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Moab 2K+1: Story and Photos...
Day 3:

We started on Monday to head towards Moab, UT for a 9-day trip (including driving). There were 5 of us going-- me, Ray, Marc in my Ford Taurus SHO; Stan and his friend Dan were in his Subaru Legacy wagon. Stan and Dan left the day before we did, and they had to return a couple days earlier than us.

The trip got off to a slow start-- Marc had a few delays in arriving at my house, so we didn't actually get to Ray's place until 11:30am or so. When we got there the wind was pretty crazy-- leaves and cherry blossoms were being blasted all over the place, and it was threatening rain. On the drive down towards the Peace Arch border crossing, the rain was *very* heavy at times. While waiting in the long lineup at the Peach Arch, the clouds above us blew past, leaving bright blue skies... there was an amazingly strong headwind, though.

Shortly after a rest stop not too far East of Seattle, we noticed that despite the lack of rain, the road was soaking wet. Sure enough, it was because we were catching up to the stormclouds that had blown past us earlier. The weather was miserable all the way through Snoqualmie pass. Minutes after getting out of the pass, we must've passed through a rainshadow area, since the ground was suddenly very dry, with dry-looking yellow grass instead of the lush green forest undercover that we'd seen through the pass.

Picture: The next morning (Wednesday), we were at the Porcupine Rim trailhead. It was amazing how much harder we were all having to work just to bike up slight hills due to the thin air at the high altitude. Photo of Marc.

Picture: Photo of Stan (at left), Dan, and Ray (taking a photo of them).

Picture: The group, standing at the trailhead. From left to right: me, Ray, Stan, Dan, Marc. My K2 4000 SE is lying on the ground. Full-suspension was a definite advantage on the second half of the ride, though it was a hindrance for the first half.

Picture: Same location, a shot of Ray and Marc taking pictures. Notice the grey weather; it was about 10-12 degrees out, and windy. *cold*

Picture: A view from the trailhead; notice the canyon that we were to bike along for a while.

Picture: At the top of the mountain (well, on the plateau) we had lunch. This is a photo of Dan, Stan, Ray, and Marc looking out over a valley.

Ray, Marc, and I had fried chicken and potato salad for lunch. Mmmm, tasty! (Stan and Dan looked on jealously while they ate bagels... They each had one piece of chicken, I think, since we couldn't finish all of ours)

Picture: Stan on the edge.

Picture: Marc on the edge. Yup, those are roads that you can see down below.

Picture: Another view off the edge.

Picture: The group, on the edge.

Picture: We took this from the top, but I can't remember what this was a photo of. It looks cool, though!

Picture: A view along the edge. This is where we had lunch!

Picture: Ray and Stan, looking rather chilly on a part of the edge shortly after lunch. It had just snowed, hailed, and rained on us. The weather did *not* look promosing. We were freezing cold, and it was tough to operate the camera with my chilled fingers.

Picture: Marc giving his long-sleeved jacket to Dan, who hadn't brought a long-sleeve jersey along and was freezing cold. (we caught up to him huddled up against a tree trying to hide from the wind)

Over the next couple hours, we were rained on a lot more, and hailed on several times as well. The rain was constant. Marc, Stan, and I each took turns trading away our long-sleeved apparel to prevent any one person from freezing... Towards the end of the trail, we found ourselves driving along a cliff-- we could see waaaay down to a highway and the Colorado River on our right, and there was a steep hill on our left. I don't like heights.

We rode into town, and topped in at the Wendys for some food and to dry ourselves off. Stan had left his car in town the previous night, so he went off to pick it up-- it had dry clothes in it. After we ate some food we headed over to the tourist info center to find out the weather forecast-- basically it looked like it wasn't getting any better anytime soon! ...So we found ourselves a coffee shop (it had an art gallery in it as well) and settled down for 3 or 4 hours of hot chocolate. The people manning the shop were quite nice, and stayed open later than usual for us.

Continue to DAY 4 (morning)!