Our stay in Fairplay was timed well. The day we left began their big annual "Guts and Sluts" women's motorcycle rally. As colorful as that would have been, we would not have found a hotel room available.
Fairplay is at 10,000' and our day started with a 21-mile gentle downhill along the side of the wide South Park valley. People we'd spoken with at breakfast had been warned of road construction on Rte 9, but no one mentioned it to us. As it turned out, there was no construction, and we met those same people at our first convenience store stop, they having driven a long alterntive route.
The downhill was interrupted by a 500' climb to the double Currant Creek Pass, our last named mountain pass in the west. Then it was more downhill to our destination at 46 miles.
Our oldest son Mike, who lives near Denver, had arranged for us to meet him and his family for a weekend get-together. They rented an entire historic ranch near Guffey. We arrived ahead of them, and well ahead of our own schedule, not having made allowance for the downhill. The road to the ranch was four miles of gravel and sand. We were able to ride about half of it, and pushed the bike for the other half. Besides a modern ranch house with room for all of us, there were several original outbuildings: a big barn, two small rancher cabins, a big storage and machine shop building, two outhouses, and a windmill. The ranch house faced across a creek with a fine view of several grassy and wooded mountains. We relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon, until Mike, Julia and their son Ethan arrived about 6. Julia brought a welcome big pot of beef stew, and we feasted while enjoying each other's company and catching up on news.
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