Day Twenty-Three: Escalante - Boulder

In the morning, we discovered a funky coffee shop connected to an outdoor store/fly-fishing shop. They had fresh-baked breakfast calzones, muffins, etc. and we munched on those while drinking a much-needed mug of coffee. Slater and I talked to the barista and the owner about the ride ahead of us, which would take us to Boulder, UT, and they informed us that it would be (and I quote) “absolutely brutal.” Great.

It sure was. But before taking off, Slate bought an inflatable travel pillow from a nearby store. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, that’s because all night long, he thrashes and tosses and turns and sniffles and coughs and snores because when he sleeps without a pillow, he gets all kinds of sinus issues. So he bought the pillow, and he was happy, and I was ecstatic. Now, back to the riding.

The road was one of the toughest yet. At first, we got a downhill: we rolled down for miles until we reached Calf Creek Falls, where we admired a crew of fun people hangin’ in the river and drinking beer—we couldn’t have wanted anything more. We passed by reluctantly, then began our climb up 28 miles of absolute hell. Portions of the route included 14% grades, and the day was filled with the sight of cyclists riding in the opposite direction (for a good reason—that’s never a good sign). Towards the end, we met another touring cyclist who was ridiculously tan, ripped, and Italian, and didn’t seem to think that the climb was too big of a deal… Slater and I were not happy. Finally, at the “summit”, we learned that it was actually a false summit, and we struggled our way all the way into Boulder.

Upon arrival, we noticed that it wasn’t much of a town. There was, however, an awesome coffee shop (what’s new?) called Burr Trail Outpost, where we met a friendly barista who told us about the tiny town and its 200-person population. She recommended the Burr Trail Grille for dinner, so we trotted over about 20 feet to the restaurant, where we were served TBLTs (Turkey-Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato) with fresh roasted turkey. All of the ingredients in the restaurant were harvested from farms just down the road and were all organic, so the Portland in us came out a little bit as we enjoyed the hell out of that meal.

With nighttime quickly approaching, we rode our bikes over to a small motel, as the only campground was 7 miles down a dirt road, and our road bikes don’t do so well on that terrain. The owner checked us in and sold us a room for the night, despite the fact that she might have been the most anal woman I have ever met (don’t worry, they don’t have the website). She reminded us at least twelve times to not run over her flowers with our bikes—which, by the way, the flowers were in pots… how would we even do that? And she insisted that we could not lean our bikes on the deck, or on the rocks, or on the walls… etc. After making our way out of that fun conversation, we were able to spend a night avoiding the rain and watching America’s Got Talent—you know, normal people things. Hallelujah.