Day 53: Orderville, UT to Cedar City, UT

• Distance: 36.72 mi
• Elevation: 4,373 ft
• Dedication: Uncle Tim and Charlotte
• Ride group: Glenn, Briana, and Casey
• Host: Community Presbyterian Church

This morning wasn’t very efficient, between trying to pack and clean up a very disheveled Airbnb and then backtracking 18 miles that we covered two days ago. That beautiful descent we had getting into Orderville became a slow and tortuous climb out of Orderville. My group took the silent, slow, and steady approach, as our spirits were not as high as I’d hoped they would be after our Zion rest day.

We finally reached a rest stop at the top of the climb (at the same gas station we stopped at on our way into town) and from there had a better mix of downhills and uphills. The route was surprisingly scenic, through a logging area that had some dense forests and even a lava flow? I didn’t take any pictures because I didn’t realize what it was but there were fields of volcanic rock right along the road.

Unfortunately we dealt with some terrible drivers on this route. The road wasn’t super trafficked but didn’t have much of a shoulder and far too many cars didn’t give us our three feet of space when passing. Sometimes I’m willing to excuse people who maybe just didn’t realize how close they were, but today we had some deliberate actions from drivers. At one point my group pulled off the road for a break and two other groups caught up and passed us. Right as we were about to get back on the road a pickup truck passed and rolled coal on all three groups. It’s hard enough to bike uphill without inhaling exhaust fumes, so that ticked us all off a lot.

Our route today was largely uphill for 40 miles, followed by 20 miles of downhill. Unfortunately, a storm started to approach around mile 35. My group was able to make it to the water stop at the summit before it got too close but at that point we made the decision to rack the team and shuttle to the host. Even without the storm the road was questionable at best, and people who had driven the route knew that the road conditions only worsened as we went down.

Now, if you remember back to my Escalante post, we only have one van that can accommodate top racks for our bikes. That means the water van can only hold 13 bikes, and some of those spots were already taken for people in the vans, which meant we had to wait for the host and run vans to come rescue us so we weren’t piling 13 riders and their bikes into the water van along with all of the snacks, water, and gear that live in the van. There was a temporary stop light up on the road ahead of us for construction and we didn’t really have service, so we ended up waiting over an hour for the vans to show up. Thankfully the storm didn’t hit us directly so we didn’t get too wet and had plenty of snacks.

One bonus of having to rack: we arrived early to our host in Cedar City and had plenty of time for errands! I joined a group that made stops at Chipotle, Walmart, a local bike shop, and an ice cream shop. Cedar City is one of the biggest towns we’ve stayed in since Boulder and it was so nice to feel like we were in civilization again! I ordered way too much food and ate all of it, called my mom to wish her a happy birthday while I browsed Walmart, and bought some new brake hoods to replace mine, which are starting to wear thin and rip.

Back at the host we had a pizza dinner that was very generously donated by a man some of the team met in a coffee shop in Bryce Canyon. This was also one of our first hosts with semi-reliable wifi, so I took some time to blog as well. I was feeling very emotionally spent tonight so I enjoyed some alone time on the back patio while the sun set. I’m “cowboy camping” tonight out on the back patio with Maggie and Bailey; there are lights on around us and we can hear traffic from the road but have a beautiful view of the sunset and the stars. This is my first time cowboy camping so, much like the hammock, I don’t really expect to sleep well, but we’ll see how it goes!

Until tomorrow,

Lauren