After a long stay at Erin‘s house in the mountains, we are restarting our travels by heading south to Albuquerque.

Our first stop was in a little town called Creede. We were really surprised at the number of ATVs and side-by-side‘s around us, that is clearly a thing to do here and next time we’re in the area we’re going to bring or rent one of our own.

Since off-roading is the thing to do here, we took our F250 on a bit of adventure on the side of the mountain. The trail we took was Bacheloror Loop and Rat Creek Trail.

The loop road was just a gravel road past many original mines. It was amazing how many different little buildings they built all over the sides of these mountains and how many of them are still standing. It was very picturesque.

The adventure started when we decided to do a little offshoot trail. Rat Creek Trail is rated moderate, but it was the most off-roading thing we’ve done with this truck.

Some parts of the trail were very narrow, and we had to scrape some branches. Other regions had lots of mud or large rocks to climb over. The switchbacks were so steep that I was afraid we would roll over. We were at an angle where all you could do was lean back in your chair and hold onto the steering wheel.

We reached the continental divide and a large tundra area just in time because it was starting to snow on us, and since we were using regular street tires, we were pretty worried we would get stuck if it got too muddy.

The coldness helps, though, because there were fewer people than there probably would’ve been. And even though it was a slight drizzle, we still saw a wild moose family!