Time in Saddle: 4:05
Distance for the Day: 29.89 miles: From Hurricane, UT To Zion National Park
Accumulated Trip Distance: 1176.6 miles
Altitudes: Starting/Ending 3284’/3886’, Highest: 4348’, Accumulated: 2828’
Speeds: Avg: 7.3 mph, Max: 27.7 mph
Weather: High partly cloudy, cool, becoming stormy and cold
Expenditures: $100
We slept well in Lucy’s beautiful home, which was so clean, tastefully decorated, and organized. Sunset magazine could have walked in, unannounced, and started clicking away, no problem. She fixed us eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and grapefruit, and offered to join us at Zion National Park (our next destination) to go hiking with us. We gathered together our freshly laundered clothes, and packed our bags. She showed us her touring cycle, a foldable Bike Friday, with panniers. She and a friend are planning to cycle across the
northern states of the US, going west to east, and she’s in her 60s! A remarkable lady whom we shall remember forever (and will certainly keep in contact with). We said our farewells, and took off for Zion. I picked up more supplies ($8) for the road. In Springdale, just outside of Zion Nat’l Park, I bought some root beer and a choco gelato at a nice, upscale touristy kind of market, where we ate lunch and accessed their free wi-fi to handle emails and check the web. In the early afternoon, we went through town and up to the entry to Zion. I opted to buy the annual pass ($80) which would get me into any Federal Park in the US for
the year, and this also covered C&E, (yay!) so we went in, and found a campsite right away ($12 per night for two nights). The weather had been very nice during the day, but another front was passing near, and the associated gust front came with it, but, only a short, light sprinkle of rain. We set up our sleeping arrangements (they, a tent, and me in my hammock), and ate our dinner of sandwiches made from ingredients we obtained at a market just outside the park entrance ($12 for my stuff) sitting in C&E’s tent, when someone “knocked” on the tent: another pair of ‘world cyclers’ from Germany, Martin and Nadine, noticed our cycles, and wanted to come visit in a bit. They left for a few minutes, and came back with hot drinks and cookies, and we stuffed all five of ourselves into this two-person tent to socialize. I thought I was hard-core, but these two had already been through most of the countries of the world over the last 6 years, and
planned to finish sometime in 2010. They were now heading north to Salt Lake City, and would eventually go into Canada and head east from there. Their annual budget was, like, $3000 – they never ate in restaurants, and that figure included airfare for continental jumps. I found that to be astounding. Their website is at http://www.weltenbummler2003.de/ which has an English version, too. Just amazing! We talked until about 11pm, trading stories, I extracting advice from them on how they stealth camp (find sites during the cover of dusk), take showers (can be done with 1-liter of water from a bottle), and a few other tips. We then said ‘goodnight,’ and each went to hit our respective hays. Getting out of the tent, everyone groaned from having been so cramped-up, but to paraphrase Martin, “If the heart is big enough, the house will fit all who come.” Such was surely the case that evening.
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