Second Day to Anchorage

After eggs, toast, and watching the Monaco Formula 1 race, I started out for Moab. The drive was beautiful, even though there were ominous looking rain clouds on the horizon. Luckily, by the time I got to Moab, they had dispersed and the weather was perfect for mountain biking.



Once I got to Moab, I headed to the trailhead of the Slickrock trail. This trail is one of most famous mountain biking trailis in the US and in Moab it is considered a must. It is a pretty popular trail, and because of it being memorial day weekend, it was REALLY busy. There were a lot of families out trying their luck at the sandstone trail. The trail is unique because the majority is just bare rock. The idea is that you go down one steep hill and then you pedal like hell to get up the other side. Most of the families were walking.

Check out that great mullet!! I'm definitely starting to mullet strong.

Because of my stubborn pride, I of course HAD to ride every steep hill. Because of not being on the bike for about two weeks (sinus infection) and the high altitude, I was really dying at the top of every hill. Luckily, it wasn't too hot and there was a slight breeze, so I was able to stay cool and recover quickly. One thing I quickly learned: puddles are fun, but destroy your traction, which is important when you are going up a 45 degree hill made of slickrock. The best part by far was riding along the above a huge gorge, where the dropoff just a couple feet to my left led about 300 ft down to the Colorado river. Scary and breath taking! And by the end I was so tired, I was walking along with the families.

After three hours it was time to start driving again. It started to rain on me at about five and didn't stop until I got to the hotel in Salt Lake City, UT. Now I'm at the hotel watching "To Catch a Predator."


There were also lots of Jeep tours going on around the rocks in Moab. Here's a video of a Jeep doing some rock crawling: