Day 9 (the long day): Evanston Wy to Vernal, Utah

150 miles, the day of many scenes.

Nervous energy, anxious people at the 5:30am breakfast, by 5:55 there were a dozen people standing around with their duffles ready to put them on the trailer and start riding. At 5:59 Susan said that people with their name on the trailer (ie, 20K and 10K PacTour riders) could load first, then the rest of us could. By 6:04am the lot was empty except for a handful of bikes, oh, including us (Don, where's Don... Don please stop sorting your socks by color and get out here, Tom's got steam coming out of his ears, I mean it is 6:06...). Then we were off in the early dawn light, the sun nowhere near over the hills to our east.

And east we went on Interstate 80 for the first 30 miles of the day, watching the sun peak over and then climb above the hills. It was surprisingly easy riding, the highway was being resurfaced so we had 20+ miles to ourselves with the eastbound traffic shunted over to share the westbound lanes. New smooth concrete and long straight hills and descents, just a question of making progress. I don't remember much about the scenery, just windmills lined up at the top of one of the hills and wondering if that was a good thing (tailwind), or bad.

Off the highway and through Fort Bridger (Rt 414) and then another 30 miles to the next rest stop at an abandoned general store and gas station. The section after the highway was flat and forever wide and we rode up to and through a bluff of wind-carved sandstone mounds. If you think of classic Utah national park pictures of rounded rocks, it was like that only painted in tans and browns instead of reds. We passsed through a gap to the rest stop at 60 miles, extra peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to hold us over to lunch. The one constant on this day, as everywhere we've been in the west, is how lush everything is. Sage, wildflowers, grass; green and more green, water pouring through the streams and irrigation troughs. Lakes have trees at their edge with water 3 feet up their trunks, just so much water, hard to hold it all.
By the way, don't go looking for any towns along this route, from Fort Bridger to Manila, Utah, you won't find a lot of anything except open ground. A 2 mile, bone-jarring descent down to a lake (reservoir? name?) then a 2 mile climb up the other side of the valley (now on Rt 44 for those of you following at home) and another descent to lunch at 91 miles. No more windswept mounds here in the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area, just raw edges of earth shoved up into the sky exposing layer upon layer of history in bright reds and brown. We sat in the shade of the tents under 300ft high rockworks that loomed high above, was a beautiful place to stop.

Then the fun started. From 91 miles to 129 miles was a climb from 6,700ft to 8,400ft, ah, just 1,700ft over 40 miles, easy, right? No, start with a 6 mile climb and 1400ft, then give back a lot of it on a descent, then climb again, give it back on another descent, repeat for 40 miles. I think the actual climbing along these 40-ish miles was about 3x the difference in starting and finishing altitudes, here's the topo of the day's route, the one big climb you see (mile 91) is what we did right after lunch.

The climb took us above the raw edges of earth pretty quickly and into forests of Ponderosa Pine, not much traffic, just up and down until we turned south on 191 and it was a straight shot (as the crow flies) south to Vernal. That's as the crow flies, as the bike rolls, up and down, up and down.
Oh, and see the pretty clouds? They got less pretty when they ganged together at the top of the mountain and Tom, Don, and I found ourselves racing to stay out of the hail and cold plops of water that started sprinkling down on us. We just did stay out in front, some of the folks behind us got nailed with rain and soaking wet.

After the last rest stop at 129 miles, another up and down and finally a long 9 mile descent on an 8% grade (southerly headwind included) before more ups and downs along the long run into Vernal. Signs along the way were about the history of the area; Vernal is a center of dinosaur history, so there were fossilized squid, alligator teeth, dinosaur bones, the bed of an ancient sea (at 7000ft...) in the rocky, choppy landscape.
Dinner at steakhouse and micro-brewery (and this in Utah, the Zion Bank and Gale's LDS Book Store and Supply across the street) and a lot of relieved and happy riders. As long rides go it was certainly interesting, pretty quick too at over 17MPH average.