2015 USA Camping Bike Tour: Day 14 of Riding Panguitch to Escalante (July 22)

Today was a pick up and drop off day. This allowed us to stay in the same camp ground for two nights. We were at a KOA in Cannonville. This is a small town but I did notice that they do have Bryce Canyon 5k and half marathon. This seems like it would be incredibly hilly!

Rebecca dropped us off for the ride at about 8:00AM and we had hopped to beat the wind and traffic. For the most part this worked. We had a nice time riding through the Red Canyon State Park and saw many beautiful rock formations.

For a while we were able to ride very nice bike path next to the road. We reached the campsite at about 11:30 and thought it would be a good to have a snack and ride the next 35 miles. We had initially intended on doing to 35 mile days to recover from the climb the day before. However, we were feeling quite good and the wind was in our favor so we went for it!

The second half was incredibly windy, but it was a tail wind. We also had a second mountain to climb and the grades reached up to about 12% at times.

This was too much for me at times and I ended up walking a few stretches. Utah has some exceptionally steep roads and I have simply run out of gears some times.

We arrived in Escalante and Rebecca met us with the kids shortly after. We hurried back to the camp site to get cleaned up and take a trip quick up the street to the Bryce Canyon National Park. Here we saw some amazing vistas, natural bridges and picked up some remaining ingredients for dinner.

Charlotte was able to get her swim in when we returned and I made some chicken for dinner. We got to bed very early as we are hoping to get up at about 5AM to head back to Escalanted to begin the mega climb tomorrow!

Rebecca's photos...

Between Cannonville and Escalante