The roads in the area were extremely inviting.

We started with easier stuff…

…but quickly progressed to tighter ATV track and lots of sand!

When we hit the sand, I started to worry about Sue a bit. She was our camp neighbor.

Good morning Sue! She reminded me a lot of myself when I was just starting out on the KLR. Extremely enthusiastic about riding in spite of the challenges of starting on a whale of a bike.
The track tightened up and banked around a tree. A turn that tight in deep sand was a struggle for me and I thought I was going down, but somehow rode the corner out. Sue was doing amazingly well in the sand up to that point (especially for being such a new rider), but the bike went down in that dreadful corner and her GS650 tragically lost most of the windshield.

At this point we realized our group had gotten separated and we weren’t even supposed to be over here from the beginner course, oops!

Eventually we got turned back around and ont he road back to camp. I made this sound like a short excursion, but it was actually hours of drills and riding. We arrived back at camp at the exact time when the intermediate ride was supposed to start…but everyone was too exhausted, so we all relaxed a while and then played on trials bikes.

They had a nice little trials course set up and we all got to take turns making the rounds. Some chicks did really well.

but there were a few spills!

Wait a minute…that’s not a trials bike!

and this one definitely isn’t!

Crazy girls…

I missed the lesson on the trials bike, but ran over to the course to give it a shot anyway. I rolled up to the first log, but I wasn’t adjusted to where the clutch engaged, so I only -thought- it was out enough to give power, but it wasn’t, so I rolled up to the log, made a loud revving sound and tipped over. The second round went better and the third time I got a perfect score. 🙂

The trials bikes were really fun and I wished I had more time to play on them, but it started raining again (a common theme in Colorado) and so we ran for cover.

Some of the guys and gals were out riding in it though and their nice ride went from this:

to this:

After that long day of riding, everyone was in the mood to party!

The next morning I faced a dilemma. I could go riding and ride my bike home, or not ride and trailer back with Skip and Cathy. My bike was in desperate need of an oil change, so I was thinking that riding home wouldn’t be the best idea. After waffling on this for a while, they said to go ahead and ride and they would wait for me to trailer back. Okay great! I found a small group of mixed level riders and hit the trail.
One of the chicks I rode with was Laura.

She had only been riding a couple months, but was already addicted and doing really well.

I wish we lived closer and could ride together again! I need more chick riding buddies! That other lady on the KLR was Shelly and she was also really awesome. She’s ridden into Mexico many times and actually leads expeditions down there. She made me feel pretty confident about trekking down even further next summer.

Something about riding this day was just perfect. I’m sure the classes really helped my comfort level, but it was more than that. Just a really great day of riding.

The terrain was a perfect mix of rocks, sand, whoops and twists!

When I returned to camp, people were packing up and saying their goodbyes.

I had decided I would trailer back with Skip and Cathy, but that ride just felt so good, I was seriously conflicted about wanting to continue my ride. I had purchased spare oil to do a change, but I lacked a filter and the one I had really needed changing. No, no…I would just go home.

Then a guy came up to me, holding an oil filter. “Hey, you have a DRZ. Want this oil filter?”

I decided it was too serendipitous to ignore and informed my friends I would be riding onward! Where? I didn’t know…