Last night we drove to Cedar City and stayed at accomodations booked via Airbnb. First time experience with Airbnb. The host family was a young couple with two small kids and were welcoming and easy to work with. We didn’t know what to expect, but so far so good.

This morning we left around 9 and had a completely different experience than our last ride. For starters we had a strong tailwind for most of the day. Although we’re going to tell you some things we think we did better, all credit might go to the wind.

In addition to a great tail wind, the weather was great. It was probably in the upper 30s when we started and warmed nicely to 60 degrees by the end of our ride.

We rode 70 miles with 2700 feet of elevation gain. We selected this route because it has many similar characteristics to our days planned for Europe.

We did a much better job of pacing ourselves on the hills. I selected this route specifically because it didn’t have many segments steeper than 5 percent. The few that exceeded that were short. We had a better understanding of what to expect because I wrote some software to analyze the route in a way that makes it easier to compare to other rides we were familiar with. It helped to know in advance that every hill was within our reach.

It really helped to not push for speed - not even a little. We had plenty of time, so we took it. 

Finally, we were a little lighter today as we are not carrying camping gear - just camp food.

For lunch today we ate at a little diner in Enterprise. Classic diner. Not many vegan choices, no surprise, but we had a big fresh order of delicious fries and a salad each. It was yummy and a good break.

We are staying at another Airbnb tonight, and in this case we have the whole house. There is no restaurant - not even a gas station - so we are cooking a backpacking dinner tonight. Nothing says romantic dinner like Mountain House.

We are tired but happy. This is an out and back, so tomorrow we retrace our steps with slightly more vertical gain.