Day 63: Tropic, UT rest day
July 16, 2011

Pizza & laundry. That’s about it.

Day 62: Tropic, UT to Panguitch Lake, UT
July 17, 2011

After leaving Tropic we rode for 8 miles up through Bryce Canyon. Hoodoos! At the top, we got on a bike path (!!) that followed the road along a flat area and then down through the Red Canyon which is, in fact, quite red. We continued downstream until we reached the metropolis of Panguitch (rhymes with sandwich and has a population of ~1,500). It being Sunday, almost everything was closed so we ate at Subway at the gas station. After lunch we rode another 20 miles uphill to Panguitch Lake. It’s lovely up here and feels nothing like the rest of Utah–very mountainy. We rented a cabin for the night and walked across the street to Grandma’s Burger Barn for dinner (not bad). Some of you have astutely pointed out that we don’t have as many funny / good people stories to tell these days. Well, we don’t see as many people as we did before and there has been a general disinterest in talking with us. People are perfectly nice, but the conversation rarely goes beyond “nice bike.” An exception is the French tourists Hillary chatted with this morning near Bryce. They assumed we were doing a tour of the Southwest. When Hillary clarified that we began 1 month ago in New York, there was a lot of very French hand-wringing and Oh-mon-dieu-ing. It was a great start to the day.

  • Start: Tropic, UT
  • End: Panguitch Lake, UT
  • Slept: cabin
  • Miles: 49.5
  • Avg: 7.8

Day 63: Panguitch Lake, UT to Cedar City, UT
July 18, 2011

We lazed around in the morning until it warmed up a bit and then continued our climb from yesterday. It was pretty and felt nothing like Utah–lots of Aspens and Pines. At the top we entered Cedar Breaks National Monument which is really neat. There is a massive, red canyon dropping out of an alpine ridge. We reached the summit around 12:30, we think. Our map did a really bad job labeling the summit today but it was somewhere around 10,500 feet. Our last 10k+ foot pass! From the top we had a AMAZING descent into Cedar City. 17 miles of flying downhill, didn’t pedal once. Cedar City isn’t a bad place. Really cheap motel, a good grocery store, a tamale restaurant, and several book stores. Needless to say, we showered, got some groceries, ate tamales, and bought some bad science fiction books (Andrew’s correction: they are going to be awesome, especially the one about the guy shanghaied to Mars and forced to pretend he’s the President of Earth).

  • Start: Panguitch Lake, UT
  • End: Cedar City, UT
  • Slept: motel
  • Miles: 39.5
  • Avg: 9.4

Photos: steep grade, hoodoos in Red Canyon, “this is not the highway you are looking for”, ZOOM!