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 Canyon and our destination, Jacob Lake, was on the way there. The ironic thing is that this family was at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at the same time as us and they remembered seeing us!! They could clearly recall seeing Rebekah's bandaged leg with some blood oozing through the gauze. How funny!

Emily, Rebekah, and Nico continued on toward Jacob Lake. However, this was when the winds started picking up. There was one section of the ride that was flat and even a bit downhill. Unfortunately, it was not relaxing. We had to push hard through every pedal to keep our momentum going. 

After about 27 miles, the road turned and started to go up the mountainside. It was then that Rebekah started having a lot of difficulties. Emily and Nico seemed to fly up the hill (but they were still working super hard)! Luckily, the scenery was breathtaking and helped keep everyone's mind off of the difficult terrain. Eventually, everyone climbed up to Jacob Lake which is at 7,920 ft (we started the day at 3,573 ft). Rebekah said it was her hardest day so far, worse than both of the mountain passes in Colorado, but we did it!

Since Michelle arrived much earlier, she set up both of the tents (which was extremely difficult with the strong winds). She also went to the Jacob Lake Inn Cafe and made friends with some touring motorcyclists. Later in the day, we all had dinner together at the same place and they even treated us! A special thanks to Tommy for taking care of our dinner!

After resting up, Nico left us at about 4pm. He decided to keep biking so that he can stay on schedule. We had a great time riding with him and hope that our cycling paths cross again in the near future!

Oh, and one other special thing about today was that we all got a short motorcycle ride. Our news buddies who took us out to dinner gave us each a ride from the campground to the restaurant. This was Michelle's first time on a motorcycle! Similar to biking in so many ways, yet so different!