Day 33: There's a storm coming

Naples, Utah

Distance for the day: 335.3 km

Cumulative distance: 7,022.8 km

Top speed: 138 kph

Moving average: 90 kph

Temperature:  17.2 - 38.0

I would love to tell you that these first three pictures were from this morning, when we got up to catch the morning sun. I would also like to tell you that Nan and I won the $15 million 50/50 draw from the last Oilers home game. Both woud be equally accurate.

They are from last night, taken with my phone, so they were overlooked for yesterday's post, so we thought they could make the cut for today.

This is the Colorado River from the distillery where we had dinner last night, the place that served us a package salad for dinner, with plastic cutlery that came in a cellophane wrapper, with an individual salt and pepper envelope. Kind of like we had tonight but not as good as we ate in our hotel room tonight.

The view from the Homestead, the cute little motel
where we stayed in Palisade last night.

So, the truth of the matter is that I had to finish last night's blog post this morning because I just couldn't stay awake any longer. Plus, I didn't really want to get up early anyways. By the time we were up and getting ready, all the other guests of the 8 room Homestead had cleared out. I guess that tells you something. We were loaded and on the way by about 10:15 and because we often find ourselves 15 minutes from departure wondering where the heck we are going, we rode into Palisade to have a look around and waste some time. We were slab riding this morning so it was pretty hard to be confused about what route we were taking. Especially as our first destination of the day was Rifle. Despite asking where we had lunch and looking online for an answer, I was unable to learn the origin of the name Rifle for the town. However, it may have been reasonable to name any town in the mid west after a weapon, since everybody here is either packing or somebody before them was. The area was the scene of several bloody battles between the Ute First Nations and the US Cavalry after the US government renaged on the agreement to grant Ute tribes their own land in a treaty. We passed near but not through the town of Meeker, named for the Indian Agent attempting to convert the local tribes to Christianity. You can probably guess who that turned out. I can't imagine it was too much better in Canada. We at least said we're sorry.

We had breakfast in a Rifle restaurant called
"Good Ol' Home Cooked Food". The food wasn't too
memorable but the decorations were. This was
in the "non-smoking" section.

We had numerous pleasant views along the White River after we had eaten. Not quite as dramatic as some of which we had seen but beutiful nonetheless

It did get a little more dramatic later in the day as we encountered some nasty weather. When we came out from lunch, it was still 28 degrees so we weren't overly concerned with a little bit of moisture. Being let in by our mesh gear. But as we rode along, the winds picked up and the temperature went down.  And the rain fell.  We still weren't overly stressed as in the far distance, we could still see what looked like storm clouds dissipating but it wasn't really clear how far it was to that distance. Nan asked me twice, "should we put on our rain gear? Isn't that why you re-sealed the seems?" Nah. 

Ewwwww.

Oh oh.

We saw this cool type of formation a few times, where it looked like boulders were stuck together and then shifting tectonics uprooted them into "fences".

The actual sight where Meeker met his demise.

That is a small portion of where it was raining. 
A much larger portion of it was on us. That is when
the temperature dropped down to 17.

Some business combinations make little sense to
me. Pickles and ice cream. Odd combination.

The rain did stop and for a few minutes, we were pretty wet. Mesh gear is not too good for keeping the rain out. It didn't matter much. Pretty soon it was 38 degrees and we were wishing for rain. 

We rode through the town of Dinosaur, Colorado, not far from Dinosaur National Monument. Dinosaur I am sure is a shadow of its former self. They have a "Brontosauraus Avenue", named after a burger on the Flintstones and numerous statuettes of dinosaurs around the town but not much else. It looks a little like most of Dinosaur has packed and moved on to some place with living creatures

I think they may have in fact, moved to Vernal, pretty close to where we are spending the night. Vernal thinks that they are the capital of the dinosaur world as absolutely every business has a small statue of a dinosaur out front. Dinosaur National Monument is actually closer to Dinosaur than to Vernal so I am not sure how Dinosaur got stiffed.

After the rain today, the bike was filthy, so I had to give her a shower.