Wearing the Yellow Jacket

We left Bryce Canyon this morning with a massive storm front stretching as far as I could see.  I thought for sure we were in for another day of riding in the rain.  So I put my rain gear on knowing that by wearing my yellow rain jacket, it wouldn’t rain at all.   And sure enough, everyone stayed dry today, and by noon the skies were clear.

Today was our hardest ride of the tour, covering 85 miles between Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park.  We left Bryce and headed west on 12 following the same route as yesterday, except that instead of the route being a miserable climb, we descended quickly until we reached 89 and headed south. 

The first 20 miles on 89 were really tough.  We ended up climbing almost 1000 feet against a pretty stiff head wind.  But Sam and I paced ourselves pretty well, stopped when we needed to rest, and for the most part I never felt winded.  And after the 20 mile climb we road another 20 miles down to Mount Carmel Junction, descending several thousand feet.  Normally this would have been an easy part of the ride, but the stiff head wind and Labor Day traffic sucked the fun right out of it.  By the time we reached Mount Carmel Junction,  both Sam and I were having second thoughts about finishing the ride.

From Mount Carmel Junction, the route headed west again up highway 9 into Zion National Park.  And from our rest stop we could see a major climb ahead of us as the road ascended towards the park.  Having already ridden 65 miles with another 20 miles to go, it was hard to get motivated to continue on, but we convinced ourselves to push on, no matter how long it took us.

It probably took us close to two hours, but we finally finished the climb and began our descent into Zion National Park.

Sam during our descent into Zion National Park

 

At one point during the descent, we had to get off our bikes and load them into the van to ride through a 2 mile long tunnel.  Because the tunnel is so long and narrow they don’t allow you to bike through it.  Once we reached the other side of the tunnel, we were back on our bikes for the most amazing ride of the day.  We road down through a series of switchbacks with banked turns that were so steep I found myself hitting the breaks most of the way down.  It didn’t take long before we reached the bottom of the canyon where we continued our ride to Springdale, where we would be spending the night.  We had finished the 85 mile ride, we had finished the tour!  No more bike riding for us until after get back to Ohio.