Into the desert

Days: 54
Distance: 4456 km / 2769 mi
Location: Provo, UT

We're here in Utah, enjoying the beautiful scenery of the high mountain desert. Here's a rundown of the past week:

Steamboat Springs

















We couch surfed with Ray, who is an excellent cook! We enjoyed his home baked pizza, and elk that he hunted himself. Ray also showed us some of Steamboat's sights, including fish creek falls (below).























Dinosaur National Monument


















We stopped by the visitor center on the main road. Unfortunately, actually getting to the dinosaur quarry would involve a 32 mile uphill ride, so we decided this is yet another place we'll have to come back to some day. Dinosaur, CO has a fun atmosphere though, with dino statues and themed street names.


















Utah

We crossed into Utah at about 4:30 am (our first nighttime crossing of a state line). Since the weather is drier here, we have actually been able to camp tentless. We were excited about sleeping under the stars, but unfortunately so far it has been cloudy every night.


















Utah has some pretty awesome geology! We crossed the great basin, where millions of years of sedimentary layers are exposed in roadcuts and canyon walls. The white mineral at the base of this red sandstone is halite (NaCl), otherwise known as salt! I tasted some to make sure.























Utah has some pretty impressive mountains too. The mountains are not going away any time soon. From here we'll be crossing one range after another all the way to the Sierras.


















Provo

We're currently couchsurfing with Dan and Robyn. Yesterday afternoon we went inner tubing on the Provo River. This is something I had always wanted to try, so I was really excited!


















Unfortunately, it turned out to not be so great. I was completely incapable of controlling where the tube was going, so I spent an hour and a half on the river getting dragged through sharp branches along the sides and bounced over sharp rocks. At one point I even ran over a beaver. I think I'm putting this on my list of things to not do again.

The end of the Mormon Trail

Remember way back in New York when we went through Brigham Young's hometown? Well, we've been following the Mormon Trail ever since then, and now we've reached the end of it. Dan and Robyn showed us around BYU. Here we are hanging out with Joseph Smith.


















Action Shots

When we were in Rocky Mountain National Park we met some cyclists along the way. One of them, Steve, was quite skilled at taking photos with one hand while riding and he was kind enough to email me these awesome action shots.

































Another of the cyclists, Lonnie, has a pretty cool cycling blog you can check out:
http://www.iowacyclist.crazyguyonabike.com

The desert ahead

We're carefully planning and gearing up for the emptiness of Western Utah and Nevada. This next leg of the trip will be challenging because there are several long stretches between towns. Since biking in the afternoon has proven pretty much impossible with the heat and high winds, we are going to switch over to a fully nocturnal schedule in order to be able to get from one town to the next. This means starting at 9 pm and riding until approximately 9 am the next day.

I might not have internet again until Lake Tahoe, CA. But if I get the chance I will try to send a quick update from some town in Nevada.