Day 70 – 5/22/16
84.8 miles biked
257.1 total

The day started out a bit rough. I really wanted to fill up a little more water before leaving Boulder, but where? The State Park was just next door, but I couldn’t find any spigots that would turn on (though the grass sprinklers were on). Next door was a not yet open gas station with a spigot out front…which was chained shut. In the interest of time (I was making us very late for our designated start time), I broke down and put 2 dollar bills in the vending machine for a $1.60 bottle of water. I received a quarter and a soda can pull tab as change.

In any case, my fresh morning legs made the rest of the climb up over Boulder Mountain fairly easily. I think I may also be starting to get some biking legs. When we were almost at the top, I noticed 2 cans of soda along the side of the road that appeared to be unopened. Obviously I had to stop and check – indeed they were full! Score! We packed them up for the summit, which turned out to be way too cold and windy to sit and drink sodas at, so we went a little further on to a more sheltered spot.

In some ways, the initial 8-10% grade down the mountain turned out to be worse than the climb because it was so cold. We had all our layers on, but after a couple miles we had to stop and stick our hands under our armpits to thaw them. It did warm up as we dropped elevation, and there were a few climbs sprinkled in there as well, getting the muscle heat going as well. The wind was also a bit bothersome through this stretch, so we once again found an indoor place to eat our lunches and get out of the wind.

Leaving Torrey, we rode through the northern end of Capital Reef National Park. When on the Hayduke, we hiked only through the very southern end. It was a really beautiful ride. (As I’ve discovered on this trip it is pretty impossible to take photos while riding, and have switched to pretty much only using my GoPro, mounted to the front of my bike, so most of my photos look kind of fisheyed).

Just 15 or so easy miles after lunch, some yahoo in a Chevy Cavalier with a 17′ kayak strapped on top drove by and honked at us: Pinup. We stopped for a reunion break, where we finished reading some stories, drank some cold beverages and took a family photo with the new matching t-shirts Pinup got for all of us!  Oh, and he also brought me a screw for my shoe so I don’t have to get jabbed in the foot anymore. Thanks Pinup!

In further luxury, Pinup slack packed us to Hanksville (took all the gear we didn’t need for the rest of the day so we could have a light load – is there a bike term for this?). These last ~35 miles of the day were so fun, easy, and pretty!

We all reconvened in Hanksville and ate dinner at the restaurant where Bubs and I first met Joey.

We camped at the RV park/campground in town. It’s one of those places that charges “per tent” instead of “per site” since it’s just a big lawn. Since we all only have one man tents, this gets annoying expensive (i.e., a family of 4 sharing a dome tent pays $15 total, we pay $45). We asked what the rate was for the 3 of us if we didn’t use our tents, just slept on the ground, and they gave us the rate of a single tent. Yes!

Also, there was this exchange between Bubs and the campground checkin lady (Pinup and his car were not present)…
Campground Lady: So where are you traveling from?

Bubs: Well, we’re doing a kinda circuitous route. We walked from Moab to Zion and now we’re biking back to Moab

Campground Lady: Great, so you have one car?

This is why we usually just say where we started that day instead of trying to explain the whole thing.

Sleeping here on the lawn of the campground, we are being serenaded by a live rock band playing to no audience across the street at Hanksville Inn, a cow mooing from behind the fence at our heads, and and some incessant screaming like noise from some unknown animal (a bird? A frog?). Probably not going to triple zero here again.