Days 42, 43 and 44 – Cedar City and into Milford

Bad, Cycle OverRide! Bad! It’s been another couple of days without an update. We’ve been really diligent about trying to post updates daily. However, after nearly a month and a half on the road, sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to get a post up.

Really, even cleaning out all the water bottles at the end of each day is starting to seem like an insurmountable chore. Where’s the Pacific? I think we’re ready for it.

Speaking of water bottles… we’re only 48 hours away from Vegas at this point. And it can’t come soon enough. I’m out of CytoMax, I’m out of Heed, and I’m out of Tailwind. All that’s left is Accelerade. What’s different between the first 3 sports drinks and Accelerade? Good question. The first three are just carbs (aka: sugar) and electrolytes… think of them as high quality gatorade. Accelerade throws in one extra bit: protein. In theory, having some protein in the drink helps with the uptake of water and helps restore muscles as you ride. I’m not sure how true that is, but I will tell you what is true… cleaning that crap out of a bottle is a massive pain. It’s basically sugary milk… that stays in a water bottle all day… in the sun. By 6pm that night, it’s caked on the in inside like a thin layer of cheese. Yum. Even with a good bottle brush, the stuff is a pain.

Anyhoo, enough of that. On to the rides.

Two days ago we rode out of Boulder. Or rather, we rode out of Escalante. The route between the 2 towns had some pretty punishing climbs. And given how well we’ve been handling the Rockies/San Juans/whatever, it wasn’t a recipe for success. So we SAG’d up to Escalante and got on the bikes.

Needless to say, the landscape was amazing. This section of the ride continues to be breathtaking.

Then, out of nowhere, @internmike from PaulDotCom shows up. Seriously. Heidi was parked on the side of the road with the MCC waiting for JP and I on a downhill. Mike was going the other way doing some sightseeing, saw the MCC, and stopped. Craziness. Really, I don’t think the whole “we’re going to DefCon in a few days” thing had hit until we saw Mike.

We rode our segment to Bryce Canyon where we were supposed to stay for the night. However, late the evening prior I threw a lateral. We have a fair bit of pre-Vegas prep to do, and spending the night in a tourist-trap of a town wasn’t going to help that. So we drove up to Cedar City instead for a 2 night stint there.

On the way to Cedar City, we drove through Red Canyon. As you can see, it’s aptly named.

So Sunday, we rode a loop around Cedar City. It had _poured_ the night before so it was surprisingly humid. This section of Utah doesn’t get much rain, and the amount we’ve seen in the last few days has been really unusual. It was a nice ride with very little traffic. Most folks are definitely at church sunday morning in this neck of the country.

After the ride, more pre-DefCon shenanigans. We had lunch with @banasidhe and friends as she was cruising down I-15 to start setting up for B-sides Las Vegas. Now, things are seriously starting to feel like DefCon.

Today we rode out of Cedar City on the way to Milford, 56 miles away. The ride to Milford is pretty straightforward.. a long, slow climb through a pass, then back down the other side. Again, it had poured last night, so it was relatively humid for SW Utah.

About 17 miles in, there were some more petroglyphs off the road… a little too far off the road for JP and I to take the trip to see, but Heidi and the boys got a chance to check them out.

Around this time, Art made a break for Las Vegas. He’s got to get some work done on his car before it runs out of warranty in 3 days, so it’s now or never. While Art is in Vegas, Heidi and the MCC are the only SAG. As you can see, Terran is thrilled with all the waiting 😉

From what I can tell looking at the elevation map for the next 400 miles, Nevada is big sections of flat separated by ~1.5k’ climbs. Here we are on the flats, cruising along. We had an awesome tailwind today and put down some great times.

That’s not to say we didn’t stop to smell the roses… or in this case, sit awkwardly on a playground toy while Dax giggled like a mad baby. He REALLY loved this thing.

I mentioned the tailwind. As it turns out, the wind seems to be a constant thing here. They’ve even built these fancy wind thingies to make electricity. And they are HUGE. You can see them from at least 15 miles away.

Tomorrow we ride to Baker. There will be no cell service and who knows what the Internet will be like. The next day we ride to Ely then SAG to Vegas for DefCon. We’ll post updates as we can, but things may get sporadic until next Sunday when we resume the trek to the Pacific.

Day 41 – A day in Boulder

Rest day! And a rest day in the middle of nowhere, so it was extra restful.

Here’s Bobby entertaining JP and our extra biker before we head out for a morning of sightseeing.

The ride south out of Boulder on the way to Escalante is amazing… and also puzzling. The road is totally insane. It’s unclear to me why anyone would build a road through this canyon. There’s a part of it about 1/2 mile long that is right on top of a knife edge ridge line. 2 lanes wide, no guardrail, no shoulder… just a thousand foot drop on either side. Seriously, THERE SHOULD BE A TEST GIVEN TO DRIVERS BEFORE THEY CAN DRIVE THIS ROAD. I barely trust oncoming drivers in normal situations. When those oncoming drivers are trying to avoid a huge cliff, I’m even more skeptical of their ability.

Anyhoo, we made it the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park just outside of Escalante without incident. They had a lot of petrified wood there, though you’ll notice the MCC was more interested in hanging out down by the lake than going on any hikes with us.

There are a lot of fast, 4 legged things in this neck of the woods. Some are mammals, but a few are reptiles. This little guy was hanging out with us in the petrified forest.

Even Dax got in on some of the hiking action.

The view from the trail going up to the petrified forest was impressive (as are many views around here).

After the hike, the boys and I did some more fly fishing. Their mechanics of fly casting is getting much better. However, that still didn’t yield any fish. The fishing in the lake was supposed to be good, but we totally got skunked.

This overlook outside of Escalante gives an amazing view of the Grand Staircase National Monument. As JP says, it’s like a buffer overflow for your brain. Again, it’s hard to wrap your head around how vast a view this really is.

Check out the road in the distance. Seriously, this canyon goes on forever.

Overall it was a very restful rest day. We ate, we hiked, we hung out in hammocks. Tomorrow, we ride again.

Day 40 – Caineville to Boulder

So, we’ve spent the better part of the last 3 days without meaningful access to the Internet. I’m going to try to play catchup on these posts, but you’ll forgive me if my memory is a bit fuzzy. If I start mentioning dragons or huge cities filled with people, I’m probably just making things up.

This part of Utah is desolate. There’s no life, nothing moving, but it’s stunningly gorgeous. It’s a great analogy for my legs 😉 It’s been a long ride, and we’re well into month 2 at this point. Between the elevation, the heat, and very little rest, the mountains out here are really kicking my butt. I’m looking forward to Nevada when the mountains only involve 2k feet of climbing, not 4k+.

Today, I rolled out of the Rodeway In the Middle of Nowhere on our way to Boulder. There’s a huge summit just before Boulder and I was skeptical of my ability to make it. JP woke up late and not feeling well, so I hit the road without him. It was in the low fifties so I was bundled up.

The road out of Caineville was relatively busy the day before. On this morning, there was nothing. You could hear the guardrails expanding in the morning sun and the vultures yelling at each other on the top of the mesas. The route was also uphill so even my bike wasn’t making much noise as I pushed up the hill. In summary: it was a great time to be on a bike.

The route went through the Capital Reef National Park. Nope, it’s not underwater, that’s just the name.

Right off the side of the road was a scenic overlook… but rather than looking over some vast landscape, this overlook was directed at a cliff face. It turns out, there are petroglyphs on the cliff. It’s pretty amazing to see art that was done 100’s (if not 1,000’s) of years ago still visible to this day.

JP and I rallied at the Capital Reef visitor center to head out on the rest of the ride.

If I was a geologist, I’d probably have a lot better insight into the differences in landscapes the last few days. But I’m not. I can say, there’s been more “rocks on top of rocks” going on in this section of Utah.

The climb out of the park proved to be a bit much for JP and I. We gained a fair bit of vertical in a short period of time.. and given how JP was feeling and my general inability to get my head wrapped around climbing in the rockies, we called it a day.

Like most passes around here, this pass leading over to Boulder had amazing views. Again, it’s hard to capture it in a photo…

Boulder UT is… uh… not large. Here’s a map of the town. That’s everything.

We hit the local state park and checked out a pit house they had. It’s amazing to think of how people lived in this area 1000+ years ago.

Honestly, this ride has really shown me how and where people live. The coasts are packed with people… the river valleys are green and we’ve settled those pretty well. But get away from running water in a meaningful way or head up mountains and there are very few people. That’s been true in every state we’ve been in. It’s pretty crazy to actually ride through it all.

Anyhoo, we stayed at a _really_ small motel in Boulder. Like “3 rooms” small. It was a nice get away. I spent some time playing frisbee with the boys. The dog in this picture loves to play fetch… with rocks or apples from the orchard out back. She and Dax hit it off immediately 😉

Meanwhile, JP and Art were out exploring the countryside and happened upon a rider going east. She was having a pretty rough time with the canyons outside of Boulder. They ended up SAG’ing her up to Boulder, having dinner with her, and helping her find a place to crash for the night… which turned out to be the MCC. 🙂 She’s a student from Pitt hoping to make it to the Atlantic in time to make her first day of classes this fall. We wish her luck and hope she enjoyed her stay in the MCC. She’s officially the first person to spend the night in it.

The stars are amazing at night in this part of Utah. Here’s a parting shot of the Big Dipper.

Day 39 – Blanding to Caineville

(Editor’s Note – For those of you who might visit here twice I had the staring city wrong originally.  We were in Blanding last night, not Dolores.)

Sometimes this ride gets a bit odd. Today was one of those days. A few weeks ago in Kansas, I changed our route a bit to put us through towns that actually had hotels and to provide a little softer landing into the Rockies. Because of that change, we ended up a day behind where we needed to be to make it to Vegas and ultimately San Francisco on time. At some point we needed to “make up a day”… ie, drive a leg of the route we would have otherwise ridden.

Well, today was that day. Leaving Blanding, the next realistic place to stop was the Hite Recreational Area… which is a national park on the Colorado river. There’s no lodging there and it’s hotter than all hell most of the summer. So the goal for the day was to ride to Hite and then SAG up to Caineville. Armed with that knowledge, let’s see how the day went…

We rode out of Blanding about 7:30. There was rain nearby but we managed to avoid it all day. The route started with a few climbs and then had a serious climb about 20 miles in… 2.1k’. Not the highest climb on the route, but one that will still get your attention. After that it’s a slight downhill all the way to the Colorado.

The landscape around here is nothing if not stunning.

Within 10 miles, we were basically out of cell service so we went in to “no cell mode”… which basically means Art and Heidi stay closer to us while we’re riding and are usually tailing (rather than leading) us on the route. Sometimes, it seems like they’re stalking us.

The push up the hill was interesting. We already had quite a bit of climbing before we hit the hill itself, but thankfully we were at a relatively low elevation. JP put up a good fight and made it up ~1k’. I pushed on, and after 2 stops (one of them lengthened by an unexpected call during unexpected cell reception) I managed to hit the summit. The grade on the climb was very polite, which helped quite a bit. Here’s the view from the top looking back in to the distance at the valley floor.

Once we reached the top, we put the throttle down and started down towards the Colorado… well, mostly down. At the macro level it was downhill, but there were still some climbing.

Around 11:30, we broke for lunch. The temps were coming up fast and honestly I was a bit wiped out from the climb (and the previous week of riding). Both JP and I called it a day after that and started the long ride to Caineville.

So… uh.. the following pictures don’t do the drive justice. The landscape around here is amazing. And brutal. It was in the 100’s most of the day and there is literally nothing out here. We would drive for miles and miles without seeing another car, let alone a permanent structure of any kind.

Seriously.. I’m not sure how many square miles are covered in this photo, but I can assure you there’s not a single human in this frame.

This is one of the few shots that starts to convey how awesome the Glen Canyon area is.

We ran in to some rain just outside of Caineville. Here’s a shot where we’re dry, the mountain is dry, but there’s a sheet of rain about a halfway in between us making everything look hazy. The wind was hammering when Heidi took this.. she was actually having a hard time standing still.

While we were taking pictures, JP and Art were meeting other riders on the road. We had passed a few riders and asked if they needed anything (they declined). JP had a much better approach… they’d roll up, he’d hold a cold water bottle out the window and ask if they wanted cold water. It turns out, yes they did want cold water.  😉

They also met a guy who was stopped on the side of the road and needed a new cleat. And in particular he needed the old style Look cleats that JP uses. The rider’s cleat was so worn that it wouldn’t even clip in anymore. After some effort the were able to get the old cleat off and JP hooked him up with a new set. JP and Art definitely made that rider’s day.

So here’s the Rodeway in Caineville. And, to be clear, this hotel is the only thing in Caineville. I’m not sure why there’s even a town name given to this place. There is literally nothing else here. The closest town is 20 miles away… as is the closest restaurant.

Luckily we knew that in advance and planned ahead. We picked up food last night so we could make dinner in the MCC instead of driving to the “nearby” town. Hotdogs, chili, chips, and brownies. Not exotic, but easy to do in the MCC. Dax decided to be the chip courier and brought chips one at a time to everyone.

The hotel is geared up for people that weren’t as well prepared as us, it seems. They’re stocked up with frozen dinners you can buy. All evening long while we were hanging out outside, we could hear the “ding” of the microwaves in the rooms as families warmed up dinner after dinner for everyone to eat.

So tomorrow we ride to Boulder… Utah, not Colorado. It’s bigger than Caineville, but not much. We’re spending our rest day there in an extremely small motel. Should be another interesting adventure.

Oh… and I broke my sunglasses today. I’m riding with my backup sunglasses now. Hopefully I don’t have another sunglass failure before I can hit an Oakley store.