July 11----65.24 in5:17. The good news is that we are out of the 'desert', the bad news is that I climbed about 1600 ft to get to a cooler climate. Actually it wasn't bad at all, just a steady, slow climb, with lots of rollers. Buddy and I started out in some pretty warm weather, but there was a pretty steady haze or cloud cover, which built as the day went on, to a point where I actually got rained on by maybe 75 drops. We had a nice tailwind also, nothing crazy, but you could tell it was there. We rode through a moonscape desert, with brown cliffs on out right, and nondescript desert on the left. Buddy got to see his first prairie dogs, and also two pronghorn who sprinted ahead of us for a while. We paralleled a railroad track most of the way, and also could see a totally overgrown road in a lot of areas, that probably used to be US 191 or US 6, which is the road we were following. Tomorrow , just north of Price, US 6 will split off and go to Salt Lake City, and we will follow US 191 over a BIG mountain pass toward Wyoming. Hopefully, US 6 will take most of the traffic that we dealt with today. There was a lot of truck traffic, wide loads, oversize loads, and one idiot who got real close to me and laid on the horn. That is such a rare occurrence, however, that fortunately it stands out in my mind, just to remind me that it only takes one idiot... The shoulder was generally pretty good and wide, so we were happy with that. On an unusual note, the road was generally three lanes, with BOTH directions sharing the SAME passing lane. Is that crazy or what? Never in the east, I'll tell you that.
Bud and I started by riding west on I-70 for about three miles on newly paved, unpainted asphalt. Bud enjoyed that, since he couldn't fathom biking being legal on the interstates out here. From there, US 191 took us basically north, with no towns, no paved intersections, no anything, for the thirty four miles he rode with me. When Pam came by, she stopped and picked him up so we don't pound his legs into submission with too much too soon. I carried on for the full pull, and it felt good to get up over 60 miles in a day. That hasn't been happening a lot lately because of the heat, spacing of the towns, and some of the big climbing days. Hopefully our big climb tomorrow won't crush either of us.
After I got to Price, we took a short ride through town, stopping at Wal mart, and a bike shop, where I picked up a new mirror for my glasses, because my old one was flopping around too much. Then we had a meal at BJ's restaurant, where the waitress thought it was very unusual that Buddy ordered gravy on his French fries. I guess they don't do that out here.
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| Long flat highway.... |
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