Nevada Desert

We have spent the last three days crossing the Nevada desert.  At least once each day I have asked myself what on earth we are doing crossing Nevada on a bike in the middle of August.  Today I asked myself that question several times.  First of all the landscape is beautiful.  I have been leaving each morning at 6:30 AM and the first couple of hours of each day have been spectacular.  The last two days we started by climbing a mountain pass.  Over the last three days we have climbed 12 mountain passes.  The hardest one was probably the one we climbed this afternoon, Robinson Summit which topped out at 7,588 feet.  It was hot with an occasional head or cross wind and the descent was very slow because of a very strong head/cross wind; at times we were going down a 6% slope at only 15 mph pedaling (without the wind we would have gone down at about 35 mph).

Today was probably the hardest biking day I have ever experienced.  We climbed four mountain passes and had no help with the descents as the wind was so strong in our faces.  The temperatures reached 100 degrees (Dana will tell you only 98, but Lisa and I agree it was over 100).  At times we were almost blown off of our bikes. 

The best day, though not an easy one, was Friday when we rode from Middlegate to Austin.  This was a beautiful ride over highway 722 that started with a 2500 ft. ascent up Carroll Summit.  Early in the ride we actually had some shade.  The scenery changed frequently and the descent was perfect.  I did manage to get my first flat tire ever (I know, that's hard to believe) at the top of the Summit, but my timing couldn't have been better (we were able to change it inside Fran's motorhome as she had stopped there to refill our water and give us some food).  This was the first flat tire of the trip and hopefully the last!