July 19 - Red Canyon Campground, UT to Cedar City, UT

Mileage: 70 miles
Terrains: Very Gradual Long Climbs
Temperature: 90 ish degrees (temperature varied on the elevations)
Wow, what a long fun day!! Woke up this morning in the campground. Got up and got dressed. Decided to wear the same jersey as I had the day before. I figured I had washed it in the stream 20 miles back yesterday. I am fresh out of laundry and all of my riding clothes etc are dirty. I had washed a pair of riding shorts by hand last night and laid them on my bike to dry over night. They were mostly dry this morning and I used the hand dryer in the restroom this morning to dry them. On this trip anything goes. You can wear the same jersey for a week and no one will care and many do. For breakfast I decided to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some cheese and crackers……..mmmmmmmmmmm. Got on the road and started out descending for about 10 miles. Just a few yards ahead of me were Shannon and Brittany and I saw them swerving all over the road and pointing I thought to myself, what are they doing? There was a rattle snake curled up in the middle of the road!! Got a picture and moved on. The first 10 miles of today’s ride was descending and then it went up from there. Rode about 20 more miles of mostly climbing but fairly gradual some parts steeper than others and came to our first rest stop. We were wondering where everyone was and who had already been though and were informed that some of our fellow riders stopped at the first town for breakfast which was only 10 miles out from camp. Was told that they were going to be there awhile because Spider (rider) had taken on a challenge to eat three huge pancakes at a breakfast place and that only one person had succeeded in eating it all before. If he could finish it he would get a free t-shirt. The three pancakes took 1 gallon of batter to make. Found out later that they were there until almost noon and he had finished them and then as they were leaving threw up. Since we knew that they were going to be awhile we decide to have breakfast at a neat little diner on a lake along the route. After a delicious breakfast we decided to roll on and only had about 16 miles to the summit. That makes for about 36 miles of climbing total. Got to the summit stopped at the water stop and filled up and began out descent which was about 24 miles. It sure was a quick one. Got stopped for some construction with a one way and had to wait for about 15 minutes. Finally got into Cedar City quickly changed clothes due to a service project that we were doing. We had to move some big pieces of wood onto trailers for a play like thing and then they fed us. After that we decided that we really needed to do laundry and the Laundromat is 2 miles away so we decided the next best option was to sneak into a hotel about a quarter mile away and use their washing machines. I decided to stay with the laundry while the other girls are at wal-mart stocking up. I gave them my grocery list. It is currently 9:50 pm, way past my bedtime and I don’t even have my tent set up. Just too much to do in one day!! We don’t get to big towns like Cedar City very often so when we do we are very busy getting groceries and doing laundry etc. Hopefully this laundry finishes quickly so I can get some sleep!!