Utah Cliffs Loop - Day 2

I got up early around 6:30 AM and had some hot cereal with for breakfast. Packed my gear, filled up my water bottles and was rolling at 8 AM.

Spork in action.

By the way. After I got home and paid more attention to my pictures I noticed in many of them the presence of "Bob"; the flag of my Bob-yak trailer. During the day I would shoot pictures and not see any details because of the glare on the display of my camera. So moving forward...look for Bob!

View back to Pine Valley with "Bob" in the left corner ;o)

First I had to bike back ~4 miles to get to the right turn to the gravel road that would bring me to Pinto via a nice valley with a small lake and grazing cows all over the place.

Valley with small lake.

120 degrees panorama shot.

Regularly I would turn a corner and cows would be standing on the narrow road staring at me not knowing what to do. In most cases I would slowly pass them. In some cases they would run off for 100's of yards, not knowing what to do and finally stop, or run of the road.

Oh ooh...

As I arrived in Pinto I ran into this surprise: "Public Notice: Page Ranch Bridge Replacement project. Aug. 19th to Oct. 17th 2013. Road will be closed. Bridge will be removed making road impassable".
Now I had a decision to make...gamble that I could still carry my bike and gear over whatever the bridge crossed, or take a long detour. Since I had seen fresh bicycle tracks on the road (assumed the group from the previous day) I decided to keep going. If the road was really impassable, then I would run into those very same cyclist if they had to turn around. A few miles further I found out that the bridge just crossed a big ditch that could be crossed even on the bike.

Miles of gravel road.

Old wagon.

From here on I would ride miles and miles of gravel road with here and there some artefacts like an old abandoned wagon.

Impact of heavy rain.

In some spots you would see the impact of the thunderstorms from previous  weeks.  Visible...but not to bad.

Post office in Harmony.

After many miles downhill I finally arrived on paved road again. This time in New Harmony. New Harmony has one of the tiniest post-office's I have ever seen before. This building used to be a store and had been moved from another location.

Straight towards the I-15 viewing Zion.

From New Harmony it went straight to the I-15 viewing Zion. Just before going under the I-15 is a gas station. They has a store and a sandwich bar. Outside I ran into the other group of cyclist again from the previous day. We talked and they offered for me to tag along if I wanted. I really like that idea, so I did.

From the gas station we continued on paved road for a few miles and then turned right onto a steep unpaved climb. This was one of the few moments I wished I had a triple crank...but I made it!

Mountain Trike @ LBS in Cedar City.

In Cedar city we stopped at a bike shop to buy a few spare tubes for the group while I bought a new water bottle to replace one that started leaking.
Turned out they buld there own MTB-Trike line. Some even with a 4 Hp engine!

Vicky, Harry and myself went to the KOA camp-site on Main street, while the others opted for an expensive hotel. In hindsight that would not have been a bad idea, but I'll explain that on the blog of day 3.

The KOA camp-site was clean. Nice spot for the tents, outlets for charging the phones, hot water in the showers and a laundry to wash our clothes.
For dinner we had pizza and a couple of beers. On the way back we shopped for food for the next 2 days and went off to bed!

Miles: 57.9
Total Ascent: 3,589 ft
Highest Altitude: 6,790 ft.

See Garmin Connect Map for details.
More pictures of first day can be found here: Drop-box link Day 2