Day 11: Leaving the Grand Canyon in the Wind
Today's ride had stunning views, but was also quite challenging at times due to 20-30 mph winds and gusts over 40 mph.
We started by riding from our hotel into Grand Canyon National Park. Away from the canyon itself, the park has lovely pine forests. Riding in, we saw a large elk, but I was not able to get a photograph of it.
Occasionally, there are places where forest fires have cleared out meadows and small flowering shrubs and new trees have started to grow.
Once we got to the rim of the canyon, we headed mostly east as we followed the south rim of the canyon. This offered us a number of vistas whenever the jagged edge of the canyon dipped back towards the road. Below are a couple more photos.
Eventually, the road shifted a bit towards the south and started to descend as we left both the park and the shelter of the pine trees. This was when the bicycling got very challenging. The wind was coming out of the south - southeast. This meant that we were generally facing a very strong crosswind although occasionally the road and the wind would shift enough to get a tail wind or a headwind. Crosswinds of this speed make it feel as though someone is constantly jerking the front wheel and handlebars around. During several long periods of intense crosswinds, the only way I could get a drink from my water bottle was to stop my bike. It simply did not feel safe to take a hand off the handlebars.
As we descended, the scenery shifted. Here is a photo taken just about the time the road turned more southerly.
At the 58 mile mark, our road came to an end and we got some lunch. Leaving lunch, we headed north then east for the rest of our ride. In this case, we had a very strong tailwind which meant that I covered 25 miles in an hour. As we headed east into to Tuba City, we entered the northwest edge of the painted desert as shown above.
One final shot as we rode the last couple of miles to Tuba City.