June 14, 2010
Day 16: Escalante Bound
Well, I wish I could come up with a bit of excitement for the day but it was pretty straight forward. I guess I COULD make something up? No, better not...
Anyway, today was a short day. There WAS a fairly significant climb with a mile or two around 14% but after the long and never ending, multiple climb days in Nevada it wasn't bad.
The only glitch happened right at the start. I was only 4 miles from the next town of Henrieville and had decided to buy drinks and extra food there. I guess after the long stretches of no services in Nevada, I figured I didn't want to schlep stuff any longer than I had to. So I rolled into town ready to break out the cash, when much to my chagrin, there appeared to be no stores! DAAAOO!
But just as I was pulling up a man got out of a car that was pulling a trailer that had a bike inside.
"Are there any stores in town?" I asked.
"Not a one," he said. I explained to him my plan of carrying less stuff and began mental calculations on whether I could make it to Escalante with the provisions on hand. While all of those sophisticated computations were going on in my noodle, he said, "We've got plenty of stuff here, what do you need?"
Turns out he was doing a 'supported tour' where he and his buddies take turns driving and leap frogging each other with the car. He set me up with a coke and enough fig newtons and cookies to get me to Escalante and BACK. He offered more tasty treats but I didn't want to be greedy. Thanks Bob from Colorado!
The ride WAS beautiful though. I took a lot of pictures and met a lot of other travelers (car travelers that is). There are a lot of foreign tourists in the area stimulating our US economy and they are all very friendly. Though the US tourists are friendly too for that matter.
As for tomorrow... I am unsure of if it will be long or short. There is a monster climb after the "short day point of no return point" and I am not sure I want to tackle it tomorrow or the next day. Add to that the fact that monster tail winds are predicted for Wednesday and it complicates the equations further. So, I think what I will do is play it by ear and let the terrain, the wind and my legs decide-- I'll leave my brain out of it.
Until then...
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Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 1,195 miles (1,923 km)
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