Day 10: Moab

At the end of Day 9, we drove out into the desert past the Slick Rock mountain biking area and found a place to camp.

We awoke the next morning, ate some bagels with peanut butter and headed for the trailhead. The slick rock loop is about 10 miles long, but the non stop up and downs make it feel much longer. Here's Lydia taking a break taking in the scenery.

At about mile 5, Lydia found a slow leak in her front tire, so we pulled out the spare and put it in. Unfortunately, while pumping the spare tube up we somehow broke the valve stem and all of the air immediately dumped out. We put in the tube with the slow leak and slowly made our way back to the parking lot, pumping the tire up every 1/3 of a mile. It took us forever. Here's a good shot of the way most of the trails look.
After finally finishing our ride, we went into town, grabbed lunch, and headed towards the Grand Canyon. By a gross mis-estimation, we thought this leg of the trip would take about 5 hours, but it turned out to be 400 miles and took almost 7 hours. At least we got to drive through the monument valley. We tried to make good time, so I snapped pictures as we drove by.We also passed this sign. Sometimes the first available road number doesn't end up working out for the long term....We finally met up with our friends Mitch and Jessica at 8:30 pm at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We just happened to have trips planned that crossed in the Grand Canyon, so we hung out with them for the evening and breakfast before parting ways. Tomorrow we might actually see the Grand Canyon (Since all we can see tonight is a big Black Hole)