Total miles: 2668.9 miles
This morning breakfast was provided for us by the host which is always a great thing to hear for hungry bikers. Unfortunately breakfast did not roll in until about 6:30 which mean that we were all starving when I stowed up. But it was definitely worth the wait because some of the tribe members had made traditional items; they said they would have done more if they were give more of a heads up about our arrival. The big hit of the morning was the blue corn mush which starts off as ground blue corn meal and then they add burnt sage leaves which have been sifted to the meal. Marcus described it best as cream of wheat. Add some sugar and/or use some fry bread as a spoon and you have magic. It was definitely filling and would get us a good way to lunch.
Shockingly I had no one to ride with this morning, so Ben and Chika very nicely took me with them. There are several great things about riding with Ben. First he loves to stop and take pictures which is amazing. Second he gets so excited about riding bikes each morning and about the views that it only makes the ride that much better.
The morning started off with some fantastic rolling hills with views that only got better as the sun rose up and out of the sky; the tail wind was also fantastic. After having a build day off and driving the van Ben we raring to go and we were heading off at a fairly decent clip. It was the first time in a long while that something did not hurt i.e. back, knee, etc.
Groups were tearing into and out of lunch pretty quickly because they were all trying to get to the host to hop in the first van ride off to Monument Valley. Fortunately our group learned that shuttles would not start until seep tried so we took the rest of the afternoon pretty slow. The combination of rock formations and hot seat action/my random philosophical questions the time on the bikes flew by.
Because we had some time to kill before sweep arrived a bunch of us headed down the road two miles to snag some coffee. To kill time on the walk back, I had been requested to give a couple of my DC tour guide speech. It was a quick taste of the tours I have promised riders when they come to visit me. Once we got back the van was back and ready to take us to Monument Valley. I would love to tell you how beautiful the ride over was, but Marcus and I pretty much passed out until we arrived. Once we left the parking lot, the group headed over to the main vista to snag some pictures and decide on which hike we wanted to try out.
I was a part of the second group and we were having such a great time talking and taking in the sites that we lost track of where we were going and completely missed the turn for our trail. Thankfully one of us had grabbed a map and while we were out of the way, we were not too lost. The one good thing about us being lost was the fact we were able to watch the sun set as we were climbing out of the canyon. AMAZING!!!
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