The first white men to explore some of the places in and around the Rocky Mountains were fur trappers. Many of them were French and gave French names to places such as rivers, lakes and trading posts. This being the wild west, the pronunciation of these French names were often changed from the proper French name to something else altogether.

Donna went for a bike ride yesterday. She’s been looking forward to riding the Poudre River Trail. Donna studied French in high school and college, so she pronounced the Cache la Poudre River with a proper French accent. I told her it’s locally pronounced Poo-der. While riding what she thought might be the beginning of the trail, she stopped to ask a couple of women if this was the trail to Windsor. They weren’t sure about that but they did say that it was the Poo-der River Trail.

Here are a few pictures of informative kiosks and views from the trail. The paved trail is multi-use for hiking and biking and runs from Greeley to Windsor. A short ride through Windsor will get you to another trail and you can ride to Fort Collins.

You can see the river water level is quite low – not unusual for this time of year.

While Donna was out on her ride, I rode the Spyder to King Soopers to buy a rack of babyback ribs. I set up the Treager wood pellet fired smoker/grill and prepped the ribs. I always remove the tough, thin membrane from the bone side of the ribs first. The membrane can be tough and chewy – also it blocks the spices in the rub from contact with the meat. I dry rubbed the ribs with a mixture of two parts Pappy’s Choice seasoning and one part Lambert’s Sweet Rub O’Mine.

It was hot out and unusually humid again. The temperature was in the upper 80s when I fired up the Traeger. After the first half hour, I lowered the temperature setting on the Traeger and went inside to read a book. I checked the grill a couple of times without opening the lid by peering through the smoke vents. I also stirred the wood pellets in the hopper to keep them feeding smoothly through the auger.

The wind kicked up during the cook and the outside temperature dropped. When I estimated about 30 minutes of cooking time remaining, I decided to raise the temperature setting of the Traeger to compensate for the cooling effect of the wind. In the end, I wish I hadn’t done that. The ribs were slightly overcooked and not as moist as I would have liked. I’m also going to modify my rub to a 3:2 ratio of Pappy’s to Lambert’s to reduce the salt content.

Rack of ribs hot off the Traeger

Meanwhile, Donna prepared a potato salad and steamed green beans for a complete meal.

A yummy meal

The windy conditions persisted well into the night. This morning we woke to the sound of rain drops on the roof of our coach. The weather almanac shows an inch of rain for the month to date in Greeley – but that usually comes in the form of an afternoon thundershower. Overcast skies and rain in the morning seems unusual to me for this time of year.

We had planned to go to a National Senior Professional Rodeo Association event this morning, but the rain shower put a damper on that plan. Senior professionals are pro rodeo cowboys over 40 years old. They compete in age groups of 40 and over, 50 and over and 60 and over. The event continues tomorrow at the Greeley Pro Rodeo Arena, so maybe we’ll attend tomorrow. I rode in a rodeo once – it was held right here in Greeley – I wrote about that in this post.

The temperature is supposed to be cooler for the next few days with highs in the upper 70s. Sounds good to me.