Nevada!

So it's been a while since I last wrote on here. We've been camping a lot more and haven't been in civilaion. We are now in Ely, Nevada. (pronounced Elee) A lot has happened since our ride into Las vegas, New Mexico...and by a lot I mean the entire state of Arizona, Utah, and two days of Nevada. Where do I begin??

Let's start with Arizona. We had some tough days in Arizona. Our hardest being our ride to Jacob Lake which was an 83 mile day. The first 60 miles were extremely hot and windy...and the last 13 miles were uphill...a lot. Our lowest point that day was around 3500 ft, and when we got to Jacob Lake we had reached almost 8000 ft in elevation.

The day after that we rode to the Grand Canyon!! We camped there for two nights, so we had one day off there. On our day off we thought a first we would take it easy...relax by the beautiful views. Hah! That didn' happen. Me and 6 others ended up going on what turned into about a 14 mile hike, which was really awesome. I guess we just don't know how to sit still.

After the Grand Canyon we headed up to Utah, which was gorgeous. We were ony in Utah for 3 days, and on our third day we reached our highest elevation of the trip. We climbed for 25 miles until we reached 9910 ft in elevation. It was an awesome feeling, and the 15 miles of downhill that followed was absolutely amazing.

After Utah we headed into Nevada. Yesterday we rode 94 miles, and today was 108 miles (which is the most we've ridden in one day) to Ely!

Just to tell you a bit about today's ride, I have to first explain a Bike and Build tradition that we've heard about since Florida. The tradition is known as the Naked Mile, which consists of a single mile in our 3600 that you choose to ride naked! Of course you don't have to do it, but it's definitely presented as a milestone that you want to conquer. You get to choose when you want to do your naked mile, so today as I was riding down the straight Nevada road with Anne, Kristiann, and Shap, and we decided that it was now or never. We made sure no cars were in sight, and we waited until we had a stretch of downhill so that it would go by faster. And we did it!

Hopefully nobody's opinion of me is changed by the fact that I rode a mile on my bike naked, haha. Nevada was a great state to do it in given the fact that...there's really not much here. After we finished we signed our names in chalk on the road that we did our mile, which apparently inspired almost the entire group to do their naked mile at some point on today's ride as well. So it was definitely a day of conquering for many of us.

Tomorrow we have a day off here in Ely, and given the fact that there's nothing really here we will probably just laze around all day and eat. I am curently writing this sitting with 3 other people eating a half gallon of ice cream with humongous spoons because it's all we could find in the kitchen. I continue to be amazed at my appetite these days, and don' know how I'm going to adjust back to real life eating habits.

We only have 9 more riding days left, one day off, and one build day. San Francisco is coming up soon and I can't believe it! This trip is flying by, and it's going to be over before we know it. Hopefully we will have internet in the next week so I can keep this more updated. This is going to be a busy couple weeks, and we've all got San Francisco on the brain!! I hope you l are doing well! Hopefully there will be more stories to come!