Kiki Bikes Across America

Archive for July 18th, 2009

Saturday, July 18th – Telluride, CO to 4 miles east of the Utah border

Well after last night, Chase had a bit of a slow start this morning. I got up at 7 and woke Chase a short bit later; we had some raspberry coffee cake and hot chocolate for breakfast, then I went into Telluride to snap a few photos since I hadn’t earlier. Chase finished up packing. Justin, a Mountain Films guy saw me taking pictures and offered to take one of me, and then we wound up talking about the route to La Sal Junction, Utah. He suggested we do that instead of go the long way down to Dolores and Monticello and back up to Moab. He helped with telling me about few big climbs and where we could restock on water and food since there was a gap between Naturita and Moab with nothing available to get water or food really. Just one little place on Hwy 191 where one can stop for touristy stuff at Hole in the Rock.

So finally we rolled out of Telluride about 10:30 and went downhill for 31 miles or so (slight downhill grade) and then climbed Norwood Hill which was 2 miles, but not horrible. We rolled into Norwood and stopped at the grocery store to get some lunch. I wound up with an odd concoction just because I felt like it – I bought pita bread, shredded cheddar cheese, ravioli, and some powerade. I heated the ravioli with my stove (just left it in the can) and then once it was hot I put the ravioli in the pita bread and cheese on top. It turned out to be pretty tasty

Back on the road again we had another 20 miles to Naturita which was fairly easy – mostly downhill grade and some pretty easy pedaling with a few small hills. We got into Naturita about 3:30 or so and refueled with water – we each bought a gallon and another bottle of water to carry with us. We filled up all the bottles in preparation for the next 60 miles or so without any services or places to find water. I also bought more Heet for fueling the stove, some yummy soft chewy candy for fueling me and some muffins that we got for the morning.

And more downhill for a bit – about 65 miles into the ride a car passed us (it was rare at this point – such little traffic on Hwy 90. Chase recognized the car that passed us and it turns out they recognized us as well – they camped across the way from us in Telluride and were from Texas and just doing a road trip of sorts. They were off to Moab, or so they thought (later found out Moab was too hot for them and they continued on to Salt Lake City). We had another 15 miles until the climb up out of Paradox. The climb was about 2 miles long and about 1,000 feet or a bit more of elevation gain – it took around 45 minutes to climb and luckily the sun was setting at this point so we were in the shadows and it was a little cooler. We got to the “top” and weren’t at the elevation that I thought we should be at, 7,500 feet, so when we started to go down in elevation I didn’t like that, because I knew we’d have to climb it all over again. We had a good bit of downhill – dropped down to around 6,000 feet and then we passed by a house with sprinklers on and a fire going – I suggested we stop to see about refilling water bottles and the next thing we knew we were sitting around the fire eating steak, roasted peppers, and pickled asparagus. Lauren, who was staying at the house offered to let us stay the night and join her for dinner, so we couldn’t pass up the offer.

It was really nice getting a yummy meal, having great conversation, and not having to pitch a tent and being able to shower. Awesome time there and great time talking to Lauren – come to find out she used to live near Braddock Road and Guinea Road in Fairfax and also graduated from James Madison University, so we had a lot to talk about and compare things to how they were when she was there and when I was there. We finally hit the sack around midnight in hopes of getting up at 5:30 and rolling out at 6am.

GPS Stats:
2,586 miles
06:42 moving time
42.4 max speed
386 avg speed

Computer Stats:
87.01 miles
06:41:22 moving time
13.0 avg speed
44.0 max speed