May 10th, 2019 / (0km / 0 miles, 0 hm)
As I had already decided yesterday, based on the cold and rain, and the terrible weather forecast for today, I declared day #13 to be a forced rest day. Cedar City is actually a good place to have a rest day – they have very nice coffee shops and restaurants and one doesn’t feel like at the end of the world without anything to do.
I get up late – 7:30am – and outside it’s indeed raining. Not something to wish for normally, but if you’ve decided to drop a day cycling, you want to have a good reason for it. So I go for a quick breakfast at my motel (the El Rey Inn — can recommend it!) and do some email, some photo processing, some research on the web for the coming days. Then it stops raining. Hm? I decide to go the “Grind” coffee shop and spend the rest of the morning and early noon there, sipping a cappuccino and having some “bakery bread” (which is actually a cake). There I meet Marcel again, the other biker I met before, who’s out here with his dog, traveling along the same route. We chat and exchange about tomorrow’s climb to the 3200m pass over to Panguitch and what’s coming behind, which national parks to stop at, etc. It’s a nice morning and nice chat with a similar minded person. He’s a really nice guy and we’re going to see each other in the upcoming waypoints a few more times, I bet.
What has been forecasted as a super rainy and even thunderstorm day, turns out to be a rather cloudy but almost dry day with the sun coming out towards 4pm. So theoretically one could have gone over the pass. But still, taking a rest day after the past 5 rather exhausting legs of the trip has probably been a good thing. And as always, would I have left towards Panguitch, I am sure I would have been soaked. It always comes different than expected.
The rest of the afternoon I spend walking around town, taking a few unspectacular pictures – the sun even has shown up a little bit. So I am confident tomorrow will be a good day again and I’m looking forward to the 1600m climb.
This evening will be Thai food. There’s a Thai restaurant just around the corner with excellent online reviews. So it’s Curry night!