inching east!

The past few days in Utah have gone as follows:

Boulder-Hanksville (84 miles)
Hanksville-Hite (55 miles)
Hite-Blanding (80 miles)

Leaving Boulder, we immediately climbed quite a bit up the "hogback" to a beautiful summit. We had views for hundreds of miles around, including all of the colorful canyons in the area. As we descended, we came through a neat birch forest, and were greeted by some open range cows who just happened to be enjoying themselves in the middle of the road. After snapping some pictures, we continued on our very long descent towards Hanksville. We traveled through Capitol Reef National Monument (those were some pretty cool looking rocks!), as well as through the base of a canyon. Red stone walls hundreds of feet high surrounded both sides of the road as we snaked for 30 flat miles through the canyon. It was pretty cool to be down there!

After leaving the canyon, we hit some very dry desert. Also, the temperature shot up immensely as we left the canyon. We were dragging along, just wishing Hanksville would suddenly appear before our eyes when a silver Honda with CT plates came speeding towards us in the other direction. We noticed that there was someone hanging out of each window of the car screaming. We've had some pretty interesting reactions to riding in certain places, so we didn't immediately realize who these people were...they were friends from our med school class on a cross-country drive out to Seattle! We had discussed meeting up, but didn't think it would work out because we had lost cell phone service pretty early that day. A big thanks to Aaron Soufer, Matt Larson, Elizabeth Artrip and Jeff Thorne for going out of their way to visit us! What a pleasant surprise to be able to hang out on the side of the road in middle of the desert with some other people we know!

When we rolled into Hanksville, the temperature was 104. Enough to scorch us.

The next day (a relatively easy day to Hite) was made easier by some significant cloud cover that kept the temperatures down. Again, another pretty ride through some more canyons, including Glen National Monument. We arrived in Hite around 2pm to find that this 'recreation area' was nothing more than a small gas station and a ranger station. We quickly decided that it would be best to leave in the middle of the night for our 80 mile uphill ride to Blanding to keep us out of the heat. So, we sat inside of the gas station until they closed at 5, and treated ourselves to some microwave burritos and ice creamWe then attempted to lie in the shade of the ranger station to get some sleep before our big day. We're not really sure how it happened, but as the evening wore on, it became hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. It was nearly impossible to stay asleep! Even still, we managed to arise around midnight for a 1am departure for Blanding.

The ride today was pretty tough. We had a long 50 mile uphill, which, although it was not particularly steep, did allow us to gain about 3,000 feet in elevation. We reached the summit around 10 AM and had some 'brunch' of peanut butter sandwiches. As we were eating, a group of 3 local cyclists rode by and took interest in our cause. They have invited us for a barbeque tonight, which we are all very excited about! We are currently in the Blanding public library, waiting out a squall that is passing by. Apparently they normally don't last long and we should see blue sky again soon!

We pass into Colorado tomorrow. Tony has declared that even though Utah is steep, it is his favorite state. Katherine agrees that the views are like nothing you could ever imagine back east. Ross and Drew have yet to weigh in on the matter. We'll get back to you after Colorado, which is likely to be a contender in the race for favorite state so far.