On Saturday morning, Bryce and Roger got up early and went to find a store that would fix the flat tire. As soon as they got it fixed, they met us downstairs for breakfast. After some biscuits, gravy, and yogurt, we went to our rooms to get everything packed up, so we could head out.
We went pass Salina a few miles and then turned right and headed to one of the trailheads for the Gooseberry Trail. We had heard so many great things about this trail. We were a little lost when we started, but we quickly found the trail head. Bryce and I felt like we needed to be back to get our kids from Jacqui by 7, so we told everyone that we needed to be back to the trucks by 3:30.
Anyway, I was really worried about the ride when mile after mile looked like we were riding through the desert on hard limestone rocks. It was anything but pretty and I kept thinking to myself, "who in their right mind thinks this is a great trail?". After 6 miles of riding on this trail, we quickly came into some thick groves of trees and the trail narrowed up.
It wasn't very long before we were climbing up the mountain through beautiful red, orange, and yellow trees. I kept wanting to stop to take pictures, but I knew everyone was behind me. This ended up being a very beautiful ride and it was a perfect time of year for it. The Fall leaves were amazingly bright.
We wrapped around a big loop. Again, we came to groves of golden Aspen trees. We rode through little creeks and wrapped our way in and out of trees. It was a very nice trail with lots of different scenery. We came upon this most beautiful grove of orange golden Aspen trees. It was almost breathtaking as we came around the bend.
We stopped to eat lunch under some green aspen trees. The weather was perfect as we sat their and ate our lunches and chatted. Bryce and I found a huge tree that had fallen over and we decided to climb its branches and trunk.
At this point, we thought we were making good time. It was 2:00 and we started back to finish the loop. We kept driving and driving, and I kept thinking, "we are lost and we are never going to make it back by 3:30". We rode for almost 2 hours straight trying to get back to where we started. My arms and wrist were starting to ache, but we kept trucking along.
Some of the last couple of miles on the trail were gorgeous. We weaved our way up the mountain through the forest and it was so much fun. It was definately an ATV trail. It was awesome, one of my favorite spots on the trail. In fact, later Bryce told me that the men knew that that part of the trail was rated "Difficult". They didn't want us women to worry about it the whole time, so they didn't tell us about it. When we got to the top, he said, "Did you think that was a hard trail?" and then he told me the story.
As we made our way back, the mountain sides were covered with red, oranges, and yellows intermingled with the ever green trees. It was so pretty. I have seen pictures in magazines and on the television of beautiful autumn scenery, but nothing like this in real life. It was awesome and I could not get the camera to capture the full effect!
We had one more part of the trail to come through before we reached the trucks, and that was the little creek. Roger wanted to get pictures of everyone coming through the water. I figured it was our last ride, so I blasted through the river and soaked myself. I ended up changing as soon as I got to the truck. We ended up leaving a little after 5 pm.
It was such a great time, once again, in Richfield. I will look forward to this trip year after year. There are so many trails to ride down there and its such a pretty time of year. I had a great time getting to know all the other couples and to spend some alone time with Bryce. Until next year!!!
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