Day 46/17 – Hite!
Today was all sorts of things….
Started out pretty well but we knew it was going to be a special day…. why? Because we had a 76 mile bike ride with no services. No houses, no stores and mostly, no people.
We had three rules today:
- Don’t leave late (to keep our group together)
- Don’t ride alone.
- Don’t get lost.
I followed all the rules! We only had one person that broke a rule, and unfortunately, he broke all three. 🙁
Anyways, everything turned out well. The ride itself was long and hot. We are in the Utah desert and the temp easily got over 100. The scenery….. beautiful! It’s really cool to see and experience this on a bike.
For our overnight, we are camping at the Hite recreation area right by Lake Powell. There are no trees here. No shade. And it was over 100 degrees until the sun went down and even now it’s still not much cooler. Let’s just say it was a long, hot evening. We all huddled by the trailer that provided a small area of shade. I love this team. There are not many people in the world that I would tolerate being this close to. It was a good day, even tho the last four miles I hated every second of. It was a climb. I was hot. I was cranky. And I was severely dehydrated. Despite our three rest stops with food and water, I just couldn’t keep up with the heat….. the very dry heat.
Tomorrow we have a 72 mile ride to Caineville and a hotel! There is some climbing but the exciting thing is that 50 miles into the ride we return to civilization and stores and people again!
Gotta get some sleep in the heat now… the next two days are gonna be rough. But, we will make it!!!
-m