Sept. 18 – Alone again, naturally

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about yesterday – here is an entry for the weird stuff found along the road:

I guess the chili wasn’t good!

The Whispering Elms owners were very nice as they left a bag of ice in an outside freezer for me so I could ice down my water bottles before hitting the road. Interestingly, the female owner and I have the same first name, although she spells it Jefri. Really!

I have a nomination for the new “Loneliest Road in America” – that would be the one I rode on today. Except for the perfunctory “goodbye’ and “have a nice day” to the other campers at the Whispering Elms, I did not talk to a soul or see anyone except through their windshield, and there weren’t many of them. Here is the sign that let me know what was in store for me. Luckily I packed extra water.

The big news of the day is that I crossed another state border! WooHoo! Utah

There it is, the highlight of the day! Other than that is was grinding out the miles – up passes, down passes. The landscape was magnificent and overwhelming as you can see for miles and miles – and when you have a climb coming up you can see it coming for a long time.

Oddly, Utah does not identify the pass as you cross over it – as you can see, the sign just says “Summit” and the elevation – On the map there is a name – ? Utah, you need to step up your game. We cyclists like a photo with the name of the pass identified; it gives our lives purpose. As I reached Summit 6460 it was getting later in the afternoon and I could see thunderstorms in the distance so I figured it would be a good place to stop for the night. I went up a little dirt road for 1/4 of a mile or so and found a really nice campsite.

I whipped up a freeze-dried chicken and rice dinner, adding a zucchini and a serrano pepper to liven it up. Was actually pretty good. As the sun set and the temperature started to drop I hopped into my tent for the night.

Have you ever heard an elk bugle? Well, it is one weird sound and I was woken up by a loud one about 3am – sounded like the elk was right outside my tent door, although who knows how far that sound carries. Really freaked me out until I realized what it was – that horny elk carried on for a couple of hours with no respect for my sleep needs.