DISTANCE TRAVELED: 74.86 Miles
AVERAGE SPEED: 12.70 MPH

          I woke up at 7:00. By 7:15 when I got out of my tent, only Lou and I still had our tents up. I ate cold cereal for breakfast, packed lunch, and tore down my tent as fast as I could to catch up with everyone else. By 7:30, Mike had already left and by 8:00, everyone had left. I had been so tired that the night before, there had been thunder, lightening, and rain, none of which I had heard! The clouds were still around and the darkest one was right in front of us! We rode the one-mile stretch of dirt to get back to the highway and then traveled on the highway back to the store to buy 2 liters of soda and a Gatorade for the hot day in front of us. The beginning of the ride was rolling hills followed by a beautiful canyon that had a great echo. We were even able to see ruins of Indian dwellings inside caves! Soon, we climbed out of the canyon, rode on top of a mesa, and then dropped into a huge valley that we would stay in for the rest of the day. The huge cliffs were left behind us as we entered a fairly flat area that was even more desert-like. At one crossing of the Continental Divide, I stopped for my first lunch break of the day. The clouds were getting darker so by the time I left, I began to feel the first drops of rain. I put on my rain jacket to keep me warm more than dry and began to ride down the gradual slope. It was freezing cold the entire way down; I was even cold climbing the hills. Soon I caught up to Stu and Brian who had stopped to get warm and eat some food. After this short break, we rode together for 15 miles to our next turn. The road seemed endless since for the last 10 miles it was perfectly straight. It took forever to get to the end of where we could see. Even though it had already rained once, the clouds began to build again. So, for the next 16 miles to Milan, Stu lead as we cruised at 22 mph without a tailwind to help us beat the storm. The rain began to come down and lightening roared just as we reached a Dairy Queen. We shoved our bikes under the overhang and went inside for the next two hours as we waited out the storm. The wind got up to at least 30 mph and the rain and hail came down hard. We enjoyed hamburgers, milkshakes, and ice cream cones in a dry building while this was going on. If we had gotten in only 30 seconds later, we would have been drenched. By the time we left, it was 4:00 so we rode to the campground to find out that they no longer had tent sites so we still had 3 miles to ride! We left and soon arrived at Lavaland Campground just as the rain began to come down hard once again! We waited inside for over an hour to set up our tents and when we finally did, the ground was still soaked. We talked about the day's events and found out that Mike and Marianne had seen rattlers during the day. Marnie had been riding, heard a thud, and thought that something had fallen. Tom however saw that a huge rattler had attempted to strike but instead had fallen to the gound and slapped its belly on the ground! Soon we had dinner and after talking for a while, went to sleep at 9:00.