New Friends and a New State

We found it easily and got the tent set up and a little fire going.  The wind was picking up so we ate dinner quickly, put the fire out and retreated to the tent.  The wind soon died down and we got a pretty good night’s sleep.  We got an early start and had a good morning riding along frontage roads.  We stopped at a Smith’s in Payson in the hope they would have the 6 pack of banana and walnut muffins for about $3.50 we had enjoyed previously, but alas they were no longer on offer and they only had the blueberry ones.  We had lunch outside the Smith’s and then as we were leaving the carpark bumped into a fellow cycle-tourer on his way south, after chatting for a while we pedalled off to negotiate the busier roads as we headed through Spanish Fork.  A cyclist then came up alongside us asked about our trip and told us he had a fitness centre just up the road and offered us a shower and lunch, but having already eaten and with a Warm Showers host lined up for the night we gratefully declined and rode on.

Tom got punctures 4 and 5 on our ride, but we had nice places to fix them and the sun shone.  We arrived in Provo and found Oliver, Raquel and Ezra’s house without difficulty and knocked on the door.  Raquel answered and immediately made us feel welcome, giving us a tour of their wonderful house and garden.  They’re into permaculture and have a beautiful garden and a gorgeous house with a bunch of cool other buildings including a strawbale greenhouse (where we slept) and a four-storey treehouse.  That evening they had a gathering with people playing music and a ‘pot-luck’ dinner.  We had a wonderful evening chatting with their lovely friends.

The next morning we joined them for breakfast and ended up chatting for hours, Oliver was late for work and we ended up deciding to stay a second night as we needed to head to the sports store to buy bear stuff (rope, bear-spray, knowledge!) and go to the bank to get more cash out.  We spent the day wandering about Provo, when we got back we played with Ezra for a bit and then cooked hotdogs over the fire pit.  Then Oliver’s brother invited us to Oliver’s parents for local bison burgers.  Despite having just eaten we couldn’t turn down this offer and so we enjoyed a second dinner with Oliver’s family before heading off with Oliver, Raquel and Ezra on Provo’s Monday Night Ride.  I’ve never ridden in a big group of bikers before but it was great fun and we had a fantastic time chatting with various people.

We managed to drag ourselves away the next morning and had a beautiful ride up Provo Canyon.  At Silver Summit we ended up doing a huge circle as the Pacific Union Rail Trail which we intended to ride was closed due to roadwork on the Interstate and so we guessed we’d just have to ride the I-80 to Coalville but as we were nearing the junction to turn onto it a highway patrol car pulled up alongside and told us we weren’t allowed.  After 2 hours we ended up back where we had started and headed for Peoa and then Coalville.  It was a lovely ride and we arrived into Coalville around 6pm.  We had just got off our bikes and were walking towards the gas station to ask if they knew anywhere we could pitch the tent when a guy on a quad asked if we were looking for somewhere to camp and gave us directions to a spot in town.  We continued walking towards this spot when a guy starts chatting to us outside his place and gives us directions to a camp spot by the lake a couple of miles out of town and points out a back road to get us to Evanston the next day.

We chose the spot by the lake and got set up for the night.  It was a cold night, our water bottles were frozen in the morning and we wrapped up warm for the ride into town before heading for the Wyoming border on Chalk Creek Road.  Mark did us such a favour sending us this way, it was a really quiet road, we saw more deer than cars and we really enjoyed the ride to Evanston, WY. Although sadly as it was a back road & partly dirt it lacked the state border signs so no silly photo opportunities.