Sunday, July 12th, 2015

Start/End: Heber/Salt Lake City
Mileage: 73.4+
Weather: Beautiful, with a tiny bit of rain/lightning

Today’s route we started with two different route choices: one that went around the mountains and one that was much shorter through the mountains. Based on the feedback and safety concerns from last year’s group, we went with the longer route around the mountains. Absolutely the right course of action!

This morning into Salt Lake City, the ride was dedicated to Chris, a wonderful woman who one of our rider’s used to babysit for her and her husband. Chris amazingly beat breast cancer a while ago, but then it has unfortunately come back recently and she will be undergoing a double mastectomy in addition to chemotherapy. So today our thoughts are with her and her family as they support Chris.

We want to thank the Mountain View Fellowship Church in Heber for hosting us last night. They had not only an amazing amount of space for us to spread out in, but also had an awesome view of the mountains. We cannot thank them enough for their generosity.

As we rolled out this morning, we found that our first 25 miles were all downhill. It was amazing. It was a relaxing start to the ride and we got to go through a really cool mountain pass/canyon thing. The rock structures and colors changed as we went continued, but it was just honestly so beautiful. We did, though, need to pay pretty close attention to the road as it was a little busy. Thankfully there was a remarkable shoulder for us to ride in which rocked. As we reached our first rest stop, Ben, our ride leader who has done the ride before remarked that this stretch of road was the best he has ever encountered.

The rest of the day, we were going more through suburb areas of Salt Lake City. We bikes on some pretty cool trails which had lots of turns and surprising hills throughout. It seemed like it was definitely in a very nature filled area, yet there were houses nearby and corporate centers. It was amazing because we had gotten ourselves in a valley completely surrounded by mountains.

It wasn’t long before we saw some dark clouds making their way closer to us. They were certainly raining where they were located so groups kept moving as to stay out of the path of the rain. As lightning flashed, groups pulled off and waited for the weather to pass in gas stations or stores. It did not rain much, which was pretty anticlimactic, up the lightning did keep us off our bikes until it had ceased. We felt pretty glad that there were only about 10 miles left in the day after that, but during those 10 miles, many groups found themselves very lost on more bike trails in Salt Lake City, which added 6-10 extra miles of riding. This was a bummer, but we all eventually found our way to the stayover, which was right at the foothills of the mountains around the valley, meaning that we had a pretty decent incline right at the end of the day.

Glad to finally have made it in. Many of us went out for Dim Sun (Chinese food) to celebrate Tony’s birthday and others went and saw the new minion movie (well, they may have slept through it). Ready for a rest day well deserved, we think. We have crossed the continental divide, climbed mountains and are really getting ourselves further west, which is so exciting!
-LAH