Today was supposed to be a "transit day". That is, we had no scheduled Top 15 roads to run, only get from the end of one to the beginning of the next. Well, let me tell you, we ran the better part of the day on roads that were certainly worthy of Top 15 status, and even then some! The short story is we had incredible scenic views, huge elevation changes, twisty roads, dirt road, rain and even hail!
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Day 20 Route |
We started out the day from our hotel in Caineville, UT. That is on UT-24, just east of the Capitol Reef National Park. Even though it is outside of the park, that UT-24 continues to be a scenic and twisty route east. The only issue here was the early time of the morning, we had bright sun directly in our eyes which made it hard to see the roadway so we did have to run carefully. Despite that it was still fun to ride and scenic in its own right.
Then we turned southerly on UT-95 which, in my opinion, is every bit a candidate for a Top 15 road as any we have run to date!
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Views from early section of UT-95 |
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Views from early section of UT-95 |
Later in the morning, as the sun has risen higher we enter a section of UT-95 that passes through the Lake Powell Glen Canyon Recreational Area. This section winds through some incredible red rock canyons and alongside some of the rivers that feed Lake Powell. We stopped alongside the road to shed a layer of clothes as the day warmed up.
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View back along UT-95 where we stopped to remove a layer of gear |
We twisted and turned a few more miles through red rock canyons before we came to a scenic vista where we pulled off for some photos.
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Looking south down the upper most reach of Lake Powell - note it's Very Low |
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Looking westward up an upper arm of Lake Powell - nota again how low the water is |
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Look closely near the upper right of the photo - there's a boat launch ramp that's completely out of the water line - that's how low the lake is here! |
After taking the above photos, we continued to wind down through this canyon and around to cross a bridge (seen in on of the above photos) and continued down UT-95 until we detoured off south of the Natural Bridges National Monument in order to traverse a special stretch of road called the Moki Dugway.
In order to help you appreciate the riding consider the elevation profile below. For the sections I described above, look at the elevation changes for the first 112 miles in the chart below:
You can see how we started out at 4600 ft, did a short climb to a tad over 5000, then as we descended into Glen Canyon, dropped to a little below 4000 ft, then climbed back up steeply to near 7000 ft. That's where we turned off UT-95 to head for the Moki Dugway. Hint: Google "Moki Dugway" for some interesting background information on this unique feature.
We turned off UT-95 onto UT-261 to head to the Moki Dugway. Essentially, this would take us to the top edge of a huge plateau and then on a dirt road (at first) we wound steeply down the face of this plateau with sharp unpaved switchbacks until we exit out onto the floor of Monument Valley dropping some 1000 ft in just 2.4 miles, and then continues to drop (on now paved road) another 1000 ft before another steep climb and descent from the valley floor until we finally climb back out of the valley on UT-191 from Bluff, UT to Monticello,UT.
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Stopped on the Moki Dugway |
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View of the remaining descent on the Moki Dugway |
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View back at the Plateau we came down from on the Moki Dugway! |
Once we got to Monticello, UT we decided to stop for fuel just as we turned eastward onto US-491 which would take us across the border into Colorado. This was probably the only "boring" road we have been on in several days. It was fairly straight, and although it encompassed undulating hills, it had a lot of construction and re-paving operations in progress. Still, we only spent a little under an hour to run the 50 miles 'till we turned north onto CO-184 which would take us up into and through the San Juan Mountain range. In the process, we would cross our highest pass to date, the Lizard Head pass (10,222 ft). It was a sweet ride up towards the pass but we did spot storm clouds building and knew we might run into some rain Eventually Larry's weather alert said there was a thunderstorm ahead, not too many seconds before we saw a large flash of lightning off in the distance. We decided to stop and gear up for rain and then continued on. Well, we hit rain less than 1/4 mile from where we geared up! Good thing too because in addition to the rain the temps dropped from the high 70s into the mid 50s in very short order. The rain only lasted a few miles and we crested the pass on nearly dry roads and then started a descent that would take us down into Keystone, CO. When we got to Keystone, there was a major road project going on that really messed up the traffic. So much so that we decided to drop of the detour we planned to make to get up to Telluride, and instead opted to just continue on our descent now on CO-145 to Placerville. By this time the temps had warmed back up into the 70s and we were getting too warm in the rain gear and considered shedding it, but decided not to because we knew there were still thunderstorms in the area. Another excellent call, as just a few miles down the road (now on CO-62), it began to rain again - HARD. Then, suddenly amidst the heavy rain, pieces of hail began mixing in and bouncing off our bikes, bodies and helmets! Thankfully, the hail only lasted about 30 seconds and then the rain began to slowly trail off too. We would run into one more bout of rain as we turned off 62 and onto US-550 in Ridgeway. After that it cleared and warmed and it was just a test to see if we could stand the heat in the rain gear until we reached the hotel in Montrose - which we did!
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View of the construction and scenery as we entered Keystone, CO Note the clouds over the mountains! |
So, that caps off another spectacular day of riding. Stay tuned for more!
Stats for the day: 394 miles in 7:13 moving time, 8:53 elapsed time.
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