Kim with Eric from Chicago, leaving the Grand Canyon.

Finally, riding our bikes.

This morning we had to pack up tents before heading off to breakfast. We then rode our bikes to breakfast, and I remembered the tickets this time. We got on the road by 8:30. The road was in terrific shape, very smooth with no traffic and not too steep either up or down. It was easy rollers for the first half of the day, and at lunch we were still at 8000 ft.

Today was our first try at lunch on the road. Cycle America provides us all lunch, so they had this very nice spread of make-your-own sandwiches and lots of other stuff to eat. One rule that we quickly learned was that everyone was required to wash their hands before we could touch anything. That, and to check your name off of the list.

After lunch we got onto a very long downhill. The views were just massive, so I didn't bother trying to go fast but just sat back and cruised so that I could better take in the views. I think that we might have been looking towards Bryce up to the North and towards Zion just ahead to the West, but at this time I had no idea which direction anything was, as I was new to this area. All I really knew was that I wasn't in California any more.

Eric, at a water stop.

Besides lunch, Cycle America also provides a waterstop at the 1/4 and 3/4 points of each day. This consists of two 5-gallon coolers sitting out there on the edge of the road.

We dropped down to well under the 5000 ft elevation sign, so I'm thinking we got to about 4600 ft in Kanab. Kanab was just about one mile over the Utah state line, and was a very nice little town with great red cliffs all around. Camp for this night was on the lawn at the high school. The temperature was about 95F when we arrived, and I was thinking how few water places there were, and how it would be good to have a kiddie pool to fill up. And when we pulled in to get our bags, what do I see but a very big kiddie pool, all inflated and being filled with water. This would work.

We were early into camp today and not yet out of energy, so Kim, Debbie, and I decided to ride our bikes out again and check out the town. After an hour or so of this we headed back to get our showers and to get dinner. I also found a little time here to lay in the kiddle pool for a few minutes. Very refreshing, as the shower room was very hot and felt more like a sauna.

Totals for the day were 85 miles.

Go to the next day.