We spent three days at the Tall Texan Campground in Gunnison, relaxing, watching birds, including a woodpecker and a hummingbird, and pottering about. We have enjoyed that a lot. We like the cold.

We also had a brief trip into downtown Gunnison and a ride out to Crested Butte, a ski resort.

Crested Butte – hee hee hee

Colorado towns really are exceptionally lovely. Resort towns are full of cool bars, cafes, yoga studios and beautiful shops selling artisan products such as green chilli peanut brittle (!)-a hipster’s dream. All of this with stunning mountain backdrops. We have ridden through quite a few and know there are more to come.

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Crested Butte would be the perfect place to spend a few days but the campsite is too far from the centre to make it worthwhile. I can imagine how stunning it must be in the winter when the place is covered in snow.

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I get the feeling it is a place that you have to be quite rich to enjoy to the full and certainly to stay here in the centre. There were some really cute cottages. Maybe in the next life.

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We found a great bar and had a couple of soft drinks and some sweet potato fries and admired the street from the 1st floor balcony while listening to reggae. It felt like being on holiday.

We cleverly Photoshopped Dave’s hair out of this picture

Gunnison is more of a working town and the busy main road goes right through the centre but that is often the case with towns here. There were a lot of bikers passing through here, mostly on Harleys. I notice that they order Bloody Marys even though they are riding.

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Gunnison is a good place to get things done. We have sourced and had a new chain fitted to the bike. We have also ordered new sprockets which we have to collect in Denver next week.

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Until then we will be staying in the mountains. Next stop is Carbondale and then Leadville,where we will be camping at over 10,000 feet.

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