Kiki Bikes Across America

Monday, July 20th – Canyonlands, Moab, Utah

This morning we met up with Colleen and went to visit Canyonlands together (by car) – it was amazing. Really awesome views of the canyons and all – the only downside was the awful heat. It was blazing hot and the sun was out the entire day. We did some small hikes into see a few arches or viewpoints and they were amazing – really stunning views and incredible scenery. Photos will be posted soon. We even had to take a nap in the hot car because we were all so exhausted from the heat/sun and couldn’t get the energy up to go to the last viewpoint before taking a nap. So we napped for a short bit and then got up 10 minutes of energy for the last viewpoint. It was pretty cool – similar, yet different from the Grand Canyon.

Me jumping around in Canyonlands

We got back to the hostel around 5:30 and then Chase and I went downtown to Moab and stopped in a couple bike shops in hopes of finding a double bike bottle cage to fit behind my seat, but at last, there were none to be found. Instead, I just invested in a couple bungee cords to strap more water bottles onto my bike. We’ll need anywhere from 1-2 gallons of water per person to get through the desert and Utah where there are no services for 75-80 miles. It’s going to be brutal, but we’ll be carrying tons of water… 1 gallon = 8.3 pounds! That’s the major downside there.

Me and Chase in Canyonlands

But we had dinner at an italian place in Moab and it was good – I got their special of penne pasta with red meat sauce and garlic bread..yummy and filling. Tempted to get ice cream afterwards, but we passed on that since we’re getting rather fat these days…all that ice cream and lack of biking, huh? Guess we better get back to pedaling here soon!

Tomorrow we’re aiming for Blanding, Utah – I have to pick up a water pump in the mail in Monticello and if we’re too exhausted to go any further, we’ll probably just crash there at a couchsurfer’s house possibly. We’ll see, but I really hope we make it to Blanding since we have 74 miles of no services from Blanding onward…and we need to do that on a fresh day with lots of water stocked up!

So that’s it for now – we’re staying in the Lazy Lizard Hostel – room of 8 beds and really friendly people. And best of all, it’s only $9/night – how amazing is that for a hostel in the US? Hot showers too, a kitchen one can use, a common room, and free wi-fi (pronounced of course wee-fee, according to an older man we met in Ohio City, CO last week)… and he also says “yay-hoo” instead of ‘yahoo’ – interesting guy he was. So whenever we are looking for wi-fi or internet we joke about how he mispronounced everything and said kgs instead of Kilobytes or Gigabytes… silly ole man