Kelly and I started Saturday morning with an epic ride up Buffalo Creek. We took the Mini Buffalo Creek loop which didn’t feel so mini at 15.5 miles and 1700+ feet ascent. There was a four mile ride up a road to the start of the singletrack trail which was pretty easy. It meanders next to the creek the whole way. After that, the initial climb was fairly unrelenting. Take a look:
The way down, though, was pretty phenomenal. It was filled with large rock faces that were absolutely a blast to play around on. We also spotted some pretty wild mushrooms that looked like they materialized out of a Mario game.
Saturday evening, I went up to Nederland to meet Josh and Jeremy at our favorite asado spot. Any time Jeremey offers to cook, you should take him up on that offer. He’s a fantastic chef. We had a several course meal, all of which was grilled over the fire. We had mussels, spicy Italian sausage, cuts of beef, and cuts of lamb. I didn’t think to get many photos of the actual dishes because we ate them so quickly. We hung out until well after midnight before cleaning up, packing up, and heading out.
Early Monday morning, Emi, Kelly, Joe, and I headed up to Nederland again to camp out for the fourth of July. We were hoping to get a good spot to catch some fireworks and hang out all day and we definitely got to do all of that. We set up camp fairly early and then just relaxed for a bit.
We set up camp fairly early and then just relaxed for a bit. Joe and Emi broke out their ukuleles and noodled around for a bit.
In the afternoon, we did a leisurely hike up to the tippity top of Sugarloaf Mountain. We saw some pretty gnarly burned trees from a forest fire some time ago and had quite the view from the top.
In the evening, despite Joe’s insistence that we wouldn’t get rained on, we went through a pretty epic thunderstorm with a bit of hail. We dashed over to Joe’s tent and played Spades while we waited. We never finished, but I believe Emi and I were winning when the storm ended.
We grilled some brats, corn, and Joe’s special Veggie mix for dinner. So dang good. We had some leftover veggies that we turned into an omelette in the morning.
Once it got darker, we ended up seeing some fireworks from way off in the distance. They were just tiny little glowing flashes of light. After the shows ended, we just hung out and relaxed to Joe’s ukulele. I didn’t get any photos after dark because I had drained my phone’s battery playing music on my Jambox earlier in the day.
For those of you in the US, I hope you all had a great Fourth of July weekend. For everyone else, I also hope you had a great Fourth of July weekend.
