It was supposed to be an easy day today with only 45 miles of riding. But, in true touring fashion, we managed to stretch this out to a full day. After breakfast, while everyone else got started riding, Kim, Debbie, and I went riding around the town once more, looking for a store where Debbie could buy a cheap watch. We ended up in an Outdoors store and I bought another puzzle, which I then had to fit into my panniers.

At our only turn of the day, Mt.Carmel Junction, we again stopped and checked out a gift shop. Funny but after awhile all of these shops start to look like they are all selling the same stuff. I did buy a DVD and a T-shirt here, and so had to find a bit more room in my panniers.

We now started to get into Zion territory and so the rock formations were getting more and more impressive. Lots of red rock which used to be mud, and white rock which used to be sand, and all of it just right there, everywhere. Instead of there being dirt, it was like the road was built right on top of one huge rock, and went around and through all of its nooks and crannies. We were following a stream down a canyon, and finally the canyon became very narrow, and the road went into a tunnel.

They had warned us about this tunnel, and how it was 1.1 miles long and that we would need to be shuttled through it. It was also suggested that we should take the time to hike to the scenic overlook, so we decided to do this. We parked bikes, and headed up these stairs cut into the rocks. It would be about one mile over to the lookout, and I was impressed by the scenery that I was seeing right here. We were able to look down into the narrow canyon and seeing how there was just no way that they could have put the road through there.

Overlooking Zion.

Finally, we came up to the overlook. Amazing. We were right on the edge of a cliff, and were overlooking a valley just as impressive as Yosemite. High vertical cliffs on all sides. We could see our road far below us and I could count 6 switchbacks from where it came out of the tunnel to where we would finally get down to the bottom. This was Zion. I was impressed.

Back at the road again, we retrieved our bikes and went to wait for the shuttle. I was just about out of water by this time, and it was hot and there was very little shade where we had to wait. Not too long of a wait and our tour shuttle van arrived. I helped to hand everybody's bikes up. After the tunnel, the van did a U-turn and dropped us off up higher so that we wouldn't miss any of the great downhill.

I mentioned to Kim and Debbie that we should all meet up at the bottom and go find a place to jump in the creek. They were both agreeable. Once down, the main river through Zion had more water than this side stream that we were going down. We went down the road a bit and it didn't look like it was getting too close, so Kim and Debbie agreed to stop and walk down this dirt path with me. Maybe an easy 100 yards and the dirt path crossed a very nice looking paved bike trail right near the water. We were now in the right place. The stream here looked just fine.

I found a few rapids where I could sit down and get a full body massage. It just beats you up nicely. Kim went on upstream and I followed. I found a flat area with very fine-grained mud and so I decided to lay down and give myself a mud bath. Kim saw me and came over to help out. I had Kim cover up any spots that I had missed. Then while Kim wasn't looking, I grabbed her and wrestled her down into the mud. I figured that a little mud wrestling with Kim would be just fine with me. Kim could hardly stop laughing. Too bad we didn't have a camera with us then.

It was still five miles on to camp, and so we had to get going again. On the way we passed the visitor center and so again stopped in and also went to the gift shop, the 3rd one for the day. I found another puzzle that I just had to have. Again I had to find just a little more room in my panniers. They were now overly stuffed, but we only had one more mile to go.

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We were now fasionably late into camp. We met Jerry and some others out front. Jerry mentioned how packed in everyone was, with the tents right next to each other, so we weren't in a hurry to go set up camp. Jerry offered to buy us all a beer so we acepted. We didn't know where dinner was so I was sent off to scout how far away it would be. I went back but didn't see it, so I checked in the other direction and found that we were camped just outside of town. I still didn't find our restaurant, but I did find an ATM so I was now all set again for money.

Back in camp it was now time to finally set up tents. Luckily for us we found that they had expanded our campsites and so Kim, Debbie, and I just about had a site all to ourselves. We weren't crowded a bit. Since it was now about dinner time we decided to wait and get showers after, since we were pretty cleaned up from our dip in the river anyway. But then standing in line at dinner, I found a few bits of dried mud still in Kim's hair. I wonder how that got there.

Totals for the day were 48 miles, with about 2 miles of hiking.

Go to the next day.