Browsing Archive: June, 2011
Posted by the girls on Thursday, June 30, 2011,
We are very glad that we decided to take the day off. The winds were definitely gusting up to 50 mph! We stayed at the KOA until check-out time. Then we headed over to the cheap hotels (almost the same price as the KOA). It was just a 3- mile ride, mostly downhill. After stuffing our bikes and gear in the room, the laziness set in. We moved every so often to wallk to the convenient store to buy snacks and drinks. Also, Michelle had to stop back at the bike shop. The new derailleur they put on...
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Posted by the girls on Tuesday, June 28, 2011,
We got up at 4:30 am as planned and got going on time (finally, no flat tires this morning). As soon as we left Baker, we had to start climbing up to the first peak, Sacramento Pass. The road sucked; it was being repaved so it had sticky tar and tons of loose gravel. The little rocks would stick to our tires and then fall off and vibrate against our fenders. Talk about a noisy ride!
About 12 miles into the ride, Michelle was suddenly stopped. She could not move because her chain and derailleur... Continue reading ...
Posted by the girls on Tuesday, June 28, 2011,
Even though today was a day off, we woke up at the same time as usual. We wanted to say our goodbyes to Tom and Mark. Unfortunately, they were headed in different directions, so we all went our separate ways.
We still ate our usual oatmeal and then changed into our hiking gear (don't be fooled, it's the same as our biking gear). We walked to the road that leads to Great Basin Nat'l Park and stuck our thumbs out. It only took us about 10 minutes to catch a ride. We stuffed ourselves into an al...
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Posted by the girls on Monday, June 27, 2011,
We started out the morning with "rain." Once again, we pitched our tents right next to some automatic sprinkler systems. They turned on at 5am sharp. Emily was sleeping in the not-so-waterproof tent, so she ran and took cover in the nearby pavilion. Rebekah and Michelle waited it out inside the tent. Not only did we get a wet start to our morning, but Emily also had a flat tire. She quickly fixed it and we were off.
We knew that today would be a long day, 84 miles to be exact. It was tough bec... Continue reading ...
Posted by the girls on Monday, June 27, 2011,
After 5 full days off and only a 15-mile ride yesterday, today was back to our "normal" routine. We had wanted to leave Rodney's house in Cedar City by 7am, but that did not happen. When Rebekah went to get her bike from his garage, she had a flat rear tire; there was a leak near the valve of the tube. However, changing the tube didn't put us too far off schedule.
We biked about 56 miles to Milford, UT. The ride had one long gradual climb and two long gradual descents. Michelle said today was ...
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Posted by the girls on Saturday, June 25, 2011,
We woke up around 7am and enjoyed some old-fashioned oats with blueberries, nuts, and maple syrup with Lucy. We were a bit sad that the day finally came when we'd have to leave Lucy. She has been so wonderful to us and is such an amazing person. We really wish we could've spent more time together.
After breakfast, we started loading up Lucy's car. We had to run a shuttle to a nearby town called New Harmony. The only way to Cedar City was to go on I-15. Not only is I-15 an interstate, but it's ... Continue reading ...
Posted by the girls on Friday, June 24, 2011,
Our shuttle back to St.George where Lucy was going to pick us and take us back to her house in Hurricane, left the airport at noon. However, we had to take a few different buses from our hotel to get to the airport so we left Stratosphere at 9am. We made it to the airport with time to spare so we found some breakfast and relaxed in the air conditioning for a little while. We all slept most of the 2-hour ride back to St. George and found Lucy there waiting for us. We drove back to Hurricane, s...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 24, 2011,
The next day didn't start off as early as the last few had. Michelle and Rebekah were up by mid-morning, while Emily slept a bit later to try to recover from the previous night. Rebekah had plans to play Bingo that afternoon and do some browsing on her own around the strip. Michelle headed into town as well to browse and Emily met up with her a short time later. They took a look inside many of the big hotels/casinos, like the Bellagio, New York New York, Excalibur, and Mandalay Bay. We all me...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 24, 2011,
We woke up early to make our tour to the Hoover Dam.Unfortunately, we didn't get the pick-up time right and missed the van. They were nice enough to loop back around and get us though, so we made it after all. The bus took about 45 minutes to the dam, but we had a few stops before our tour of the actual dam. We got a really good view of the dam from the bypass bridge, half of which was in Nevada and half of which was in Arizona. Once at the dam, we watched a video about its history and then t...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 24, 2011,
We woke up super early this morning to make our way to Las Vegas; a day we've all been looking forward to. Our original plan was to rent a car to Vegas, but Lucy gave us a much better offer. About a 20-minute drive from Hurricane, in St George, there is a $25 shuttle van to Las Vegas; making our trip much cheaper and probably safer. Lucy drove us to St George to catch the 7:30am van before she headed off on a trip of her own to visit with her family. It took just 2 hours to get to Vegas, so w...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 24, 2011,
This morning we took our time and had a wonderful breakfast supplied by good ol' Lucy. Then we all drove up to Zion National Park to spend the day. Lucy began her volunteering at 1pm, so there was some time for her to show us around a little bit. She took us up the canyon ridge on the east side of the park in her car. We had an amazing overlook of the canyon and she also took us on a short walk where we saw some petroglyphs etched into the rock and a view of the Checkerboard Mesa.
We took the...
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Posted by the girls on Sunday, June 19, 2011,
We've experienced just about every kind of extreme weather thus far on our trip. Today we experienced Hurricane. Okay, so not the weather phenomenon, but the city. Hurricane is decent-sized town of about 8,000 in southwestern Utah.
We left Pipe Spring and headed northwest. After about 20 miles, we reached the state-line between Arizona and Utah. We took photos with both state signs since we missed the Arizona state sign coming in. Technically, we were already in Utah at Four Corners Monument, ...
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Posted by the girls on Saturday, June 18, 2011,
Today we left Jacob Lake and headed down toward Fredonia. The first part of the ride was rolling, but after a few miles we were able to fly down the 6% grade decline. We stopped at a little scenic viewpoint and then continued on our way. After about 30 miles, we reached the town of Fredonia. We went to the public library for an hour or two to use the internet and kill some time. When it was noon, we headed to the only restaurant in town: Cowboy Butte Grill & Steakhouse. The menu was limited, ...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 17, 2011,
From the title, you can guess that today was tough. Besides being hilly, we also had an unfavorable wind. It was too bad that Nico had to join us for a ride with such unpleasant conditions. We left Charles' house by 5:30 am, as planned. After 10 miles or so, Michelle was in tears; her blisters have not a chance to heal yet. She wanted to ride, but her heels need to heal (no pun intended). We immediately found her a ride with a wonderful family. They were headed to the North Rim of the Grand C...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 17, 2011,
Today we got our earliest start so far. Knowing that it would reach at least 100 degrees, we woke up at 4:30 and got on the road within an hour. Our destination, Marble Canyon, was 75 miles and included a 3,000 ft climb in the middle. Even though we started early, it got hot quickly. We ran into some road construction, but were pleasantly surprised by how helpful the construction workers were. One of the ladies working led us through in her truck with flashing lights so we didn't have to batt...
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Posted by the girls on Wednesday, June 15, 2011,
Today we left Grand Canyon National Park and headed east. The first 30 miles or so of our ride were actually within park boundaries. It was not overly hilly, but we were all suffering; Rebekah still has her road rash, Michelle has huge blisters on both of her heels from hiking, and Emily has achy muscles from her extra-long hike yesterday. With a few pit stops, we were able to push ourselves through. We stopped at the Desert View area and looked down into the canyon from the watchtower. We al...
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Posted by the girls on Wednesday, June 15, 2011,
For our second full day off at the canyon, we all decided to go our separate ways. It's not that we are sick of each other, but we all had different intentions and varying states of health. We all planned to get up for sunrise, but only Michelle and Emily started heading over (our camp site was as far away from the shuttle bus stop as possible). Since it was still dark out, the girls got lost and only Michelle ended up making it to see the sunrise. Emily opted to get a couple more hours of re...
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Posted by the girls on Sunday, June 12, 2011,
We woke up early as planned and ate our usual oatmeal. We made some peanut butter and jelly bagels to take along with some other snacks. Yesterday, we thought about buying a cheap backpack since we don't have one along. We wanted something to carry our water, snacks, and other supplies. We discovered that the general store does gear rental, so for $6 we were able to get a North Face day-pack. We stuffed it full of food and water and headed on our way.
We had to take the shuttle bus to get to t...
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Posted by the girls on Sunday, June 12, 2011,
We left Flintstones Bedrock City and headed north on Hwy. 64. After about 21 miles, we arrived in the tiny town of Tusayan, which is just a few miles south of the Grand Canyon park entrance. We decided to go to the National Geographic Visitor Center to see the IMAX film about the canyon. We learned a lot from the 34-minute presentation, but were all left feeling a little dizzy from some of the precarious angle shots. Before heading into the park, we stopped at the general store in Tusayan, ho...
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Posted by the girls on Saturday, June 11, 2011,
After getting way too comfortable, we finally left Sara's house. We had to navigate through Northern Arizona University campus and downtown Flagstaff to get onto Hwy. 180. Once we were on it though, we only had to make one more turn the entire day.
The first 20 miles of our ride were uphill, but not too steep. We climbed up to about 8,100 ft and then started our descent down to 6,000 ft. It took us about 56 miles to reach our destination: Flintstones Bedrock City in Valle, AZ. This park was bu...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 10, 2011,
Today was a day of running errands and enjoying our last day in Flagstaff. Rebekah picked up her bike from the shop, cleaned it, and re-installed her front rack and fender. Then we all went to a used bookstore to grab some "new" reading material. We also did some laundry, baked brownies, watched TV, and starting re-packing our panniers. Everyone is feeling much better physically, so we think we'll be ready for our 54-mile to Flintstones Bed Rock City tomorrow. We will be a bit sad to leave th...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 10, 2011,
Today we were able to use Sara's car to explore the area around Flagstaff. We decided to check out the Sedona area, just south of Flagstaff. We spent most of the day at Red Rock State Park. We enjoyed dipping our feet in the creek and hiking up to Cathedral Rock. We packed ourselves a little picnic and ate right next to the creek. We ended the day by lounging on Sara's couch and watching a movie.
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Posted by the girls on Wednesday, June 8, 2011,
This morning we all had a sleep in and lounged around the hotel until just before check-out. Rebekah has a friend, Sara, in Flagstaff that she knew from working at a camp a few years back who offered to let us stay at her house as long as we wanted!! Not only that, but she was able to take most of the day off work to hang out with us. Sara picked Rebekah up from the hotel and drove her to the bike shop while Emily and Michelle rode their bikes to meet them. Rebekah got some relatively good ne...
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Posted by the girls on Tuesday, June 7, 2011,
Today was a long day for us; we traveled 255 miles! As you can imagine, we didn't bike the entire way. Michelle didn't bike at all, Rebekah biked 18 miles, and Emily biked 28 miles. The rest of the miles were spent hitchhiking in multiple cars.
Now you're probably wondering why we ended up all the way in Flagstaff, a city not even on our itinerary. Well, let's start at the very beginning...We woke up with wet tents and it hadn't even rained! We stupidly pitched our tents right next to the spri... Continue reading ...
Posted by the girls on Sunday, June 5, 2011,
This morning Michelle woke up feeling about the same and Emily woke up with a migraine. Thankfully, we only had a 15-mile day planned. We took our time getting ready and stopped at the Wal-Mart in Cortez on our way out (we'll soon be headed into the desert where the towns are few and far between). In just over an hour, we arrived at the Ute Mountain Casino, which is located on Ute reservation land. For only $19, we get great camping facilities, hot showers, a pool, and of course, a casino!
We ... Continue reading ...
Posted by the girls on Saturday, June 4, 2011,
Today was another tough day for Michelle. She has a cold virus and cannot seem to shake it. She is so full of perseverance though and tried to bike today, despite feeling awful. She made it about 5 miles (all uphill) and would have continued, had Emily and Rebekah not stopped her. Her body just needs more rest time, but we also want to stay on schedule since we made reservations at the Grand Canyon campground. So, we stuck out our thumbs and patiently waited for a pickup truck to stop by. The...
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Posted by the girls on Saturday, June 4, 2011,
We all slept quite well at Dr. Mike's house, but Michelle was still under the weather. Our planned ride for today was to Mesa Verde State Park. We looked more closely at the route and realized how steep the climb was into the park. Even on a good day, this would have been a tough ride. The obvious choice was to take the day off. Durango is the biggest city we'll be in for awhile, so it's a great place to have a day off anyway.
We ate breakfast and did a load of laundry at Dr. Mike's before ge...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 3, 2011,
We left Sky View Motel fairly early because the weather forecast showed the winds increasing throughout the day. The very first part of the ride was a steep hill out of Pagosa Springs. After that, however, we were rewarded with a 10-mile or so gradual downhill. Soon after that, the terrain became a little hilly. We were able to see Chimney Rock, but didn't have enough time or energy to stop and hike.
Throughout the ride, Michelle was feeling worse. Her throat was sore, and that combined with d...
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Posted by the girls on Friday, June 3, 2011,
Today was another tough day. The first couple miles of the ride were fairly flat, but then the 15 mile climb up to Wolf Creek Pass began. The first 5 miles of the climb were quite gradual, but still noticeable. Once we saw the sign that said, "10 miles to the summit," it seemed to get much steeper. The last 3 miles were almost unbearable with the 20+ mph winds. It had gotten cold and snowy near the top and we were being blown of the road. We also all ran out of water, so we stopped at the Wol...
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