Day 17
63 miles 7106ft ascent 4500 calories used!
We said goodbye to our friends this morning. Rory & Vicki gave us a magnificent breakfast and then Dana came over for a goodbye. Rory kindly offered to lead us to the start of our days ride as part of his morning training session which was great. It was a tough goodbye even so.
The ride to Panguitch was extreme. 18 miles of serious climbing followed by some slightly less serious but certainly not humorous climbing. All added up, every little ascent we made at any point = > 7000ft. In reality the highest point was about 10500ft above sea level. It was bloody hard work. The scenery however was beautiful, pine covered hills, rock formations, remarkable canyons and rude pick up drivers!
As we finished the worst of the climb we met a very nice guy called Mike who is cycling alone from Oregon to Colorado. He joined us for the ride to Panguitch. We had earlier met a nice chap called Patrick who dropped into our day twice.
We had just passed Panguitch lake with about 18 miles to go when a truly dreadful thing happened. A car coming towards us hit a deer. The car hit the poor animal hard on its right back hip. We could see the people were ok but rushed to check the deer. It lay near the side of the road clearly mortally injured. The man driving the car was +\- ok in his response. The repulsive person he was with however sickened me with her attitude. She said ‘there are loads of deer around here’ I told her it was about the suffering of this poor individual animal that was my concern not population numbers. She later said ‘take it home and eat it’. As I say a repulsive specimen of humanity. We eventually found someone to come to help us , a nice man called Joe who had a firearm and was willing to use it checked the deer with me but it had already died.
We carried on after this. Somewhat subdued. We made Panguitch about 1900 and had an amazing surprise. Rory & Vicki had ridden all the way here with their friends Brian and Cindy to see we were OK and to bring us some food.
Tracey and I had checked into a motel with Mike and we stood chatting to our friends for a while before a final goodbye….for now.
A tough ride with some tragedy, saved by friendship.
