Cedar City to Somewhere in the Desert – 106 miles
Yesterday I woke up at around 6 excited to get back on the bike. I packed up and did some maintenance on the bike. I decided to rotate my tires again because the rear one was looking pretty worn. By the time I had everything packed up Alice woke up and offered to cook up some breakfast. I couldn’t pass it up. She made eggs, bacon, grits, and a bagel. Fantastic! Thanks for the wonderful hospitality Joe and Alice! I hope we meet again!
Before heading out of town I swung back by the bike shop because the mirror I had bought the other day didn’t fit my bike well. They had just got some helmet mirrors in so I swapped the one I bought before for one of those. I also decided to pick up a new set of treads. I probably could have made it a bit further on the tires I had, but there aren’t many bike shops through Nevada and blowing out a tire in the middle of the desert didn’t sound like fun so I erred on the side of caution. I’m glad I did because when I got back on the road I could feel the difference. It felt like there was significantly less friction than before.
As I came out of Cedar City it started to feel a lot more like desert and I even saw a few dust devil tornado things. Luckily some storms rolled in and kept things pretty cool because after the bike shop it was close to 2 before I was actually pedaling out of town.
A few miles outside of Cedar City I stopped to look at some Petroglyphs. These are some of the best and clearest that I have seen on the trip so far.
As I pedaled on and summited the first pass of the day I got a dose of what I was in for throughout Nevada, I think. It was a wide open basin with mountains on all sides. You could see for miles.
I went through a couple of towns, restocked on water, and grabbed a Subway sandwich then started climbing out of the basin to my second pass of the day. A bright flash and instantaneous thunder caught me by surprise. Storm clouds had rolled in without me noticing because the sun was still shining in front of me. It had me a little sketched out because it seemed like I could be caught in a pretty nasty storm, the sun was setting, and I hadn’t seen a car since I had left Milford.
I decided to pedal on, but pick up my pace a bit because it looked clear in front of me. As the rain started to taper off I turned around and the view behind me sent chills down my spine. So incredible.
I got a burst of energy from whole thing and I pushed through the summit. Cresting the hill exposed another huge basin, but this time with no sign of civilization. It’s probably the most alone I’ve felt on the entire trip, like the closest human was at least 10s of miles away. You cold see the road all the way up the other side of the valley even through it was 20-30 miles away.
I continued up the next pass after sunset. It was super dark. The star were amazing and you could see the milky way. When I got near the top of the next pass I started to look for a place to camp which was pretty difficult in the dark. I explored a few dirt roads off of the highway, but ultimately decided to ride down the summit and continue to look for a place to set up my tent.
Near the bottom I found a dirt road and rode down it a bit. It was really strange and a little scary setting up camp in the dark in the desert. It was too dark to see what was around me even with lights, and the silence was deafening. I was asleep before my head even hit the sleeping bag.
