Sunday we were warned that early this week we’d be traveling through an area that would teach us why the dinosaur’s died. Hopefully we’d experience the beauty of this paleontological hotspot rather than the brute force of it. Indeed we did today, it’s hard to capture on camera because it’s rather spread out so photos tend to include a little strip of cool stuff (hoodoos, badlands etc) across a ton of sagebrush and a ton of sky. Here’s the best I got:
Today was a good day on the road as far as cycling is concerned. We began with a headwind and downhill similar to how we finished up yesterday. Tyler and myself took turns shifting off up front and then freewheeling in the rear. The first hour and a half resulted in an average speed of 36kph and we picked up Eritia along the way. Following a 10 mile climb into the town of Vernal we had caught Matt Zanting, Hans Doef and Laura Holtrop. Eritia and I joined their group and Tyler went off with some others to explore a bit of town. After stopping in at an outdoors store and the bike shop we sat on the feet of a giant pink dinosaur and ate a bit of lunch at quarter to 11 am.
From there on out we had another 10 miles of downhill (again in the mid forties for speed) and the day wound up with a 20 mile gradual climb into the little town of Dinosaur. We do indeed have showers here but the visitor center at the national park has trouble with a shifting foundation and is closed. So all of us that hurried out here so we could go check out the national park are a bit lacking with things to do. Some of us are going to go buy a bag of ice and have a bit of cold therapy for some of them muscles.
We’ve got another medium difficulty day Wednesday and a tough one on Thursday. I’ll be on the sweep crew for Thursday which should make for a very long day on the road.
Regarding yesterday’s prayer items, Stephanie left camp and turned around after 4 kms aware that she had swelling and fluid on her knee, she doesn’t plan to try and ride tomorrow either. Art is still undecided when he’ll give riding another kick at the can.