Utah- Beautiful Landscapes, Incredible People

5/31/09 - 6/01/09

We left Zion nervous about the road ahead, all anyone said the day before was how awful the ride was gonna be considering it was all up hill, even the locals agreed to this. However, J.R. set us up with a great breakfast of branflakes and incredible raspberries and we headed out ready for the ride ahead. He was a great man, with great hopsitality and meeting him definitely boosted our morale. Before even begining the ride however we got a flat with the BOB trailer. We argued and bickered over whether to buy a puncture resistant tube for it considering we've had so many in so few days, and finally dicatorship over the wallet took over and we bought one at local bike shop there. Finally, we rolled on. Climbing through the switchbacks out of Zion was arguably one of the most beautiful rides out thus far, even though the switchbacks were quite brutal. The next 30 miles turned out to be quite tough. We all thought we might actually die climbing one those blame mountains, it wasn't so much as the grade that killed us, just the constant up hill and the fact that we had no food in our systems. Its quite frustrating when you think a town is only five miles away, yet it turns out to be 10 and all up hill.
At the gas station there we loaded up on food, a diet slightly different today, consisting of smashed hot dog rolls with peanut butter and jelly, and corndogs that someone bought us while in the gas station there. Great people we meet out here, great people. We were then also told by the lone local sherriff there that the ride should be mildly flat from here on out, it also helped to learn that we were at about 8,000 feet, and knew Bryce could not be much higher than that.
We rolled out of that gas station, caught a slight down hill and hauled for the next 20 miles averaging around 23 mph, distincly up from the average of 11 mph earlier that morning. We finally climbed slightly into Bryce for the next few miles and rolled into the great town of Ruby's Inn.

It seemed lucky considering as we rolled in it began to hail, the first precipitation we've gotten all ride was hail, it was nuts. We then began looking for our man "Nick," a man who we knew little about except that first name. We were given that name by previous bike tourers that came through this town 2 years prior and stayed with him. So there we were, with no last names, and not even a for sure place of where he lived and began scouring the town for this man "Nick."We had no last names, no nothing, but just began asking around for a man named Nick. We found ourselves the last name of this man, then some relatives of the man, and finally his actual house, where we found him. We found out he was manager of the local hotel and he decided to get us a room for the night. The room and hotel were stunningly beaufiul, by far the nicest place I've ever been. We were astonished by his hospitiality. To blow us away even more, he gave us a small piece of paper with his writing on it that said how we could get a discount of 55% off in the local restaurant. We of course devoured the "Cowboy Buffet" there we and we sat there, in all our glory, destroying the most incredible food I've eaten. We actually had real vegetables for the first time on the trip. To top it all off, we all piled in the hottub there as well.

Following all that and a great nights sleep, we devoured the "Cowboy Lunch" yet again and again received the 55% discount. We just could not believe it. We then left and headed to see the actual park of Bryce Canyon. Its a beautiful park, unlike anything we've ever seen before. Its indescribable, the pictures should represent somewhat of what we saw today. It was the most unique place thus far.
We headed out of the park again and back to the town of Ruby's Inn, ate a dinner consisting of Hamburgers and donuts and then headed back to Nicks house. Yet again, he pulled through and put us up in a hotel room, again. That guy is great. Now here we sit, in our hotel room, again, relaxing watching TV, chatting on the phone, and drinking coffee for the first time in weeks, thank you Nick. Tomorrow we roll forward for the small town of Boulder.
0 flats
81 miles
4000 ft. climb
avg. 13.5 mph

Disclaimer - Blog posts might be infrequent for the next week. Mike Simpson is the man!