Today we started down Highway 12, one of the prettiest roads in the US. After a tough day the day before, we allowed ourselves a later start. We slept in and took our time getting ready in the morning. This also meant that we could time our arrival at a restaurant with the Champion’s League Final (David insisted).

Immediately after starting our ride, we went into the Red Canyon/Bryce Canyon area. We traveled a few miles along the road and then we had a bike path that took us all the way to the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park. The adjacent road passed through tunnels in the beautiful red rock.

We eventually reached the entrance to Bryce Canyon NP and unfortunately had to continue past it. We have accepted that our adventure this summer is to bike across the country and see all of these things. We are sometimes disappointed not to go and explore the things we see but this trip will just make us hungry to come back for more in the future.

After passing the park, we encountered a descent that would take us to the restaurant where we planned on watching the game.

We went from a flat grassland into an amazing landscape as soon as we went down.

Colorful cliffs surrounded us all the way down into the city of Tropic. The town only had a population of 800 and was almost entirely centered around tourism with all the people that come for the National Park and other attractions. We found the pizza place that had TVs in the pictures on google and went in to enjoy the game and a nice midday rest.

Real Madrid won in a pretty exciting game, through it was significantly caused by mistakes from the Liverpool keeper. There were two Liverpool fans in the restaurant who looked pretty distraught.

We had 40 miles to go in order to get to Escalante. We left town and started our way into some of the prettiest parts of the country. More towering cliffs with amazing colors. The road was nicely paved and had pretty good shoulders all the way through. The cars were also very respectful.

We had absolutely stunning weather for the entire ride. It was partly cloudy with temperatures perfect for the exertion of biking. During this part of the ride, the odometer passed the 1000 mile mark for our entire trip, about a fourth of the way through our total mileage.

After a climb of over 400 feet over a mile, we had finished the big climb of the day. We stopped at an overlook that showed one of the last places in the US to be mapped. It was full of fossils and other unknown things. Even today, very few people have gone through it.

After a nice rest we descended towards the town of Escalante where we knew we would have trouble finding a place to stay because everyone is out camping for Memorial Day. The descent led us through canyons where the layers of rock on both sides matched over the half mile between them.

After a few phone calls, we found a campground that could put us in their overflow area. We set up a hammock fly on the ground and slept under the stars. Unfortunately it was sandy and windy so it was not perfect for sleeping. A stray dog came by and woke up Aaron in the middle of the night.

We had decided to take a rest day on Monday. We had one more tough day ahead of us but we’re all excited for the chance to relax for a full day.