Tuesday, July 7th, 2015
Start/End: Maybell, CO/Vernal, UT
Mileage: 90.6+
Weather: Cool throughout the day, cloudy until the late afternoon, then it warmed up
Camping. Well that was interesting! We had a bit of a crazy evening as Lightning was seen in the distance and the winds picked up quite a bit early in the evening. Thankfully we all secured our tents/rain flaps well so no tent parts went flying away. This noise was a little alarming to some first (and veteran) campers, but remarkably, most of us had a pretty good night of sleep.
Today we had a very long day ahead of us, but we were pretty prepared, especially with the delicious banana- chocolate bread generously donated by the Texas 4000 alumni yesterday. Additionally, today’s ride was dedicated to a writer named Ray who frequented a restaurant where one of our rider’s previously worked. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma cancer and is going through a tough battle.
Today’s ride was a little bit different from other days because today we had absolutely no cues for the day. We literally stayed on the same road the entire day: U.S. 40. So we stated off in the morning headed west and we had quite a few big hills to both climb and go down. We always get excited when we see signs that indicated a steep descent to trucks because that means we can coast quite easily, and sometimes use that momentum to get us most or all the way up the next big hill. Not far from Maybell we passed a field of cows that seemed slightly distressed making quite a bit of noise. It was interesting… Even more entertaining is that many miles past that point, we encountered a cow that had somehow gotten out of their pasture and was just walking along the fence line. It came up to some team members and moo’d, but then continued on its journey, wherever it may have been heading. Sean was sure to report the cow to local law enforcement so that its owner could locate it. Kind of a fun morning!
After our first rest stop, it started sprinkling and was chilly, but it was not a significant amount of rain at all and stopped not long after it started. The clouds did hang around for a lot of the day, though. That did not dampen our spirits,methought, as we approached what appears to be the place to be for dinosaurs. We passed along Dinosaur National Monument, which is actually a really large park where fossils have been found. Many groups stopped for some pictures and to explore a little, but we did have to press on since our mileage was pretty high for the day. Our next stop was Dinosaur, CO where the street signs are named for types of dinosaurs, so that was pretty cool. Shortly after that, we reached our next state line of Utah! Oh. And their state sign had a dinosaur on it. Many team members did their best dinosaur impression with the sign, while others did their traditional state sign picture. It is fun to see that many people have a style, whether it is a selfie, a handstand or holding their bikes overhead.
We had about 30 miles left after reaching Utah. We saw some cool scenery of some very large geological formations, including high plateaus and some mini canyon formations that were pretty cool. It was a pleasant ride, and was nice towards the end as we began to approach Vernal and neighboring towns as it was much more populated than other areas we have travelled through for a while.
We all made it in safely and you can definitely tell how exhausted most of us are. Today we saw a sign that said Salt Lake City, our next rest day, is in 205 miles (less now!), so that is exciting and we are looking forward to seeing another city, but we know we have some great stops in Utah before then. Many of us were a little sad to leave Colorado and have plans to return at some point, but Utah may surprise us! The amount of dinosaurs everywhere sure have….
-LAH