Val and I joined mountain biking friends and recent RV converts Dave and Becky and new friend Brian on a mountain bike trip to Gooseberry Mesa.
Gooseberry Mesa is near St. George, Virgin, and Hurricane in Utah, just about 2 1/2 hours east of Vegas. Dave and Becky recently acquired an Airstream trailer (and the requisite truck to pull it), and we've been planning this trip (and some others) ever since.
We met up with Todd and Debra, who happened to be in Vegas when we were passing through (and gathering some folks who flew in for the trip). I managed to get killed at the poker tables, even though we were only there for a brief time (that's another story), but Dave won a single-table tourney. After bidding adieu to Sin City, we moved on to our RV resort stay in Utah.
The riding in and around Gooseberry Mesa is Moab-like, in that it's got a lot of slickrock and breathtaking vistas. It's generally a bit more technical, but has fewer long, grinding climbs than Moab does. It's also got quite a bit more singletrack than Moab. It's a great destination.
We spent two days on Gooseberry Mesa proper, and two on trails in the surrounding area. There were lots of folks with cameras, and I got copies of most of the pics and uploaded them. (This is an edited assortment. I used Aperture for the first time on a large quantity of pics for this project, and I'll write about that soon.)
Summary: The trip was awesome, and we absolutely have to get some guys from our group together and get out there. It was awesome to escape the gloomy weather we'd been having here and get on the bike (and nice to return to good weather here). The RV was great, as usual, and having our riding friends as neighbors at the RV resort was cool.