39

Sunday, July 13, 2008, Camping off the road near Lion Mountain, Wayne County, Utah
Got an early start and headed 2 miles downhill into a beautiful red rock canyon which wound its way gradually uphill toward our second highest summit so far- 9,400 feet. The scenery was great. We also passed through “The Hogback” which was supposed to be a harrowing ride on cliffs without guardrails, but it was nothing, easy and not scary at all. When we came down into the small town of Boulder, Pop. 180 (not Colorado), we stopped at the only store open on Sunday. A man with his SUV open in the back exposing fishing poles was getting gas, so I asked him where some good fishing was. His eyes lit up as he told me about where he and his wife had just gotten their trout limit. It was stocked every year and few people fished it-Garkane Power Plant, about 3 miles away. We quickly bought worms, power bait, hooks, some drinks and headed out in the van. To fish, the lady working at the store said we could leave the bikes there at the store until she got off work at 2 pm. That gave us about 3 hours to fish. After back tracking once, we finally found it and started fishing. After three hours we had a stringer full of 20 beautiful trout-best catch I’ve had in years (and boy they were delicious later on). However, while we were fishing, the sun had burned its way out of the clouds. We started riding again about 2:30 and it was hot and uphill. The first seven miles were very slow and exhausting. I think the heat tires me more than the hills. When we started the hardest grade, the clouds shaded us which was such a welcomed relief. I don’t know how much harder it would be to pedal all day in the sun. So far, we’ve had pretty favorable conditions, wind with us mostly, and cloud cover at needed times. The climbing never stopped-up up up the whole way in 1st and 2nd gear-3-5 mph. We finally reached the summit, 9,600 feet, at about 6 pm, took a quick picture, and headed down. Unfortunately it wasn’t all downhill; some short sections we had to pedal. Nevertheless, it was beautiful with pine trees everywhere surrounding us. We decided to camp there in the mountains rather than go all the way to Hanksville because it was getting late and everyone was tired and hungry and we needed to cook up all the fish with rice. We found a nice wooded level place off the road. By the time we had set up the tent, cooked, eaten, and cleaned up it was almost dark, so we had our Bible time with a flashlight in the tent, then went to bed-all but the dedicated few who write pages a night in their journals. They went back to the car to write. I think today was the hardest 39 miles I have ever cycled.