Sometimes you succeed and other times you learn

October 3, 2021

Springville to Provo loop, Take 3

We woke up to a beautiful day - clear blue skies with only a few puffy clouds over the mountains.

After piddling around inside the trailer, waiting for it to warm up, we finally left on our ride at around 11 am. On the way out of the campground, we stopped by another Airstream that had just checked in last night. It was the same model as ours but was a 2022.

The owner was a younger man from Orem who had sold his house and was living full time in the trailer for the time being. Jeremy said he lucked out in purchasing his trailer in Las Vegas because someone had cancelled their order at the last minute. Otherwise he would have had to wait 6 months or more to order a new one like we did. He was a newbie to RV'ing and later he came over to our site to get some questions answered.

We continued with our ride and this time headed north to Provo on Highway 51/89. It was a 4-lane road that normally would have had heavy traffic, but was quieter on this Sunday. But it did have nice wide bike lanes.

Once we got to the city limits of Provo, we turned east on a road that took us into a neighborhood that was built on the slopes of the mountains. Here it was UP, UP, and more UP as we climbed higher and higher. Whew! Sure are getting our workout today! But the views of the valley were nice.

Finally we reached a high point and dropped down, down, down to the valley floor where we immediately got turned around (lost?). I had previously looked at the route Don had picked out this time and written out the directions myself, but it didn't seem to help once you got into the neighborhoods.

Many of the streets around here are numbered so it's L at 400S, R at 750E, L at 1230 N - well, you get the picture. And then the city threw in some roundabouts to add to the confusion.

But we did eventually manage to reach BYU where we stopped in some shade for lunch. It was an attractive campus and very quiet today.

Even getting through the campus and onto the Provo River Trail was a challenge! We did finally succeed and headed south on the trail.

It was bigger river than where we at near Utah Lake and a pleasant ride with all of the fall colors, if you could ignore the rough, heaved up narrow pavement. There were lots of walkers out so riding was slow going. Plus we also had to get off and walk through several underpasses. 3 of them had water inside and were so tight that Don could barely squeeze the long tandem through the tunnels.

This section must have been an older portion of the trail because when we got to a park, it widened out and was much smoother. Even the underpasses were wider so we didn't have to get off and walk through them. It would have been nice to continue further now, but we needed to exit off onto a road to get back to home.

Of course, as soon as we got back to the road riding, we got turned around again! Arghhhhhh!!!!! What a mess!!! At one point, we took a wrong turn and ended up circling around an apartment complex.

I had hoped to get to Provo's cemetery and be able to wander around a bit looking at the monuments, but somehow we missed that completely.

Finally we got to some roads we recognized from our ride the other day and it was smooth sailing back to the KOA. EXCEPT FOR A FLAT TIRE!!!! And of course, it was on the rear. Will the "fun" never stop?!

Don tried to use CO2 cartridges to get enough air into the tube to get us home, but that didn't work. We were on a road that was directly behind the KOA and it would have been nice to just walk back, but there wasn't any gate in the fence next to the property.

So Don sighed and got to work fixing the flat. It looked like the culprit was a wire brad. He was able to pump it up using our pump and we made it home. Hopefully the patch holds! He sure earned a drink tonight!

It was a quiet evening and Jeremy came over later to get a lesson on how to put up his big awning. As both of us were tired from the ride, it was early to bed. It had been another day of adventure here in Utah! But the new camera worked fine - yeah!

On the BYU campus I saw this sign - Enter to Learn. Didn't help us learn how to navigate through Provo!

Had no idea that BYU had motion picture studio!

NIce sign, but the trail was a bit lacking.

Poorly designed underpass for a 9 ft long recumbent tandem! Don could barely squeeze around the turn and through the narrow tunnel that also had puddles of water.

Don hard at work fixing our flat. But at least he found a comfy piece of rubber to sit on!

Jeremy's Flying Cloud Airstream has the same options as ours but he could use some flamingos and rope lights to jazz it up!

Today's ride: 26 miles (42 km)
Total: 660 miles (1,062 km)

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