We knew that it was going to be cold again this morning, so we all wore all of our warm clothes. I was glad that I had my earmuffs and long-fingered gloves. My one glove had a hole in one finger-tip, and I could sure feel it. I don't know how I would have managed with no gloves. Luckily it was going to be mostly uphill this morning, so that was ok with us as it would help to keep us warm.

At the start of what would be a 30-mile uphill, I stopped to take off a few layers. I then caught and passed Debbie and then had to work real hard to catch back up with Kim. After a few miles I finally got close enough to yell out to Kim, but this took a few tries before she finally heard me. This turned out to be the only point during the tour where Kim, Debbie, or I had our differences, as we had all gotten together fine up to this point. I wasn't mad at Kim, but I did want her to stop and wait so we could all ride as a group. It looked to me like Kim might have kept going and not stopped to wait until these 30 miles were finished, and I very-strongly didn't want to see that happen. I don't think that Kim was happy with my talking to her this way, and I was sorry that I thought that I had to say what I did. I was happy to see that Debbie caught up to us very quickly and that she seemed to keep up just fine so we were again riding as a group.

The uphill was never anywhere close to steep, maybe 5% max. But we were at 8000 feet and climbing up to 10600 feet, so the air was thin and the breathing was hard to do. We stopped at the water stop overlooking a small lake. Then we left to go another mile to the only store for miles around. As we were leaving the water stop, my chain got stuck, and when I got going again it kept making noises. When we stopped in at the store I worked on my bike. To my amazement, the chain was on the wrong side of a metal tab on my rear derailler, so I had to take my chain apart, re-thread it through the derailler, and then reattach it again. This fixed my problem. Luckily I had a removable link on my chain so I didn't need any tools.

For some reason the lunch stop was late in the ride today, being at mile 52. And this was near the end of the 30 mile uphill. We were all very tired when we finally got there, and we all needed the stop and the food. We were probably up at 10000 feet by this time. After lunch, it was just a few more miles to the summit, and then to the visitor center at Cedar Breaks National Monument. Most people didn't bother stopping, but we figured that we should stop and check it out since we were here. They charged us each $3 to enter, which seemed like a ripoff, and so I offered to pay for us all just so we could stop in and not worry about the price. The visitor center was very small, and we had seen all we wanted to see in 5 minutes. Cedar Breaks is up at 10600 feet, and is right on the rim overlooking a miniature Bryce Canyon. If we looked way down the valley I thought that we could see the lowlands where our trip would end that afternoon. But that was still 20 miles away. We all made sure that we used the restroom before we left, just to get our money's worth.

As we were ready to leave Cedar Breaks, we saw a Tour shuttle go by loaded with about 10 bikes. Looks like lots of people decided to SAG today. About 3 miles of mostly downhill, then we turned right onto what was supposed to be a 17 mile downhill to Cedar City. The first half mile was slightly uphill, but we could feel the downhill that was coming. We had been looking forward to this all day long. Kim went off the front with John from San Diego, but I was ok with that now and would let her go. Besides, on a long downhill there was no way in the world that I could have kept up with Kim. Instead I was content to cruise down with Debbie, happy that I could at least keep up with her if I tried.

We caught many riders along this first half mile section, as the Tour shuttle had let them all out so that they could finish with the long downhill. The downhill itself was great. It would drop about 4800 feet, passing through lots of neat rock formations. It also felt great to finally get down from the high altitude, as we could now breathe easier, and it was now nicely warm again. About a mile from the bottom we found Kim and John waiting for us. Kim said she felt a bit guilty about going off the front this time, but I assured her that it was ok.

Together, we rode on in to Cedar City, elevation 5800 feet. This looked like it might be our biggest town yet. Camp for tonight was at a KOA on the north side of town. They had a pool but this time we didn't have the urge to go swimming. Instead we were content to go put up our tents and then hang out. This was partly because some of the group was taking the early shuttle back to St.George, and so we wanted to be around to say our goodbyes. Once the shuttle was gone we headed off to dinner, and we all got stuffed on mexican food.

Kim and I working on a jigsaw puzzle.

That evening Kim and I again tried to do a jigsaw puzzle, but the day was too short and it got to be too dark to see. We borrowed John from Dallas's lantern for awhile, but even this was hard going, and we didn't really want to waste his light. Debbie had gone off early to bed for a nap, saying that she might come out later, but that was the last that we saw of her that day.

Totals for the day were 82 miles.

Go to the next day.