This pizza place we ate at in Crested Butte offered “The Workingman’s Special,” which was a specialty slice, salad bar, a shot and a fancy beer for $15. We both ordered that, AND truffle fries. I am extremely curious to see if I lose any weight from this trip, despite the 5-7 hours of bicycle riding on travel days.

Here’s the most surprising part to me— all that riding has kicked my metabolism into overdrive, so instead of my normal travel bowel activity (pooping once ever three days), I’m pooping at least twice a day if not more. Gotta move that food! 

Also there’s the farting issue. When we first got started on the trip, Travis remarked that it was like we had two extra traveling companions: our buttholes. They had a lot of opinions and were very vocal about them. Kinda like Chewbacca’s unintelligible running commentary. I blame it on the processed food, summer sausage particularly. In any case, Travis’ body has adjusted to the eating and exercise, and mine just hasn’t. It’s kind of great though because I basically always have a fart on cue. 

Travis: “How do you feel about climbing this mountain before lunch?”
Claire: “I think we can manage.”
Butthole: “Pfffffttthbbbh (Yeah let’s go!)”

Anyway, the sun came out in the afternoon and we left Crested Butte over Keblar Pass around 4pm. 

Gravel roads are so low traffic that they are worth the challenging terrain… Until it starts raining. Which it did, of course.

This time we had rain pants but still hadn’t figured out a shoe situation. Feet were soaked very quickly and hands were cold and wet this time Travis got mad. It was just bad luck. We were riding down into a beautiful valley with a Cezanne pallet— orange cliffsides melting down into a lush green valley.

We even saw a herd of elk (if you squint you can see them).

It was really hard to enjoy though. That was the big bummer about it.

The rain really slowed us down, and dark was approaching. Our lights were shit and our rain gear was all black. I stuck out my thumb and a VW bug stopped. Melinda let me borrow her pink anorak to show up better in the headlights, and offered to go home and switch out the bug for her truck. We were pretty close to Paonia so I told her not to worry about it, but ten minutes later she showed up with her truck and her dad.

Me, Travis, five bags, two bikes and tons of mud stuffed into the back of the pickup camper, and they dropped us off at Dana’s house around 9pm. I gave Melinda her anorak back and thanked her profusely.

Dana is Cousin Kate’s friend. She used to live in Crested Butte but ended up buying a house in Paonia when she and her boyfriend broke up three years ago. She makes her living as an artist as well, and Kate set us up to stay with her, which was great. We stayed up talking for a bit and then fell asleep on the pullout couch.

What do you think Shackelton’s doing right now?

The next morning, we got a tour of Dana’s backyard garden, which was quite impressive. Gardens in high season are fun to look at. 

Dana decided to ride with us part way as we left town. She took us to downtown Paonia to restock on supplies. We stopped by the restaurant/inn branch of The Living Farm, an organic farm right outside of town. 

That’s some successful agritourism right there. The restaurant is supplies with local veggies and meat from the farm, and tourists can stay at the inn right above the restaurant.

I remember reading something a while ago about how Colorado is staunchly anti-corporate, and how they drove Borders out of the state in favor of local bookstores. It’s still true today, even in these small rural towns. Paonia had local restaurants, a variety store, a butcher shop, and a thriving downtown. Compare this with Florida small towns— there’s usually a CVS, a Dollar General, a gas station, and maybe a Winn Dixie. The downtowns are blown out and abandoned, unless some enterprising out-of-towner has moved in to start an antique shop. It’s depressing.

We were all packed up— we even bought fresh sweet corn, peaches and cherries from a farm stand. We passed by the site of The Living Farm, but they only offer tours on Tuesdays and you have to have reservations.

That’s what I’m talking about! Farmers work hard and don’t have time to be showing people around any time of day. Since Farm to Table is so in these days, farmers should be jumping on the chance to make some money on a marketable resource and charge people for what they want to see.

Dana rode with us to the very edge of town, wished us luck, and sent us on our way to embark on the West Elk Loop.

Cousin Kate and Crested Butte

Cousin Kate is pretty great. She loaded our bikes into her chariot (a Toyota pickup from the 80s) and saved us two days riding by depositing us in Crested Butte by motor vehicle.

From the get go she started telling us (very animatedly) about her art, her cat, her roommate, it was all great. She runs an Air BnB operation out of her spare bedroom. If you’ve never used Air BnB, I highly recommend it. Regular people rent out rooms in their houses, or sometimes their entire house, and you can stay there instead of staying in a shitty hotel. So if you’re ever in Crested Butte, stay with Kate.

Let’s talk about the house. First of all, its In downtown Crested Butte. 

Crested Butte is a ridiculous little resort town that has attracted a large artist population, in addition to the typical Colorado outdoorsy type. If you want to know what the typical Colorado outdoorsy type looks like, it’s this

My boyfriend has “gone Colorado”.

I would like to assure you that I am still wearing all black when I can, and the only fashion irregularity that lets you know I’m on a camping trip is my Lady Crocs, which look like flats and aren’t immediately recognizable as garden wear.

Anyway, the house. It was built in the 1880s. It’s a weird, slanting, two story cabin that has been added onto over the years.

Kate bought it a while back and has made it awesome, with antique and junk sale finds, marvelous houseplants, and charming animal inhabitants.

The animals! There is Phoenix, who is a wolf dog pup who belongs to Kate’s roommate Jess. 

He’s a baby, but he’s also half wolf… Luckily the only ways he gets into trouble is trying to nab the butter off the counter and chewing up the toilet paper.

Then, there’s Shackelton.

Shackelton, the adorable diabetic cat. He was recently diagnosed, and Kate is doing her best to keep him healthy— feeding him a raw diet, giving him shots of human insulin, monitoring his blood sugar levels by catching his pee in his litter box. I became slightly obsessed with Shackelton.

 He’s enormous, for starters. Also he has great big blue eyes that bug out a little bit. He has the most pathetic meow— he just lets it squeak out a tiny bit, like he’s losing his voice. Also, his favorite game is “the chewies”, which means he likes to be gnawed on by a little dinosaur grabber toy.

 I find myself reminiscing about Shackelton— I’ll ask Travis, “What do you think Shackelton is doing right now?”

We spent a lot of money that night at a great Asian fusion restaurant called Ginger. It’s extremely difficult to not spend a lot of money every time we’re around places to spend it. Our logic is, “We spent two whole days eating tuna and trail mix! Fancy Pad Thai time!!” What’s great about Crested Butte is that there are so MANY great places to spend your money— gourmet coffee places, mountain bike rentals, bookstores, art galleries. Luckily for us our choices are limited because we can’t carry anything. However, I DID find the perfect boots that I’ve been looking for for YEARS. 

They were in a thrift store and I bought them and mailed them home, that’s how perfect they are (I can wear them with pants OR shorts!).

Kate is extremely busy. She talks fast, she jokes, she moves on from one idea to the other in a heartbeat. Idea examples—  plant a garden out behind the cabin so she can serve Air BnB guests truly local meals; start a goat dairy and make artisan yogurt packaged in reusable terra cotta containers, delivered by bicycle by some of the hundreds of mountain athletes in the area (“Like the milkman used to do!”); at baby showers, expectant mothers receive their baby’s ONE STRAW which he or she will use over the course of a lifetime so as not to waste plastic (she really hates plastic). One idea that came to fruition was Poo Fest, an annual Spring event during which residents of Crested Butte pick up dog shit that has been accumulating in the winter snow. Kate was just really tired of stepping in dog shit everywhere. Also, in years of heavy snow, she constructs a “snow cave”, which is a multi-roomed cavern dug out of the snow embankment in the backyard. 

This lady is for real.

Kate’s a successful artist and makes her living from it. She helps run an artist co-op, does some freelance work, and features her pieces in monthly Art Walks. So saw her some, but we were left to ourselves during the day. So of course, we went for a bike ride. It wouldn’t be a full day unless we climbed a mountain, amirite?

Crested Butte is the Wildflower Capital of Colorado, and it shows. We even technically missed wildflower season by a few weeks, but they were still spectacular

I don’t understand why more places don’t follow Colorado’s example— in Florida, we mow all our wildflowers, plant sod, then pay someone to mow it every two weeks. There’s no reason we can’t have blanket flowers, coreopsis, and clovers growing by our roadsides. Florida means flowers for chrissake. 

A neat thing about working in agriculture is being able to recognize wild cousins of cultivated crops and landscape plants. We know dill, so we recognize cow parsnip. We know carrots, so we can pick out Queen Ann’s lace. Same thing with wild roses, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, yarrow, amaranth, echinacea, and dracaena. 

We got hungry after our nature ride, and ate a very late afternoon pizza snack. A little while later, Kate invited us to the local movie theatre to see Wolverine, which was badass. The movie theatre, not Wolverine. Wolverine was kinda stupid but Hugh Jackman does have great abs. No, the movie theatre! 

You can buy liquor drinks there! And beers on tap! And when you get popcorn they put clarified butter on it for you, and you can top it with nutritional yeast! Nutritional yeast at the movie theatre! Popcorn for dinner!

It’s things like nutritional yeast at the movie theatre that make Crested Butte a part of what I like to call The Fantasy Bubble of the West Coast. I have very little experience of with “the West”— I’ve spent some time in Portland, visited LA, and at the end of this trip I will have a month in Colorado. But boy oh boy do I have some opinions about the region. 

The West Coast seems cut off from a lot of American reality. The fact that you can walk into a store here and buy marijuana to smoke recreationally, not medicinal purposes puts Colorado on a whole new level. Smoking for pleasure could put you in jail almost anywhere else. Also, nobody locks anything here, from their beach cruisers to their $1500 mountain bikes to their front doors. 

Cousin Jonathan and his roommates in Durango haven’t even seen a key to their house in three years. This is what happens when you go to the liquor store for goodness sake!

Crested Butte seems to embody this insularity— it’s a resort town that has the particular distinction of being artsy and creative. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live in a place that supports artistic people and has embraced liberal and creative concepts decades ago to make them the norm. But I guess I like life to be harder, and I still want to work to transform my backward-ass, conservative hometown into a place that would welcome a firecracker like Kate. In like fifteen years. We’ll see how long it takes me to get burnt out on THAT project.

Moving on… The next day, we followed Kate’s roommate Jess’ advice and decided to hike up to Green Lake. It was 4.5 miles away. After biking this whole time, 4.5 miles seems like nothing. We figured this would be a three hour hike. Well it was 4.5 miles straight up a mountain.

After three hours in ascent I started asking Travis, “Are we there yet?” like every three minutes. I had nothing else to do that day except I really wanted ice cream, and I was expecting to have my ice cream fix fulfilled much sooner. But the hike was worth it.

We did indeed buy ice cream as soon as we got back to town. I got a single scoop of lavender honey, and Travis got a double of Thai basil coconut and pear.

Both on homemade waffle cones. People need to jump on this basil ice cream bandwagon, that shit is the bomb. If you need specialty basil, I know a GREAT little urban farm in Tallahassee that can supply you with some.

After ice cream, we had very good intentions of going back to Kate’s house and making healthy vegan dinner. Except that Kate was at the bar, and that bar happened to serve quesadillas and chips and salsa. So we ate junk food and got drunk instead. Kate showed us her studio, where she was busy at work with a volunteer getting pieces framed for Art Walk. 

She gave us shots of Makers and introduced us to her creepy chimpanzee toy.

Afterwards, we did indeed go home and do some drunk cooking, and it turned out GREAT. Jamaican style cabbage with coconut rice and curry kidney beans. YUM. We chatted with Jess and then we all had to go to sleep.

What do you think Shackelton is doing right now?