Dove Creek to Blanding, Utah

June 27, 2014

I DON'T KNOW if Colorado is bigger than other states or whether it's an illusion that we were in it for a long time. Like Montana, but nowhere near as bad, it went on and on.

Anyway, in the end, around mid-morning we slipped out of Colo, as the signs here call it, and into Utah. It doesn't look any different - all grey-green sage bushes and distant and independent mountains - but it does mean we have only Nevada and California before we reach the Golden Gate. Except that we

Sage bushes are the only thriving growth beside the road for hour after hour. But, coupled with a few trees, they would make a superb screen for wild camping

have to cross Utah first, including a two-day stretch across desert with a warning that not only is there just one place to find water and buy food but that the only shelter is "from three trees east of Fallon." It's that

The Rockies are behind us - I'd hoped for jagged, snow-topped peaks but we got just two cols - but individual mini-mountains still line our route at a respectful distance

precision of "three trees" that gives the chill. And a chill, or at least a mild chest and throat infection, is what I have. I noticed it at Dave and Belinda's, coughing and blowing my nose and sleeping deeper than usual. Today it made me groggy when we reached Monticello in late morning, although then I started feeing brighter if not better.

It ought to have been a rotten ride out of Monticello because not only is it uphill but long stretches were being resurfaced. Traffic was funnelled into one lane and then delayed for four minutes or longer as it came first in one direction and then in another along several kilometres at a time.

It would have been miserable to be crammed in with the delayed and doubtless frustrated drivers. But the bollards were far enough into the highway that we had a bike path and occasionally an entire lane to ourselves.

When you find yourself talking about roadworks bollards then you've had an uneventful day. And apart from a fair bit of climbing and Karen's decision that we have two nights at a motel so I can recover before the desert and its three trees, that's all there was. Sorry.

Today's ride: 76 km (47 miles)
Total: 4,381 km (2,721 miles)

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