Posts Tagged ‘mountain biking’

The Blue Mountains are a 2 hour train ride from Sydney and full of great scenery and hiking. We spent a few days in the small town of Katoomba to enjoy the area. I had thought that “Blue Mountains” was just a name, but looking out over the valley the mountains really are a misty blue color.

The Blue Mountains

One of the days we hiked to Wentworth Falls, one of the more interesting waterfalls I’ve ever seen. We hiked across the top of the waterfall, then down really steep stairs to a middle level, and then across the valley on a path along the cliff. It was very cool.

Another day (more…)

Leaving the beautiful West Coast, Ben and I headed towards Wanaka on a scenic drive past mountains, rivers and lakes.

Wanaka

We immediately fell in love with Wanaka. Just 2 hours drive from the utlra-touristy Queenstown, we found it to be a low-key oasis with beautiful scenery, a cute and live-able town, and plenty of fun outdoor activities to keep anyone happy. If we ever decided to live outside the US (unlikely), I’m pretty sure this would be the place.

We stayed a few nights in Wanaka, enjoying (more…)

Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand

Ben and I have searched the globe for good mountain biking, but have failed to find anything worthwhile outside of the US… until now. Yesterday we rented full-suspension bikes and rode one section of the Queen Charlotte Track near Picton, New Zealand. The scenery was gorgeous and the riding was awesome. We will definitely be mountain biking more during our next 3 weeks here. (more…)

We went to Moab for a weekend and met up with Ben’s mom.  It was GREAT!  Seriously, I can’t tell you how much I love this place…

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Last Summer Ben and I went biking at Bogus Basin Ski Resort outside of Boise.  Ben had the sweet idea of taking photos of the exact same locations in summer and winter.  We forgot to look at the summer photos before heading up to Bogus yesterday – but we took a bunch of pictures anyway and some of them matched up pretty well.  So, here you have examples of Bogus Basin in the summer vs. winter!

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Last weekend we took a road trip to Moab.  Ahh, Moab, I love that place! If you’ve never been to Southern Utah you should definitely add it to your “list” (if you have one, well, doesn’t everyone?).  The scenery is just amazing.  Bright orange and red rocks in all kinds of shapes and formations.  And usually the sky is bright blue which makes a nice contrast.

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• Red Badge(s) of Courage:
  
• This happened in one of the easiest sections of the Rock Garden at Table Rock.
• The biggest danger in mountain biking is going too slow.  Or too fast.
• (I prefer Red Raspberry of Courage, but calling it that assumes everyone has heard of the book the Red Badge of Courage – or at least the term itself – and no one has.  Plot summary – Civil War boy soldier is wounded in a cowardly fashion, everyone thinks he must be very brave because of his injury and this shames him into actually becoming very courageous)

• Day 1: Fisher Creek and Ladd’s Fajitas and horseshoes
• Day 2: Elk Meadows and aluminum foil sculpture-food and more horseshoes
• Day 3: Scones and packing up
• Pictures…

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• Sunday July 6th
• Elk Meadows / Deer Point Trail at Bogus Basin Ski Resort near Boise ID
• Approx 7 miles, probably 1K elevation gain.  Well maintained (new) trails, except 92/Shindig, which was a bit more of an adventure.
• Several Trail markers were missing or mislabeled.  This is common on mountain biking trails and is “part of the fun”.  A wrong turn here means hours of suffering and the possibility of never finding your way back to civilization:
  
• Alonna hikes back from taking the wrong turn:
  
• Varied and interesting wildflowers everywhere:
  
• Also lots of butterflies and bumble bees (not pictured).
• Never really saw any people, except for two bikers headed the wrong way at the aforementioned fork in the trail.
• Not much shade, probably because we were criss-crossing ski runs.

Today Ben and I went on a bike ride.  We attempted to go “early” (10:30am) to avoid the heat, but it still felt like we were biking in a sauna.  The high today was 96 degrees – it seems a little early for it to be this hot in Boise (the high tomorrow is 102!).  But still, you can’t beat the clear blue sky which we see most of the year.  And the biking was still fun – we just took more breaks to enjoy the view…