Bicycling Utah, Arizona, Nevada

May - 2009

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Today was supposed to be an easy day because we were not supposed to have any steep upgrades and we were supposed to have a very long, fast down grade. Well Mother Nature knows how to fix things to make riding more challenging. All day we rode against the wind and our very fast down grade became a slow down grade where we had to peddle a lot of the time to maintain a steady down hill speed. Even going down a 6% grade we did not go extremely fast. So, in addition to head winds, we were all pedaling on tired leg muscles.

The day started with a fantastic breakfast at Harold's, across from our Cabins.

Then, we had a long but easy climb followed by the long down hill. We ate lunch in Mt Carmel Junction. We were tired after fighting the wind so we checked to see if we could stay at the local Best Western motel. They were filled up so we began to ride our bicycles up Hwy 9 to Zion National Park. Our goal was to get to Springdale, but the hills and wind proved to be stronger than our legs. The first two miles were so steep that we got off of the bicycles and walked to the top of the grade. For the next 6 miles we were lucky to go 6 miles per hour and most of the time we were going 4 or 5 miles per hour, all up hill and against the wind.

We finally reached the top of the climb at a buffalo ranch. They had cabins for rent and we took one because we were very tired. We showered and walked back to the restaurant and had another fantastic meal. Scott and Jim had buffalo meat loaf, Barbara had chicken and mushroom alfredo and Mary Kay had salmon. We were stuffed after dinner. We watched the buffalo herd while walking back to our cabin for the night.

Submitted by Barbara