I woke up at 6 AM, and had breakfast at the hotel. I loaded all items that would not join me on the tour in my car and parked it in the far corner of the parking-lot (Quality Inn management allowed me to keep my car parked for the week).
After filling all 5 bottles with water, hooking up my trailer to the bike, I took a deep breath and started riding at 8 AM.
The first section would lead me from the outskirts of St George to Snow Canyon State Park.
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| Snow Canyon State Park Entrance |
While biking up to the entrance I met another cyclist on a MTB who told me that he had the exact same set-up (Sala Vaya, Bob-yak trailer and Ortleib handle-bar bag) for cycle touring. Only his bike was one year older and had a different colour. "What are the odds?" he said.
At the Park-entrance I had to pay a $4 "passing fee". I found out later that you can pass with 4-5 cyclist at once for $4; representing a car with passengers.
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| Snow Canyon bike path |
Snow Canyon State Park has well maintained paved bike-paths, clean rest-rooms and a very nice camp-ground. If I had to do the ride again, I would start more south-east from St George and plan my first overnight in this location.
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Snow Canyon beautiful views
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The bike path kept meandering through the park while climbing moderate to steep up-hill to the exit of the park. There I took a left turn in direction of Veyo.
While the climbing continued I ran into 3 other cyclist (Philip, Jim and Vicky) that were touring the same route. I later found out that they all belonged to a bigger group that got spread out a bit due to different climbing paces.
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| Short break in Veyo |
I planned a break in Veyo and was hoping to replenish my fluids with some cold Gatorade at the local gas station that had a Food Mart. Unfortunately almost everything is closed on Sunday in Utah (including this Food Mart) so I had to stick to my water from St George. In Veyo I ran into 2 other cyclist (Andrew and Susan) from the previous mentioned group. We exchanged some chit-chat and I continued my climb up to Baker Reservoir.
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| Gravel road East from Baker Reservoir |
At Baker Reservoir I experienced my first off-road section of the Utah Cliffs loop. Just like 90% of all the off-road sections it consists of a well maintained gravel road...except if they just has flash-floods and added an addition layer of soft gravel to resolve muddy conditions. In my case that meant that I had to cycle through this loose gravel while pulling a trailer behind me causing extra drag. I could have stayed on the paved R-18...but then I would have missed out on this nice first off-road experience. Did I mention the loose dogs chasing me while ploughing uphill through the loose gravel?
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| Entering Dixie National Forest |
At Central the gravel road turned into paved again. Here I would take a right turn and continue climbing on the FR-35 in direction of Pine Valley. Meanwhile I was getting hungry so I explored Central for a moment. I was hoping to find a sandwich shop of some kind, but ended up empty. I did however ran into the 5th member (Harry) of the other touring group who was waiting for the others to catch up. I continued for 15 minutes in the direction of Pine Valley and sat in the shade of the entrance sign, ate a bar and some dried honey coated banana chips.
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| Climbing continuous up to Pine Valley |
After my lunch the climbing continued up to
Pine Valley. At this moment it was getting hot, my legs were getting tired and my body was feeling the altitude. At this moment I started getting visions of cold beers and nice dinner; not knowing yet that none of that would solidify (remember...it was Sunday..everything closed).
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| Pine Valley entrance sign (rock) |
Finally at 2 PM'ish I arrived at Pine Valley at 6800 feet of altitude. I had still to ride 5 miles through Pine Valley to get to the camp-site. But the end was in sight!
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| A Coke vending machine...WOOHOO!!!! |
Meanwhile I was getting low on water and getting really thirsty. As I only found closed stores my eye caught a Coke vending machine on the porch of "Utah Heritage Realty". I was happy to pull out a $1 bill (proceeds would go to the Pine Valley Fire-department) and enjoy this cold refreshing Coke...boy that tasted good!
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| Beautiful camp-site at the Pine Valley Recreational area |
10 minutes later I rolled into my camp-site for the night. For $15 I got a clean site with a nice level gravel area for the tent. The site had a fire-ring and a dedicated cooking-stand next to the picnic table. The water was fresh from a well and highly carbonated. It would start of "white" because of all bubbles and turn out totally clear after a minute.
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| Charging my GPS |
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| Pasta and Tuna was for dinner |
While getting settled and cooking my dinner of pasta and tuna I charged up my GPS and phone with my LiPo battery/Solar combination. I reviewed my map while having still daylight, set my plans and went to bed early.
Miles: 43.6 (38.9 from start and 4.7 from hotel to start)
Total Ascent:
5,180 ft
Highest Altitude: 6,800 ft
See
Garmin Connect Map for details.
More pictures of first day can be found here: Drop-box link Day 1
