More T'Dubing for Fall Colors around Silverton and a ride down to Purgatory.

 I've woken up to frost on everything outside the last couple of days with temperatures down in the high thirties. 

Yesterday, Wednesday, was a gloriously sunny day though the temperatures never crested above 62° I think.  Still, in the sunlight it felt warm.  

I went to check on the availability of a couple of the campsites candidates I'd seen before but they were still occupied. Since I was in the area I checked out this road that bordered the Animas  River which flows into Silverton.

It turned out to be a very rocky and bumpy road! I was not looking forward to retracing my steps in case there wasn't an out on the other end.

The road ended at the border of private property so I had to do a river crossing in order to get across the Animas River,  there being an OHV trail leaving to a BLM camping area across the river.

Fortunately the water and never got above my knees as Yagi and I rode carefully through.

I had walked across first to deposit my phone in wallet on the far back before returning across to Yagi and carefully riding down the steep bank and on to the river.

Getting Yagi down safely to the river bed was

the hardest part.

The Animas River

I rode towards town after this and here are some pictures along CR 2:

Moose Cow!

Back in the Miners Shrine Road area:

From the above spot, I climbed up the small hillside, crossing a fire break and into the midst of the Aspen with the red coloration up on top:

The hillside I wandered atop of...

Thursday, September 19

Once things warmed up enough, I rode Yagi South along US 550 heading towards the purgatory ski resort just a few miles away. 

I spotted this gorgeous display of Fall Colors near the entrance to the Molas Lake Campground:

The camera fails to do justice what I saw...

Continuing south how long US 550 I noticed that Fall Colors have not really come in yet, just a few spots here and there, nothing like in the vicinity of Silverton.

Once I get near the Purgatory Ski Resort, I decided to check out a campsite reported above the ski resort by Ioverlander.  It's a good 3 miles of uphill driving but the road is not bad though today it had several pickup trucks driving way too fast for conditions.

I recorded the locations I found for future reference though I doubt I will choose the camp up there.  The sites are surrounding by pine trees so scenery-wise, not great.

Coming back down to the highway, I made my way north again for this picture of Engineer Mountain:

Then I had the "bright" idea to continue making my way north by using Lime Creek road.  This is a mostly rock, and big ones of that, that forms a side loop to the highway with dispersed camping on both ends of the loop.  The camping on either end was very crowded. 

Anyway, my bright idea took me an hour to negotiate through due to the very rocky conditions! The Fall Colors weren't quite started yet along this road, and I only took one pic:

Once I got through to the northern end I decided to explore the area contained by a big hairpin type turn made by US 550.  I could see some campsites down there and it was intriguing. 

I don't know if this car fell off the highway way back when, but its now riddled with bullet holes and missing the engine.  There were also remnants of an old pickup truck nearby.

The water crossing through Lime Creek:

Yagi and I made it through the water crossing just fine though I will admit I did it slowly and with outriggers deployed.  The water was no deeper than below my knees but there were some big rocks under the surface.

It's not something I would want to take the VRRV through so the campsites I found aren't really available to me.  There is one nice site labeled as a trailhead just before the creek crossing but I don't think I will be using it. 

As I made my way back to the campsite, I found and mapped a couple more sites near the Molas Lake trailhead.

This sky had become even more overcast as I rode home and I would end up spending the afternoon just resting.