August 28, 2021
A honey of a ride
Coalville UT loop
Boy, was it chilly here when we got up this morning - in the 40's! We've been using the heat pump option on our air conditions a lot lately which works great as it quickly warms the trailer using our electric hookup vs the furnace which uses up our propane.
The air quality here wasn't great - unsafe for sensitive people but we went ahead and decided to do a ride since we don't fall into that category. But we had to wait around until it got up to at least 60 degrees.
By 10:30 Don deemed it warm enough to ride (if he can't wear his shorts and sandals with no socks, he won't ride! - wimp!) I put on an extra layer under my light jacket and after loading Garfield, we headed south of Coalville.
This small town is located in a narrow valley along I-80 north of Park City. We passed many small farms along with newer homes. Lots of alfalfa fields and a dairy.
We spotted horses, cattle, llamas, sheep, goats and plenty of chickens running around in the front yards. The traffic was light to non-existent.
It was a pleasant, bucolic ride but a shame that our views of the surrounding mountains were so obscured by haze. At least we couldn't smell smoke - just freshly mown hay and manure.
As we passed one house, a lady called out, pointing to her car "you need to get one of these"! At least she didn't say - "she's not pedaling" which I hear all the time.
The road was flat to rolling. We started out on the east side of I-80 but decided to cross over to the west side of the highway when we came to a crossover road.
There was even less traffic over here but a lot more climbing. We got our workout today! But it was annoying when the chain fell off the granny ring when Don downshifted as we went up one steeper climb. We had to walk the rest of the way to the top as it's very difficult to restart the tandem again in this situation.
After we had crested the hill, Don said it was time to turn around. On the way back we took a slightly different route and by 1 pm were back in camp.
The rest of the afternoon we relaxed with our Kindles and then spent some time redoing our trip route for the next few weeks.
Don had just discoverd that the dump station was broken and closed at the state park - Henrys Lake - we're heading to next in Idaho. Since there are no sewer hookups, that would be a major issue for us.
We do have a portable caddy that we can dump our grey/black water tanks into and can tow it with the truck to a dump station to dump. We don't have large enough wastewater tanks on the trailer to last a week, just a few days. So we cancelled that reservation and found a different place to stay.
I had also read on a journal located on another site that there was a bridge out/highway closure on Highway 95 west of Blanding, UT which we would have driven after camping at Bullfrog on Lake Powell later on in the trip. That was an even bigger problem as there was only the option of a lengthy detour up to I-70 and then south to Blanding through Moab to get to Page which was our destination.
So we've come up with a different plan and need to spend some time tomorrow making calls for new reservations. We're not yet comfortable "winging it" like we would on a bike tour. It's a lot harder to find a good spot to camp at the last minute with a rig the size of Tango vs a tiny tent!
Today's ride: 16 miles (26 km)
Total: 1,080 miles (1,738 km)
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