18 miles to breakfast, but it was mostly downhill with a tailwind…topped out at 51 mph screaming into Panguich
Very tasty breakfast in Panguich with some killer cobbler to top it off – very glad Anton is riding with us to share my quest for tasty desserts
Tailwind turned into a nasty headwind heading out of town, but wasn’t too bad once we turned east
Picked up a great bike path through Red Canyon that took us all the way into Bryce Canyon
I hit 40,000 miles of lifetime bike touring! Looking forward to the next 40k!
Just outside the park we met an amazing woman from Serbia who has been bike touring around the world for 12 years! Check out Snezana’s books here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=snezana+radojicic&crid=2M4STBQK6CZAZ&sprefix=snezana+radojici%2Caps%2C242&ref=nb_sb_noss
Snezana came to our campsite for dinner and shared many great stories
We went on a night hike along the canyon rim for some stargazing. I definitely did not almost walk off the edge into the abyss
40,000 miles!
Tuesday
Breakfast at the lodge, and then a long hike though Bryce Canyon. We ended up doing 8.5 miles and over 3000 feet elevation! It was all absolutely stunning
On the hike we met a woman who volunteers to do “preventative search and rescue”, which means she hikes the trails all day to make sure folks have enough water, does basic first aid, etc. She said she has to assist folks every single day. She gets to live in the park for free though, so not a bad way to spend retirement!
Had another delicious camp meal, then attended a very strange ranger talk about navigation. The best part was the Q and A at the end when someone asked if the ranger thought there will be national parks on Mars (she replied, without skipping a beat, “yes, because that’s job security”)
