Independence Mountain - Days 8 and 9

Sunday, Aug 09

Yet another sunny but not too hot day here in North Park, CO.

Still atop Independence Mountain, gauging how things change during the weekends in the summer.  I must say, it doesn't really get too busy.  I think the largest group of ATVs/Razors was perhaps 7 vehicles and they were moving sedately.

As I sipped my first cup of coffee, I saw a Pronghorn looking back at me from part of the road below me:

Look in the middle of the picture....

So I went back and grabbed my camera, putting on the telephoto lens.  At 200 mm, it's not really suitable for long distance wildlife shots, one has to use magnification and software to enlarge the Pronghorn and so quality suffers.

After breakfast I swapped the worn shock absorbers on the front of Scarlett for the still functional ones on the rear.  Trying to eliminate a swaying motion I've been experiencing when riding into the wind and on gravel trails.

I rode down to CR 6W and did a couple of runs headed both east and west, things seemed fine.  Then I turned onto CR 7 to head towards the Lake John SWA and noticed the behavior return though not as bad as before.

I stopped, changed the preload from second to lowest to highest (max preload) and this seemed to help even more in terms of the wandering front end.

Note: I have performed the head bearings check, no movement with the front wheel off the ground.  Still, I am planning on doing the check once I'm home with all my tools and a nice garage to take things apart in.  I also plan on verifying the sidecar's alignment.  All this shock absorber changes has changed the alignment I'm suspecting.

Rode on with no issues to the Lake John Resort's General Store and got some bacon and eggs.  

Then I rode the perimeter of Lake John to see what I could see.  It's apparently quite the fishing spot as there were many fishermen trying their luck along the shore.

South of Lake John, there's this interestingly named SWA:  Perhaps worthy of a visit by RichardM?

 It's a walk-in SWA, this sign is in the small parking lot

 A view of the southern end of Lake John

I cruised slowly with Scarlett down the narrow causeway/border on the eastern side of Lake John, managed to capture some of the birds:

 Not sure of the name, this bird would dive for up to 30-40 seconds

at a time, looking for fish I assume.

 A pod of Pelicans

This one decided it didn't like me shooting his picture

The other three remained unconcerned.

That was it for Lake John exploring this morning.  I had eggs and bacon to get back to the URRV's refridgerator!

Got back to camp with no issues, still a tiny bit of wandering but not bad.  I'm really hoping it's an alignment issue which would be an easy fix.

Monday, August 10

Woke early enough to wander up the hill where the antenna is located and catch this view of the rising sun:

As I ate breakfast, the view of the mountains to the east were quite scenic:

 My view from the URRV

The rest of the day involved no further riding, just cleaning things inside the URRV, relaxing and listening to an audio book.

Saw one ATV and one pickup truck the entire day.  Nice to have the mountain basically to myself again but it's time to move on and see other things.

Tomorrow, will move south towards the BLM areas south and west of Kremmling, CO.  I want to see how crowded conditions are as I near the I-70 corridor through the mountains.

Last sunset for this site, this trip....I'll be back.