Today was a busy and long day. We rode a big loop through Castle Valley and over the La Sal loop. Here is Tom's traditional intro video for today's ride. I was feeling comical and video bombed his intro.
Tiffany started teh ride with us and the as planned vectored off to ride a shorter ride that the monster we were riding. i think she migh have been teh smart one!
Once through Moab, we headed down RT 191 towards Casltle Valley. This ride was mostly on a weaving road through the canyon, but it was pretty safe and drivers gave us lot's of space. Here are some pics from the first part of the ride.
We also saw some strange things along the bike path. Form your own opinions ..
After a 23 mile lead in we finally reached the turn into Castle Valley.
This is a cool place and if you are a fan of John Wayen movies, you'd surely recognize the monuments here. Many of the John Ford Westerns were filmed in this valley. The ride was constantly up hill from here, in teh valley averageing between 3-6%. Not hard but very much zapped the energy from your legs. Here are some of the better pictures.
After about 10 miles of this, the fun started and the climb began in ernest up the La Sal Loop. Here gradients were routinely 8-11% and teh temperature had risen to just under 90 degrees. Pretty challenging climb, but worth it. Here are some views from the climb.
Here is looking back down at Castle Valley
As usual, Tom made it to the top first and struck up a friendship with a group of mountain bikers .... not sure if that explains his hair or not.
Then Molly made it second and I was last .. feeling every biit of my age until I realized we had climbed to over 8,000 ft ! When I made it to the top, I had to lay down and take a nap while Molly looked on with disgust.
Here is the map of today's ride.
Here is the dynamic map
Meanwhile while we were suffering, Tifany did her ride then did a run around the neighbothood and took there interesting pics
She also had a visitor
After another great lunch at the Moab Brewery, we heared over to the Castle Creek Winery. Who knew Utah had a wineries?
Also at the Winery, we visited a meuseaum dedicated to Utah films formteh area. It was very cool and it makes total sense now why so many of the monuments here look so familiar.
