June 27th Day 20

This is so much harder than I expected. Another early day so we can beat the heat and get to Hite and swim in the Colorado River. We need to get water for the next day's ride which is 77 miles with no services along the way and lots of climbing. Supposedly there is a store in Hite and a visitor center. On the way, who should drive by us again...yep, Jonathan,Jackie, et al....and why have they altered their route to Colorado? Why to bring us another pie of course. Today it is Mulberry!!! It was a long, hot ride but that pie and seeing our friends (and especially seeing Rueben, who is only 3 yrs. old next week, open the car window with his toes, while strapped into his car seat) made it all so great!!!!!
We got to Hite at 3pm..hungry, tired, hot, thirsty...looking forward to a cold drink and stocking up on some groceries...but NO! The little store was closed until 11am the next morning and the the visitor center didn't look like it had been open all week. So, we made a new plan...swim in the river (which we did and it brought us back to the light side), make dinner on the tables outside the visitor center, fill up every empty vessel we own with water from the one water pump for the next 80 miles, and head out towards Blanding tonight and see how far we get so the next day (77 miles and lots of climbing)won't be so harsh. So, we did. We made dinner, filled up vessels, brushed our teeth, put on the clothes we were going to bike in, sleep in, and bike in the next day...put our lights on our bikes and headed out. And, like often happens..just when you think you have been forsaken and everything is going wrong.......you change directions and it is better than you could ever have anticipated. Riding through those incredible mountains by in the cool of the evening, with an almost full moon, no cars...and the setting sun, was just magical. I have never experienced anything like it. The light changed everything. The colors on the mountains were so different. Everywhere you looked it was like a Sierra Club Calendar picture. It was indescribable. I felt so happy that I was experiencing this..and just overjoyed that my boys were having this experience in their life...to ride through the desert canyons, red cedar rock mountains, bright moon, cool breeze.....just amazing. Yonah spotted a King snake so we got off our bikes to check that out. We rode until about 10pm and then we were just too tired to keep going. So we pulled over at a flat stretch of desert without too many sage bushes, put down our tarps, got in our sleeping bags, I read a few pages of this book I'm reading to them, and we went to sleep. The moon was so bright but I still saw millions of stars...I kept thinking of that sappy Eagles song about sleeping in the desert with a million stars all around.