We woke up in Blanding, Utah excited to move on to Colorado. Though it was the prettiest state we had seen, it was tough riding and the lack of resources made it even harder. We picked up some groceries and ran into the Brazilian couple one more time in the store. This was the third and final time that we ran into them as they were resting that day. We wished them luck as they continued on their journey. After groceries, we went to the burrito place that we had been the night before and got some amazing breakfast burritos. These powered us to the last town in Utah, Monticello.

The road from Blanding to Monticello had constant rolling hills with the Abajo mountains (also known as the blue mountains) looming to our left. They looked almost fake against the sky. The landscape was mostly arid farmland. After having only cattle ranches throughout the canyonlands, more farms started popping up.

Without really noticing, we had a strong tailwind carry us up the road almost directly North to Monticello. The rolling hills were a little bit of a challenge but we knew they would only last for the first 20 miles. The tailwind powered us up the hills but, as normally happens with a tailwind, we didn't really notice it was there. We got to Monticello and stopped for some food. We ate in a shelter at their city park and spent some time riding our bikes around their skate park after we finished. This confused the local kids who watched us go up and down the ramps on our very heavily weighted bikes. Once we decided we had wasted too much time, we turned from heading North to heading East. This almost immediately resulted in the realization that we had been traveling with the wind all morning. It also meant that we had to fight a strong cross wind from the South and it would even turn into a headwind as we got into Colorado and the road curved into the wind. This made the day much harder than we were expecting. We only had 65 miles to go, a relatively short day for us, but each mile now required a lot more work. We had fortunately found a host in Dolores, CO so we knew we would have a comfortable place to stay when we finished.

We ran into one other bicycle tourist this day. His name was Alan and he was a retired man on his way from the East coast. He told us there were a few more people a few days behind him on the same route. Yet another retired bike tourist. He was also frustrated by the cross wind but he had been carried by it all morning like we had. He was worried that he wouldn't be able to make it to Blanding with the wind which would set him back a day because the stretch afterwards was too long to not start in Blanding. We gave him our advice on where to get water.

We eventually reached the Colorado border which was signified by a large wooden sign. This was a break from the mold of metal signs that we had seen before that. We stopped at the sign briefly but needed to continue in order to make it to our hosts at a decent time.

We made our stops in whatever shade we could find and kept grinding out the miles. The wind slowly started to ease up on us and we were able to make reasonable progress. As we got further, we were able to make out the daunting snow covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to deal with them today. Shortly before sunset, we reached the town of Dolores, Colorado. It was a small town but looked to have a good amount of life. We passed a very cool looking bike shop and planned to visit it in the morning and then visited the grocery store to get some food to make for dinner (our classic meal of spaghetti and ice cream).

We found our hosts’ home and they welcomed us in. The Barber family had built a massage studio and sauna in their backyard that featured a loft and a pullout bed for us. We played with their wonderful dogs, a theme for the trip, and made our supper. We were very thankful for comfortable accommodations after a long stretch of sleeping outside.