August 25, 2010 – Capitol Reef National Park
What a great ride today. Lisa left before us because she wanted to do the ride past the Mormon settlement deeper into the park. Steve and I drove it last night and I had driven and hiked it last summer; Dana had also done it fairly recently. It is a spectacular ride/drive and should not be missed, but neither Dana nor I wanted to ride it this morning. Dana and I left Torrey a little after 8 AM and rode the highway through the park. What a beautiful ride. We had a tail wind most of the way. We did stop at the Visitor’s Center after a GREAT decent, then continued on. My bike worked perfectly!
We took another break about 20 miles west of Hanksville. We were stopped along side the road and the manager of the Rodeway Inn across the highway invited us to sit on a bench under a big tree in front of the motel. As we were sitting there we saw Steve drive by (he had no way of knowing we were on the “wrong” side of the road); that was no problem as we only had 20 miles left to Hanksville. We talked with the lady from Rodeway a bit, filled our water bottles with ice from Rodeway’s ice machine, then headed towards Hanksville. We got into Hanksville a little after noon. The ride was a beautiful and easy 47 miles.
When we went to dinner the cover of the menu stated we were close to “Goblin Valley National Park”. Having never heard of it we were curious and asked our waitress where it was. She said it was about 30 minutes north of Hanksville, so Dana, Steve and I decided to drive up there and check it out. What was billed on the menu as a “national park” turned out to be a state park, but what a state park! There was a whole valley of rock structures that looked like goblins. Apparently this valley is so unique that there is nothing else like it anywhere. It was truly a worthwhile drive through and to beautiful and unusual landscape.
 |
| Goblin Valley State Park |
August 26, 2010 – A Spectacular Ride Through Glen Canyon
Today was another beautiful ride! We headed south out of Hanksville through red rock canyons and eventually were in Glen Canyon. By early afternoon we could see Lake Powell, then crossed the Dirty Devil River and then the Colorado River. Because of the heat (about 104 F.) I decided not to ride the last 8 miles to our campsite. We had to “dry” camp as there are no services between Hanksville and Blanding, UT. We ended up parked next to White Canyon, where we met two hikers from Moab who had hiked down into the Canyon and swam in the river with wetsuits. They were a nice young couple and we ended up talking with them for a while.
 |
| Lake Powell |
 |
| Colorado River |
A tough ride today. We climbed for 35 - 40 miles with a strong headwind or crosswind the entire way. We were riding through red canyon country again, which made for a beautiful ride, but the winds made the climb really tough. Finally, after 40 miles we reached the summit which was a little over 7100 feet and had a great 10 mile descent. Then the climbing began again, only this time it was steeper and hotter since it was now afternoon. When I was about 9 miles out of town Dana came and got me with the car telling me I did not want to ride the rest of the way in. She said it was HORRIBLE. I was feeling good but decided to take her word for it and got in the car. Was I ever glad! There was a wickedly steep long climb that would not have been fun in the afternoon sun!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment