We're at altitude and things are different up here. If you want to bake a cake you have to adjust the recipe, if you want to cook rice you have to wait patiently and if you want to cook dried beans you're screwed! But those can't be the reasons that the rich and famous are flocking to the area, some names we've heard splashed around are Oprah, Tom Cruise and Ralph Lauren and I really don't blame them! The scenery is stunning and the folk that live here are so, so lucky! Well, until we showed up that is, and added some excitement into the lives of some of my distant relatives! Sorry that things didn't go quite as smoothly as planned but we're immensely happy to have had a great time together with the continuing theme of kindness and hospitality reaching up into the Rockies.

We had received intelligence that taking our route off the main road would be worth the effort today, so from Telluride we were headed up to Hastings Mesa on a well cared for dirt track that reached for the heavens. So much so, we were forced to take to bike pushing, which is where Casey entered our lives. Pulling up in front of us he gets out of his pickup and tells us we can stay at a ranch on the mesa which he care takes if we fancied, as he'd seen us out a few days before passing through the town of Rico. Did we ever! Taking a hand drawn map and Casey's kind offer with us we ploughed on up to the mesa above and started to follow the map to the ranch. Having spent the last few hours on a not insignificant climb we were shocked to see that said ranch was pretty much on top of a mountain surrounding the mesa! But with few options available we struggled on, all the while knowing it would be worth it for the views at the finish line. My word it did not disappoint! We spent what was left of the afternoon chilling out in the garden waiting around for Casey who showed up later to provide us with some drinking water, firewood (totally by surprise!) and kind conversation. It turned out the owners of the ranch are only there a couple of days a year for a BBQ with friends and are kind enough to open the place up to passers by when necessary. The rest of the time Casey pretty much has the run of the place along with the deer and coyotes we encountered during our time there. We were more than happy to make some use of it and are very grateful to Casey for going out of his way to find us and the mystery owners for kindly allowing us, and it seems others, to stay there. I really wouldn't mind having a ranch to host my BBQs at, what a world away from Ruth and my everyday lives!

The long way down to Ridgway was our only objective, getting our payback after the previous climbs! We were to meet my 4^th cousin once removed the next day at the state park close to the town for a picnic. So we cruised down some amazing scenery, even seeing the vast "Double RL Ranch" of Ralph Lauren nestled between great white peaks and, in the words of my brother in law Andy, inhabited by plump well looked after cows with real cowboys going about their business. As we passed through town we managed to bump into Sue, aforementioned 4^th cousin! I guess we are not hard to spot with the bikes all loaded up, so as I was on the zebra crossing in town out of the window popped the head of a familiar looking stranger, "you must be Rob!" to which the only reply is "you must be Sue!" It was the first time we'd had the fortune to meet and we were in for a real treat the next day. So after a quick natter we pootled down the road to the state park camping. Here we tucked into some Telluride brewery beers contemplating the seriousness of the "bear boxes" we had at our disposal and how safe that meant we were...

And so it was, time for the long awaited picnic that we'd been planning for a few months! We were busy preparing a Spanish omelette when Sue and her husband Tom showed up with a salad, an amazing grain and mushroom dish and the pièce de résistance... local Palisade Peach pie! The area just to the north is famous for its fruit growing and the peaches are the pick of the lot. Tom and Sue were full of interesting and handy information for us and we had a lovely lunch together only to have to say goodbye all too soon when... We needed to make a call to immigration and had been told it would be just a case of giving them a call and sorting it out in the moment. How wrong we were! The first call got cut short by lack of signal (maybe a good thing as the fella on the other end didn't sound like the sharpest tool about) and for the second Tom took me up the hill for better signal only to hear the tragic news that we'd have to make it to Denver in the next couple of days to have an appointment... OK last try just to make sure I wasn't dreaming and the third time we are told that we'll get a call back from an officer and 99% not have to go to Denver. But that meant being stuck to Tom's phone for the foreseeable future... It was eventually clear we needed to get a US number of our own, but the good news was that for now we could spend some more time with our new friends (and old family I should say!). Sue and Tom offered to take us in for the night so we headed to their lovely home tucked away on the slopes looking out over some beautiful mountain scenery and spent the evening chatting amongst humming birds and Thai curries. All the while taking sensible covid precautions!

We awoke to the most stunning views from the house, one which flowed seamlessly between rooms and had little need for many pictures on the walls given the gorgeous valley painted by the windows! Oh how lucky to have an architect son. Sue and Tom needed to pop into town today and were happy to take us by car to Montrose so we could sort out a US phone number to be able to communicate with the authorities directly. Well, we spent the whole morning trying to activate a SIM card which could only be solved by going to the store itself and talking to a real person rather than via internet or annoying recorded phone messages. Tom had the patience of a saint to put up with us that's for sure! So we were all set then... Wait, where were those helmets? Classic us, we'd only managed to leave our helmets (and a few eggs it turned out!) at Tom and Sue's house a 45 minute drive away! Patience of a saint, more like patience of an experimental geologist! Fate seemed to be smiling upon us and the four of us had got used to problem solving during our time together, so thankfully Tom had to come back the next day to sort out the car in any case, so we had a solution! We'd hang out at a nearby campsite till the next day, and why not get a round of mini golf in while we were at it.

The first of a couple of days we'd spend here, the reason for this particular one was to meet Tom in the morning for the helmets and well, Tom and Sue being Tom and Sue, a little morning treat as well! We were unfortunately way too lazy/tired in the morning to catch him popping by but we were raised from our slumber with a phone call from the man himself. "Don't let your coffee get cold!" It took me a second to twig but the legend had only brought us a couple of coffees with cherries to match! What a way to start the day, thanks so, so much Tom and Sue for having us and of course for this lovely surprise. Hopefully next time things will be back to normality. So preparing to leave with a newly painted smile on our faces we noticed that my bike wasn't rolling quite as smoothly as normal and it turned out the tyres (plural!) were punctured. The cause? The dreaded seed we'd be warned about during our first days with Richard in LA, the "Goat's Head". The little buggers have a few spikes on them and always land on the ground with the big one pointing up, so becoming the bane of cyclists the continent over. On closer inspection there were hundreds of the thorns in both mine and Ruth's tyres leading to us tending our noble steeds with "monkey love", picking out the spikes with tweezers for a good old bonding session and subsequently putting pay to us leaving the campsite...

Day two, and attempt #2 to leave had actually been foiled the previous day on hearing that some severe storms were headed our way and we didn't fancy being at the mercy of Mother Nature at her angriest! So we finally set about sorting out our charity fundraising page. More information can be found here but in summary we have set ourselves the target of raising £1000 (one per cup of tea we aim to drink) for Aerobility, a charity who give disabled people of any flavour the chance to fly in specially adapted light aircraft and one that is particularly close to our hearts as my Dad has been involved with them for many years. We can't wait to help towards making a real difference to people's lives and feel so lucky each day being able to undertake this tour so easily when there are folks out there who's day to day is a bike tour's worth of effort. This achievement required a celebration, and you can't get more American than going to a drive-in (in our case pedal-in!) cinema to watch The Goonies and Back to the Future back to back with a few beers and home-made popcorn. What a way to round off the day!

Right now, 3 nights and 3rd time lucky on getting out of Montrose. Without a hitch we cruised out and up a good 1000 feet to the entrance of the nearby Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park where we could camp for free for the night. In this spot we met our first Spanish friends of the trip! Beatriz and Alberto along with their twin boys who were frantically running around, with that energy kids have in abundance, playing hide and seek. I think their parents couldn't have put it any better by saying "thank goodness there are two of them, cause that way they manage to entertain themselves!" We had a lovely chat before collapsing in the sleeping bags to end the week.