"No Act of Kindness, No Matter how Small, is Ever Wasted" - Aesop

April 23 - 25,

For our last night in Zion we had a visitor from Denmark who was hitch hiking across the country, he was looking for a place to set up his tent so we returned the favour that we received on our first night in the park. We had a pasta dinner and and a cup of authentic Navajo green tea and then headed off to bed.

The next morning we woke up bright and early at 5:30 and packed up camp so that we could climb out of the park in the cool of the morning. The climb out went really well -- we powered up all the switchbacks and even got a little break at the top. We had to wait about 45 minutes at the top because there is a tunnel that bicycles aren't allowed through, so the park ranger stationed at the tunnel stopped a pickup truck and asked if we could put the bike in his truck and ride through with him. When we got to the other side we hopped out and continued on our way to a town called Kanab. When we got into town we found a grocery store and picked up lunch and found some wifi to post our blog and look at some maps. We took longer then we planned and when we headed out again it was pushing 8:00pm. We biked about 15 miles out of town to BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land and pitched our tent a little ways down a dirt road.

We woke up this morning and got another early start. It was a relatively easy 60 mile day with no huge passes. We are thankful to be done with Nevada and the endless basins and mountain range passes -- but it was a great way to get into biking shape! We crossed the Glen Canyon dam and made it to Page, Arizona near Lake Powell by 12:30 (when we crossed the border into Arizona we gained an hour because they are not on daylight savings time so we felt like we made amazing time). :)




The dam was HUGE! The first picture is the view of the dam from one side of the bridge and the second is the water level downstream of the dam.






As usual, we found a grocery store and bought some fresh bagels and hummus for lunch. After eating we found a little cafe and had lots and lots of coffee (because we hadn't had any that day and there were free refills) and used their wifi to look at some maps for places to camp. Once we were well caffeinated we went back to the grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine and as we were getting back on our bike to head to the campground we were approached by a man who was curious about our trip. As it turns out, he is part of an organisation called warmshowers.org and he was hosting another touring biker and he invited us over to his house to let us pitch our tent in his backyard. We were served a delicious dinner, took a warm shower, and were able to do laundry. What a wonderful surprise! We are discovering a really neat subculture of cyclists who are very kind, open, and generous people.

Tomorrow they are calling for thunderstorms in this area with a headwind, so we are mentally preparing ourself for a challenging day -- we'll let you know how it goes. :)