Here's another great story from a Garmin employee gladly mixing work with pleasure. Jeff works on our automotive team crossed over into fitness at this year's Yeti Tribe Gathering in Fruita, Colorado.

My brother-in-law, Mike and I headed west with a nüvi 880 for voice-recognition navigation and a GPSmap 396 connected to a GXM30 antenna to watch for weather threats and for uninterrupted XM radio.

We arrived at Camp Yeti, held this year just down the road from Kokopelli’s trail head, on Friday around noon; checked in at the registration tent and found a nice flat spot to set up camp. Once camp was set we were ready to hit the trails with our Yeti’s, equipped with the new Edge 705, of course.

We started our ride with a nice little climb from Mary’s Loop trailhead; it was tough to stay focused on the trail – the views overlooking the Colorado River were spectacular. After a short ride along a section of Mary’s Loop, we came across a nice hike-a-bike section down a very steep rocky section that took us to the Horse Thief loop; we were told that on a good day an expert rider could successfully clear this section…would love to see that (above left is the view looking up the trail).

After a couple hours out on the trails we had our fix and didn’t want to miss supper so we headed back to camp. The evening was spent taking in the views, reviewing the Edge data from our ride and wondering what Saturday’s ride would bring.

Saturday morning arrived and we awoke to temps down in the 40’s and highs expected to be close to 90! After breakfast, we loaded up the bikes on trailers and were bused out to the trails. The bus dropped us off in large parking area and then it was about a mile and a half of grueling uphill. Once at the top of hill it was down the Ribbon trail we went to a nice section of flat rock and then more downhill that had everyone’s brakes screaming for mercy.

After an afternoon of incredible riding we loaded on the bus to head back to camp; once at camp we reloaded on H2O and were back out for a quick pre-dinner ride around Rustler’s loop. The BBQ for dinner was excellent and the after dark activities entertaining…bike limbo, bike high jumping, barrel racing, raffle drawings and even the tossing out of some Garmin schwag.

Sunday morning arrived and we knew the great riding would be coming to an end soon. After breakfast everyone went out for a ride on the Kokopelli trails one last time before breaking down camp and closing out a great weekend at Camp Yeti. Our Edges performed flawlessly, were the topic of a number of rest stop conversations along the trail and guided us back to camp with the back-to-start feature at the end of our ride. Can’t wait for next year!