America By Bicycle: Cannonville, UT to Cedar Breaks, UT

We started out the morning anticipating a tough climb a few miles down the road. It was pretty cold and we got going with our down jackets on.

The first town we went through we stopped for coffee and met a 67 year old guy who was bike touring around Utah, cool stuff. We also met a dog who was the sweetest, happiest dog ever. We befriended him a little too much and we couldn't get him to stop following us until a couple miles down the road. He turned around eventually though and trotted back home.

And the ride was beautiful! As it always is :)

And you might think we were unhappy to see this sign right before entering Red Canyon...

But it meant there was a bike path! And it was awesome. It was beautifully paved, had these super awesome fun turns, and was all downhill (for us!).

And we saw the best sign. Ever. It is probably my favorite sign from the trip and that I've ever seen. It's a great sign when it's for trucks, but just awesome when it's specifically for bikes.. That's us!

We tried stopping for lunch in some small town, but all (2) of the restaurants were closed so we went into a little gift shop instead, and then moved on.

I wonder if those cowboy/indian mannequins are for sale. If they are, I would love to meet the person who would buy them...

We continued our downhill, then climbed some, and ate in a town called Panguitch. Penguin sandwich? Pancake witch? Pancake sandwich for penguins? Whatever the underlying meaning of Panguitch may be, most things we tried to order on the menu came with a reply from the waitress "Oh, we don't have that." Going in to a restaurant you might think that everything on the menu is something you can order, but don't be fooled.. it is apparently a misconception.

We're happy about the pretty mountains.

This was also confusing because we had just been in Capitol Reef National Park a day or two back... We had to check the map. But we were still on track. Signs and menus of Utah, confusing stuff. Watch out.

On that note, we've decided we don't quite understand Utah. It's like somebody took Colorado, shook out most people and water, but left some odd people and also left the Colorado River, tried to remove trees but got really lazy in some parts, twisted it, added some odd signs and odder people, plunked it down, added Mormon laws, and called it Utah. Who knew.

Oh and this was funny:

There's a sign 100 feet up that said what road it WAS. Apparently that wasn't enough, and there had to be a sign noting what the road was NOT, also.

The road that was not 89 was also where we really started our climb. But we were confused because we couldn't actually see a mountain or something that we had to get to the top of, we just kept going up. They were more like rolling hills that built on eachother. It didn't feel like a horrible climb because there were flats or downs sometimes that gave us a little break. It wasn't until later that we started to feel a heavy climb. And climb we did!

We saw a beautiful lake where we could have camped, but decided to keep going up.

We also rode past a TON of sheep. They were hilarious. There were so many, and they were bah-ing all over the place. There was one walking toward a cattle guard and we stopped to see what it would do. It stopped, sort of looked around, then looked at us, and then just sat down. Poor sheep. There was also a sheep dog that was so happy and so uninterested in us.

We ended up climbing 6,667 feet, which topped our highest climbing day from a couple of days before! Wow. We were tired, but still confused by the climb.

We entered Cedar Breaks, where we were staying. Which was great. But it wasn't the top yet!

When we got to the top, finally, and got to look over and see the other side of what we were climbing, and it all made sense... And it was incredibly beautiful. Maybe the most breathtaking view we've seen, especially after a tough climb. The steep red walls of the canyon were just amazing.