36.29 mi / 2:01:07 time / 17.9 mph avg. / 41.5 mph max. / 491 ft. climbing
Staying at Kokopelli Inn, Bluff

Today was something new, we actually went through two towns in one day, a first for this tour! We also didn’t climb any hills. Crazy, huh?

We did have to wait out a whole bunch of rain though. It rained lightly through the night, then stopped in the morning long enough for me to go out and eat breakfast under a spacious ledge/cave in the rock, which would have been a perfect place to try some tentless camping, even in the rain, had we discovered it earlier. But then before we could pack up, it started again, heavier, keeping us holed up in our tents until after 10am. We packed up our wet gear (yuck), then rolled down the hill to Blanding.

There, we made great use of their fine visitor center, using their overhangs, power, bathrooms, Internet, and even patio area to dry out our stuff when it got momentarily sunny. But then a heavy storm came through keeping us holed up there until nearly 4pm, with only 10 miles in the bag.

Once we finally got going again on the road towards Bluff, the skies cleared up enough, and after a bunch of 25-30mph cruising, we were suddenly dragged down by the flat-tire demons. Three of them in ridiculously quick succession! Two for me (both the rear wheel, and both different from each other and different from yesterday’s) and one for Dennis (on his trailer wheel). I have no idea if it was just a really crappy highway, or a really crappy stretch of luck.

Anyhow, that ruined any chance of us making it to our planned destination (Goosenecks State Park), so we pulled into a motel in the tiny town of Bluff. It’s a beautiful town though, situated in the San Juan River valley, and surrounded by, well, Bluffs. Dinner was at the San Juan River Kitchen, which is a fantastic place totally unexpected in a town as small as Bluff. It’s almost an art-gallery type building, and in fact there were some pretty great works of art from a local artist hanging on the walls. And then they make a lot of local food, and have a note on their menu saying that their cuts of meat vary from night to night because they only buy one cow at a time. We split a roasted-grape/toasted-walnut/pancetta salad, and I had some fantastic enchiladas. Bluff is very close to the Navajo Nation, so there is a bit of native influence as well. Combine that with the classic diner lunch we had in Blanding (where we talked with a Mormon woman who noted that her touring-cyclist husband could always keep up with his group even though he could not ride on Sundays like they did), and it was a good day full of local color. That helped even out all the rain and flat-tire crappiness.

I fell asleep listening to Tiamat’s “A Deeper Kind of Slumber”, and had a nearly-religious experience. I’ve always loved the album, but this time, in my half-dream-state, I was envisioning enormous sandstone bluffs, flowing and changing and growing along with the music. It told me that this trip is really hitting my subconscious, or, the chef at the restaurant put something funny in my enchiladas!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm and is filed under 2009 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.