The First Century

6/4/09 ~ We woke up in the community center, ate our wonderful dozen of donuts and headed out on the road, praying for anything but a head wind and some water on the way anywhere out there. All we knew is we wouldn't hit anything major for the next 120 miles, our last desert crossing we hope. We realized right away this was going to be a long hard day, as we were planning on doing 90 miles, which would just put us sleeping on the desert floor that night.  The first 50 miles went quite smooth, as we headed out through nothingness watching the same mountain by our side for  the first 2 hours. We  then began our decent towards the Colorado river, our first sign of water for what seemed like days. It was a great descent and beautiful scenery dropping down into the huge lake where the colorado and "Dirty Devil" river met. We then climbed up out of the basin, and found a small town of "Hite." Unfortunately, that town was a mile off the road, and wasn't anything but a small, almost out of business, gas station. We threw the BOB's off the side of the road at the intersection and rode on into "town" to yet again eat a hearty lunch of Peanut-butter and Jelly, and coke. 

Heading out of there around 1 was quite brutal  as we began yet again climbing, and the heat of the day was just beginning, it was somewhere around 90 degrees and higher at that point. At this point in the trip is where for some, the first insanity moment almost crept in. We made our next climb, rounded a corner, and hit a nasty headwind. Not only that, but the road we were riding on was the worst yet, and we could not seem to get above 7 mph, on a slightly down hill stretch, cranking away as hard as we could. Suddenly miles seem like hours, hills seem like mountains, and the heat sucked every last ounce of water out of you. To top it all of we knew we still had 40 miles to do that day, and did not exactly know when we might find more water. We pedaled, and struggled, and fought with nature for the next 3 hours to try and make it to "Fry's Canyon" a  town 23 miles away from Hite. We finally arrived in the town to find nothing but an old abandoned motel with no trespassing signs everywhere, one of the more frustrating signs on the whole trip. Seth, determined to find water went charging through the front doors of the motel, that were surprisingly unlocked. It was quite erie, walking into this deserted place in the middle of nowhere, trying to find any source of water. Seth came out with no water and only knowledge of one small soda can of unopened Mountain Dew. Surprisingly, however, a man came to our rescue, he was out working on the plumbing in the back, we don't know why, and found us some unopened bottles of water covered in dirt in the shed out back, we used that water for cooking then. Finally, we ate our finest of sorts for early dinner: Ramen noodles, shrimp and beef style. We ate, napped, and at 5 pm headed out yet again for more pedaling, hoping to make it to some source of water 25 miles down the road. Again, we hit the same headwind, the same awfully slow road, and continued pedaling at 7 mph. After 2 1/2 hours more we made it to Natural Bridges National Monument, which we were surprised to make it too. We pedaled in that night with the sun setting over the desert looking for a place to stay. The long entrance to that park was what actually gave us our first 100 mile day, which we we hit dead on rolling into the campground.

The Campground was full and closed by that time, however we were able to find a nice young couple that let us share sites with them. They actually found us, and the husband we met was actually an avid cycle tourer as well. They were great, we shared tools, stories, and little tidbits of knowledge that night and ate a great meal of Chili and Rice. It could not have been a better way to end that day, on that road that nearly led us to our first taste of insanity, for some of us that is. 

All that said, we must agree that the scenery was beautiful that day, it may have gotten mildly boring at times, but all in all it was a beautiful ride and we can't complain about that. We were also blessed with water, at times when it seemed nearly hopeless. Its good to finally be done with the desert.