Sunrise Park Resort: Greer, AZ

Today, Kort and I went up to Sunrise Park Resort . We split from my house at little after 5:30 am blasted through Globe, AZ and hour and half later, and a little after 9:00 we arrived at the Sunrise’s parking lot.

We ended up jumping on at about 9:45. I don’t know what the true temperature was, but it must have been in the low 70’s and pretty stayed that was as some clouds moved in after our first run. Pretty comfy, compared to Phoenix.

What a screaming deal for only 20 bucks. This was my first time up here, so for our first run, Kort took me Fungi, to Upper Chutes and Ladders to Children’s Trail to Bonito. Which was a perfect match for my skill set and ambition. The trail flowed pretty well through the trees, and the upper portion didn’t have many drops, but the other sections had a handful. It was so nice to be rolling through trees again. We did pretty variations of this run a couple of more time before grabbing a bite to eat at the car around 12:00.
Our first run after our brake took us down Chutes and Ladders. Oh man, the drops near the top were a handful for me due to the size and not setting up for them properly. I walked down couple of of ‘em, knowing I’d hit them up later. Once we came to the first cat track crossing, we continued down Sticks, and probably about 15 feet down the trail I hit a patch of gravel that acted like ball bearings. My front wheel shifted out from under me, then it feel off a drop with such force that I catapulted me down the trail about 15 feet. It was like I hit the ejector seat button, the way it launched me. I had a hard helmet to rock collision, as I flew like Superman. That really rung my bell, and luckily I had purchased a full faced helmet the day before. The scratches showed me what a benefit the full face protection added. I had rocks burrowed under my shin and elbow guards, that left me bleeding. But probably the most painful thing was my upper left bicep/shoulder was aching. I didn’t bash anything with it, but I think I just strained it while landing.

With my head spinning and the wind knocked out of me, I took my time rolling again. My shoulder was in pain, but I continued to ride. I just took it pretty easy by riding our first run of the day over and over. Kort and I knocked out 8 or 9 runs in before knocking off at 2:45.

We hit the road a little after 3:00, but we decided to head towards Payson instead of Globe for our return route. I think this was an easier drive, because I believe there are few more miles of multi lane highway. Even with all the traffic we managed to get home at 7:00.

Here's a vid of the day:

Click to play

A high res QuickTime version can be found here: Sunrise Park Resort 8/2/09