DISTANCE TRAVELED: 52.12 Miles
AVERAGE SPEED: 12.25 MPH

          Today I woke up at 7:00 but could not force myself out of my tent until 7:30. Al had left before the sun had even come up so he could try to ride the entire 87 miles to Silver city in one day instead of two. I ate breakfast, packed, and was riding by 9:15. We had been told that all the way to silver City was on a gradual downhill but a four-mile uphill to start the day was not in my definition of downhill! After the climb in the steadily rising temperature of the morning, I began a consistent downhill for the next 10 miles as we came into a large valley. Here, started small hills that were still small enough to power over. (Picture222) The mountains were still large in the background and to my surprise, a river was still fairly full that ran along the road. (Picture223) In a normal year, it would be completely dry. Soon, we arrived at Glenwood, a small tourist town where we planned to get some food. We heard that the pies were even better than in Pie Town! We rode through town to not find one café open! Two were closed only on Wednesdays. Another place was only open from 6 to 10 in the morning. Finally, we decided to wait 15 minutes for the next place to open. We went in and ordered lunch and since I was full, I skipped the pie. From the reviews of others who ate it, it was not the best pie of the trip. Soon we were on our way again to ride another 30 miles to our camp for the night. As we were leaving, a native told us that it was a downhill ride to Silver City. However, we had a net 1,000 ft elevation change in the wrong direction for this to be true. We climbed for 5 miles out of town in very hot conditions. The hills were steep but short and Tom and Marnie were able to pass by me with no problem since they like that kind of riding. After a seemingly endless time on the bike for only 30 miles, I stopped ½ mile outside of town since something along the road had caught my eye. I turned out to be nothing but I then saw the bones from a deer. The skull and jaw were bleached from the sun so I picked them up for Mike who wanted to strap them to his handlebars. Soon, I got into the campsite where I set up my tent and began to do laundry. I took a shower and put on clean clothes for the first time in a while. Back at my tent, I watched Stu and Brian come into the campsite. Stu slipped on some rocks while going 15+mph and fell, ripping both his shirt and shorts. Fortunately, there were only a few small cuts. Dinner was spaghetti and we then talked about the end of the trip coming rapidly upon us. We were surprised that we stayed up so late without a fire to sit around. At 10:00, I finally went to bed as the rain started to come down once again.