


Europe, here we come!
It was sunny and cool at the top were we met up with Ray and Brenda. Brenda took this picture of us in front of the marker. To us this was an important moment. Crossing the Divide felt like the point of no return, there's nothing for it now but to keep on to the East Coast. After all, it's all down hill from here, right? Yeah, right. Well as we descended the views to the East were beautiful.
We descended the eighteen miles to Poncha Springs rapidily. At Poncha Springs we found a little resturant named Thai Mini Cafe where we had a great lunch. We were certainly surprised to find great Thai food in a tiny burg like Poncha Springs! From Poncha Springs we turned north on Hwy. 285 which will take us all the way to Denver. Tonight we are staying in a KOA just outside Buena Vista. We will be at Belinda's Mom's house by Saturday.
Sunday, Father's Day, we faced a 45 mile gradual climb of 3000 ft. to Natural Bridges National Monument. The first part we paralleled White Canyon, which looks like a great place to explore, full of slots and verdant vegetation in the more open stretches. Not all of the climb was gradual, there were some steep pitches, and again the weather was hot. We weren't sure that we would make it all the way to the Monument, climbing the whole way heavily ladened. But in the end we set our caps for the Monument and rolled in late in the afternoon. John broke two spokes on the climb and spent a good portion of the day making road side repairs. The campground at the Monument was dry but there was good cool water at the visitors center, so we never really had a dry camp after all, though with the weather so hot we consumed a lot and didn't feel bad about carrying so much.
The trip from Natural Bridges to Blanding on Monday was a net elevation loss, it was a very challenging day none the less. Early in the ride we had a fast prolonged descent on which we all set new personal best speed records for the trip. Belinda broke 42 mph, Dave 47 mph, and the speed demon John hit 48 mph. Then the road turned ugly. We crossed several washes, with a fast descent to the bottom followed by very steep climbs out. In one five mile stretch, Belinda was pulling the cart, there were four pitches so steep she was having trouble even pushing the cart up the hill. So Dave would ride to the top of a pitch, park his bike, and jog back down to help Belinda push her bike and cart to the top. It was also a day of flat tires. We had five flats between the three of us, Dave had one, Belinda and John had two flats each. At last we reached Blanding. As we have been seven straight days on the road we are taking a rest day here on Tuesday. We are doing laundry, patching inner tubes, and cleaning up the bikes. Tomorrow we will ride out of Utah on Hwy 191 to Dove Creek, Colorado!
We next passed through a very sere region of sparse vegetation and a predominantly grey color. Our friend John asked "What planet are we on now?". Indeed, we later learned that the locale was known as Luna Mesa. In the middle of this moonscape is Cainville. Don't blink or you'll miss it even on bikes. We pulled over for lunch at a very inviting patch of shady grass in front of the Cainville Cove Inn. We were just setting up to eat when Nancy, a blond mom of several youngsters and an abundance of energy and enthusiasm, came out to greet us and gave us two bunches of cold grapes to enjoy with our lunch (very welcome as the weather was quite warm). Nancy also made restrooms available to us, and later when we went to thank her for the hospitality she made us eat watermelon and gave each of us a pile of cookies to take with us. Again, the kindness of people like Nancy renew our faith in humanity.
We camped outside of Boulder and Thursday morning headed up the mountain for a climb of 3000 ft. in 12 miles. Along the way, we kept seeing these old cars that were obviously part of a rally. One of the cars a Landrover sedan honked and waved at us on its way down. A little bit later the same car drove past us going up the mountain. When we got to the summit the driver had jumped out and was taking pictures of us. We stopped and talked with David and Lorraine from Hong Kong who are driving their 1960 Landrover from Panama to Alaska (14,000 miles). They were intrigued with our adventure and with Jack. We wished each other good luck after taking pictures. We headed down the pass and got to Torrey late in the afternoon. Today we ride east on Hwy 24 to Hanksville. Our ability to post may be limited from Hanksville to Blanding.
On Monday we passed Powell's Point on the way to Escalante. We couldn't help reflecting on this man's great accomplishments. A one armed explorer, surveyor, and mapper he charted the whole Green River and Colorado River drainages. This is some of the most rugged country in the US.
Many friends have enquired about Jack and here is a picture of him riding in his chariot (the dog cart) as we ride towards Mormon Gap.
We had two long climbs and the valleys in Utah seem so much bigger than in Nevada. There is also an interesting wind pattern to each valley. Descending from the pass we have a headwind, across the flat we have a crosswind, and ascending the pass on the other side we have a tailwind. After 52 miles we found our campground at the top of the pass. Here is a view up the dirt road from the highway.
We listened to the weather radio and knew the good weather was changing again. This morning clouds filled the sky, we packed up and headed into the headwind on the descent from Wah Wah. At the bottom of the Wah Wah valley we were hit by tremendous side winds reducing our speed on the flats to 5-7 mph. Rain clouds, thunder and lightning could be seen on the San Francisco mountains ahead. We persisted and finally reached the point with a tailwind and made the 1400 ft. climb to Frisco Summit. The storm had passed over us with some light hail on the climb; however a very cold tailwind pushed us to Milford. After we warmed up, we checked the weather radio and realized that we had just ridden through a major wind advisory for southern Utah and Nevada.