Baatar Hero to Boulder from Baatar Hero on Vimeo.
Music: El Carnicero

Photo set available on Flickr

Last weekend I reported that, in addition to having just purchased our first vehicle, we were off to Boulder, CO for Afternoon Tea with The Adventurists. With the help of an overly decadent peanut butter and chocolate monstrosity donated by Celena at ScrumDiddilyUmptious Donuts in Spokane during a sunrise pitstop Kim and Jean and I drove our Honda Element through the night for 25 hours to Estes Park, CO.  Yeah… you read that right, Scrum. Diddily. Umptious. We joined the rest of the team, freshly flown in, already camped out at the hotel with Justin from Just A Steppe Away who was crashing with us.

We had just enough time to catch some zzz’s before heading back out again.  Greg from Khanopies Over Mongolia joined us for lunch and then we all made our way to the lovely Aspen Lodge for tea.  Chief adventurer Tom Morgan welcomed us and showed a preview of Wild Rides airing on the National Geographic channel this summer.

Jason Lewis inspired the teams with tales of his harrowing 13 year human powered circumnavigation of the globe. Jason walked, biked, swam, rode, in-line skated and pedaled a home made boat across the equator and every line of longitude.

We broke for tea and some extreme winter croquet and got a chance to mingle with other rally teams.  Everybody had a great time talking to Jason and finally putting some faces to names as we schmoozed with The Griswolds, Team Rooster, Five Stans and a Pol, the Non-Toxic Avengers, and the Windy City Wanderers. Minda from Mercy Corps was also there to cheer us on.  We went out for some food and drinks afterward, sharing stories about past travels and expectations for the rally.

And as quickly as it all began, we were on the road at the crack of 7am Sunday morning for another marathon drive back to Seattle.  With Tom’s help we made it in just over 22 hours.  Our round trip was almost exactly 2800 miles using 123.86 gallons of gas.  The Element wasn’t quite as efficient as my Civic, but even laden down with 4 people and gear we averaged 22.6 mpg for a total output of 2381 pounds of CO2 which we are offsetting with TerraPass.  We can’t wait to beat these stats in our little Fiat Puntos!