And then there were two

Quick update from Salina, UT: I finally met up with this guy John who is also doing the Western Wildlands Route. He had started out a few weeks after me, from Las Vegas, and got into Bryce just two days ago. We’d been communicating about the trip and various aspects of it for a while…most recently pondering the snowpack situation up on the Wasatch Range / Skyline Drive. Well, yesterday he decided to take a “shortcut” of highway riding to catch up to me. 118 miles on the highway in one day. As these things go, he beat me into Salina despite covering almost 3 times the distance I did. I got a late start from the Doctor Creek Campground at Fish Lake and had a nice (mostly) downhill ride on fairly smooth dirt. It was what seemed the greatest variety of landscape in a single day yet on the trip…pretty cool. When I rolled into town John was sitting on the curb outside the gas station in town, chatting it up with some locals who told us about a nearby lake where we could hang out and swim. So we grabbed a six-pack of PBR, strapped it onto John’s bike with care, and headed down to the lake. We were treated with good company, country music, leftover grilled food, and a rollicking ride in a side-by-side. We even got a ride back to our motel in town, about 5 miles away.

Given that today was going to be a scorcher (88 degrees) and John had just had a big day, we figured we’d take today as a rest day and head out just a few miles to some public land to camp, then attack the next section in earnest. John spent hours poring over maps and conjuring up a route for us that avoids Skyline Drive and hopefully the worst of the snow and melt. Time will tell….