Day 15, 67 miles today, >1,000 total

Sunday, June 15, 2008. “If you have a father, don’t forget to call him. It’s Father’s Day,” reminded Michelle as we went through the breakfast line. Michelle is the ride’s Mother Figure. She also tells us to put on sunscreen, drink lots of fluids, and to hop in the van if we’re not comfortable riding in the 60 mile an hour truck line down- hill wind-buffeting construction zone with no shoulder that’s coming up in a few miles. A few riders take her up on it. (It really wasn’t that bad, but I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t ridden it.) I went to bed at 7:30 last night, go up at 5:30 a.m. and am still tired. Breakfast was at 6 and we rode out at 6:30. We were in by 11:30 a.m. before the weather got hot and, knowing that the hotel rooms wouldn’t be ready yet, stopped at the Green River Coffee Company and Café (and Indian craft shop). The women who ran it were very nice and we enjoyed the eclectic décor and yummy food. I had French toast and a root beer float.

We were, as on every day, treated to new vistas that explode before us as we rode out of the canyon. ** We were out on the mesas where the hill’s striations ran horizontal, red, orange, brown, green at the bottom like a piece of spumoni laying on the plate that was the prairie floor.** A few hours after hitting the hotel, we took a (van) excursion to Arches National Park, about an hour from here. Arches is named “Arches” due to the huge land masses that have been eroded in the middle, but not on the arches. There are hundreds of such arches in the park as well as a variety of landforms I’ve never seen before. The park construction started about 150 million years ago when it was all under water on a salt flat. Sediment and erosion piled on top of the salt flats and as the water evaporated, a multi-layered land mass, much like a 14 layered mocha chocolate cake which gets eaten from the bottom by a picky kid until the layers collapse. It’s something like that. The salt lake can’t support the weight of the sediment, so it collapses too. Once the layers are exposed, they erode. There are other unique formations, some look like those sand castles made by dribbling sandy water over the mound. Other are very phallic, subjected to a poorly-executed circumcision. These land forms extend off into the horizon, where the (yes, snow capped) Rockies loom in the foreboding distance. We’ll be riding them soon. Tomorrow will be a long (97) mile day.

The Holiday Inn Expresses we’ve been staying in are quite nice. The rooms are large enough to accommodate two riders, their gear, and their bikes. They serve a decent hot breakfast, have a pool and whirlpool, and a laundry- an important piece of cycling support service. I never wear dirty shorts.

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