Leaving Colorado

My final full day in Colorado was quite an event. I spent the morning going up over Lizzard Head Pass, from Telluride (where I left off on this journey), and after a long downhill (we're talking miles here!) I made it into Dolores, CO. Before arriving, I was told Dolores had an excellent brewery that I had to check out, if anything for their Calzones, and seeing that I had a long day ahead of me the next day, I didn't mind calling it an early day in Dolores.

Once at the brewery, I got to talking with people about the ride ahead, how wonderful Utah was going to be, and of course, how hot highway 50 was going to be once in Nevada. After a Calzone and a live concert on their patio (some cover band that primarily played old 90s music), I was feeling it was time to find a place to lay my head, Talking with the bartender inside and a few other fellow bar sitters, I found that the local community center was the place for me - everyone kept commenting about how wonderful the grass was and how close the center was to the brewery.

I rode over, found the grass in the back, and set up camp for the night. That is, I blew up my sleeping pad, rolled out my sleeping bag, and crawled into bed - the evening was nice so no tent was needed. It wasn't long, I'm sure, before I was fast asleep, dreaming about the next day's ride of course.

Now, I didn't know it then, but afterwards what I found to be around 2am, I awoke to what seemed to be a glass of water being flung into my face. Not sure what had just happened, I pulled my sleeping bag tighter around my face. Again a glass of water. Completely confused I came out of my tunnel of sleeping bag and began to come to my senses when yet again, more water in the face. It was a pattern, slightly rythmic. And it was then that I realized why their grass was so lush - apparently at 2am the Dolores Community Center's automatic sprinklers come on.

I quickly gathered my things and relocated to a part of the yard that did not seem to be getting the rinse I had just received. I sat there a while, not sure what I was going to do before I decided that that part of the yard, though more visible to passing cars, would still be safe and I could continue my dreaming. Listening to the sprinklers, I began to fall asleep again. Within just a few minutes however, I re-awoke to find that the second half of the yard's sprinkler system came on around 2:30am, while the 2am set turned off.

Moving yet again, I re-located this time down by the river that ran behind the center, off of the luxury that was the green grass and onto what I'm sure housed spiders and insects of all sorts (loose decaying leaves from who knows how long). Oh well, you can't win them all.