We Believe in Miracles

This week has proven to be one of the most inspiring of the trip and we've experienced miracle after miracle as we've ridden through Utah, one of the most beautiful, yet also most intense states. Green River was our first stop after Moab and it was here that we met Richard.  Little did Richard know that he was soon to be a savior of our trip.  I noticed the morning after we rode out of Green River that I had left a pair of bike shorts hanging in a tree at our campsite in Green River State Park.  Richard answered the phone and the first thing he asked was, "We were all wondering how'd you manage to ride out of here without your shorts?" Haha... of course I had another pair.  Anyway, Richard agreed to take the shorts, in his free time, to the post office and use his own money to send them to the post office in Zion.  Of course I sent him the money in an envelope that day to pay him back, but there is no way to pay him back for his generosity. 

One of the biggest miracles we've encountered here is the miracle of Utah! It is unexplainable in words how strangely beautiful the desert can be.  Cliffs, slot canyons, rivers, Hoo-Doos, and oceans of rock create a masterpiece impossible to re-create.  

The harsh landscape was not only candy for our eyes, but a workout for our legs. After our hardest climb of the entire trip, a 20 mile climb up 3,000 feet in elevation with grades as steep as 10 and 11%, we camped in Calf Creek Campground.  The six mile hike that afternoon through the canyon to a waterfall was the only way to end the day.

Along the way, we've had the good fortune of meeting a lively group of bike tourists on the same path as us. 



Being on the road for eight months with only the two of us has made us comfortable with each other.  We know how long it takes for each other to wake up and get on the road.  Adam has dealt with my insanely small bladder and looks for bushes on the side of the road for me to hide behind every half hour or so.  And I am (mostly) happy to stop or ride back and forth for Adam to snap pictures around every corner.  I was nervous at the proposal to ride for a few days with others.  I wasn't sure how this would upset our routine and so I was hesitant. 

Of course, all of my worries ended in silliness and we enjoyed day after day of biking, hiking, and camping with our new family of cyclists.  The meeting of the cyclists proved to be a miracle in disguise and we've found renewed excitement for bike touring... enough to push us through these last months. 

Katie and Cheney, married almost a year and 1/2, have been traveling the world since they got married.  This bike tour from Jackson, MI to Los Angelas, CA is simply the end of their 18-month journey together.  They've traveled through Southeast Asia, experienced Vipassina Meditation (11 days of silence) in India, basked in the sun on the beaches of Zanzibar, and are now biking home.  How can we not be excited to finish our journey after hearing all of what these two have accomplished this year?

We tried a little Meditation of ourselves while visiting Lyman, one of our Warm Showers hosts in Torrey, UT.  Not quite 11 days of silence but the picture is impressive, I think!
 

Mike has become our new biking buddy through The Loneliest Road in America.  Route 50 in Nevada has spans of over 80 miles with absolutely nothing.  On our map, it describes Nevada as having no shade except for 3 trees East of Fallon.  At least we've got Mike.  Mike's goal for riding this year is to build his faith in God and "show people that God is real and there is still love out there in this crazy world."  We are loving his company and the goodness he has brought to us while riding with him.  

Glen was our camp "Dad."  What would we all have done without him?  He invited us to share his campsite when all the rest were full, bought us all power bars to scarf down at the top of a 6 mile hike in Zion called Angel's Landing, supplied us with Gorilla Tape when squirrels chewed through our food panniers, and was always ready with a joke.  

Sadly, on Tuesday, Adam, Mike and I left our camping cyclist community in Zion but since then, we've been finding miracle upon miracle.  After making it into the Wal-Mart only minutes before the rain pounded Cedar City, we finally settled into a Starbucks to wait out the storm where we met Bob and Nancy.  We shared some great conversation with them, and they invited us to delight in some of the best apple and blueberry danishes we've ever experienced.  

We debated our camping options that night.  Stealth camping along a river bed only a mile or two out of town for free, or fork over the $30 to stay in the local KOA.  Since we hadn't had a shower in four nights, the KOA won, but as we navigated the back roads of Cedar City, we passed a church picnic and were invited to share the meal with them.  Scalloped Potatoes and Ham, burgers, salad, and ice cream for dessert was our dinner that night.  We were inundated with conversations and enjoyed dinner with what seemed like 50 or so others.  Before we could leave, we were offered two bags of leftovers, and a place to camp, shower, and do laundry... all necessities after spending a few nights in a National Park. Enoch was our host and we camped under his peach tree, met his family in the morning, and converted him to become a Warm Showers host. 

All of the food we got from the church gave us more than enough energy to ride 60 miles to Milford, UT, and finish our day carrying our bikes over the train tracks (I made a mistake in directions and we chose this route instead of riding a whole 1/4 mile back).  

We've made it to Nevada now... but that's for another post!  46 states down! And on we go....

And We Would Bike 5,000 Miles, And We Would Bike 5,000 More!

That's right! As of August 31, Adam and I crossed into Utah and have officially biked over 10,000 miles this year, touring 45 states and crossing the continental divide only 9 times (whew- glad to be done with that).



Throughout this tour, there have been times when we stopped to smell the roses, and there have been times that we really pushed ourselves. Well, for the past few weeks we had been taking it easy, enjoying the sights and visiting with so many people. After we left Boulder, sad to say goodbye to Papa P, we were ready for a good push to get back into the swing of things and within a few days we found ourselves heading downhill into Utah.

Linda Guerette, who found us a few months ago on Facebook, also found us the other day on US 6 coming out of Vail, CO. Instead of continuing uphill, she turned around to ride with us for a few miles.



Well, a few turned into many, and we soon found ourselves in a Canyon 10 miles from Glenwood Springs with a closed bike path and an interstate illegal for bikes. Our only option? A shuttle.  I guess we could have hopped in one of the rafts heading downstream, but I don't know if the bikes would have made it.  It was here that Linda turned around to climb the hill we'd been enjoying all day and we strapped our bikes to the back of a van for a whopping two mile ride around the eroded bike path.



Safe on the other side, we continued a car free ride all the way into Glenwood Springs ending the day at 59 miles.

But this wasn't the killer day. Our ride from Glenwood Springs to Grand Junction was close to 95 miles but somehow, we've figured out a way to make these days enjoyable. We found ourselves tasting wine at a Winery (I swear we thought the sign outside said "peaches").








A little further down the road we really did find peaches and got to snack on them, fueling us the last 15 miles of the trip.







Our destination that night was with Eileen and Jim, Warm Showers hosts who took us in, gave us a warm shower, a hot dinner, a scrumptious breakfast, and an incredible sneak-peak of the scenery we were about to enjoy in Utah.







We're back to a land where towns are few and far between, where a shade tree is a God send, and where we need to make ourselves get up and on the road before the sun and it's heat. But we're also in the land of crazy natural wonders. Where rocks jet out of the ground hundreds of feet above you. Where canyons fall hundreds of feet below. Where the rocks glow red as the sun rises and sets.

Our introduction to the Utah scenery looked mostly like this:



But soon enough, we were riding through a canyon on our way to Moab.








This day was one of the hottest on our trip, and we were stuck riding smack in the middle of the heat. Not to worry, the muddy Colorado river was our savior and a dip in the water cooled us off enough to ride another 15 miles to one of our favorite camping spots of the trip. 




































Only problem?  No drinking water.  We had to grab some muddy water from the Colorado River.  Filter process?  Pour water through Christy's sock (clean) and into water bottle to seperate particles.  Use SteriPen to zap all the bacteria.










































...Adam still thought the water tasted like my feet.


The next day into Moab surprised us with even brighter colors and higher cliffs than the day before. We hadn't even entered a National Park and already we were in awe.





























 


































We made it to Moab before the sun got too hot, found a cafe to relax in... (we love it when yesterday's pastries go on sale for 1/2 price), and when deciding where we would spend the night, we were donated a room by the Ramada Inn Moab! How awesome are they! They even had a separate locked room to store our bikes!

To celebrate our 10,000 mile marker... We rented a car to see the national parks instead of riding through. We left our bikes in the bike room and spent the day covering 145 miles in Canyonlands NP, Dead Horse State Park, and Arches NP. The pictures will do more justice than any words could.

















































 





    




































 
That night, we got a total of 3 hours of sleep (thanks to the wind and intermittent rain) before we woke up early and biked out of Moab.








 


 
Some fun with the camera: