Today's itinerary was to cross the western half of Colorado and all of Utah. We woke to 38 degrees in Steamboat, seeing our breath in the morning air as the guys prepped the bikes for departure. How to dress for a day that would have a 50 degree temperature variation? Shorts topped by the heated pants worked great. From our 8 am departure we made good time working our way across western Colorado.
The terrain began to change not long after, and the first glimpses of red rock appeared.
A bit after 10 am we took a needed break at the Dinosaur Visitor center, where we had stopped twice on previous trips.
Having shed our heated gear and layers, we could enjoy the 70 degree temps as long as they lasted.
Soon we crossed into Utah.
We stopped for lunch in Duchesne, Utah at Cowan's Cafe. Back on the road, we got on route 191 which was really scenic. Nearly every turn had interesting sights and rock formations.
Our trip would not be without tradition if we did not experience road construction on non-pavement.
Our conditions today ranged from smoky to extremely smoky. We had a few reprieves, one of which was a surprise elevation gain back up to 9,000 feet without us even realizing it until we cooled off a bit (as Tom later said, for only about 5 minutes).
As we neared Salt Lake City, traffic picked up dramatically for 40 miles. We thought the city highway traffic went on forever! And it was hot, 97 degrees. Near 4 pm we arrived at Salt Lake. But, as the pictures show, it looked dried up!
The smoky skies didn't help, we could not see across it at all. It was cool anyway and Rob tried to capture interesting snaps.
We made our final 90 mile push to Wendover, made shorter by a 80 mph "speed run" as Mike said. At a quick fuel stop, a man in a SUV said "You guys were hauling a--! I was following you!" We are not sure what these circles on a pole were meant to represent. We will need to research it later. Soon the the terrain shifted to the white salt flats, a preview of what we hope will be a fun day tomorrow.
Once in Wendover, we relaxed at dinner and reminisced on the day. Today we covered about 515 miles in 11 hours. Tomorrow we try out the Bonneville Salt Flats!
p.s. This blog app does not work well with tablets, so excuse the typos and weird formatting. Michele wanted to be sure that was mentioned.
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