And then there was one

North of Moab we pedaled out onto the Dead Horse Point national park. A narrow peninsula of rock high above the Colorado river where ranchers once corralled wild mustangs. I'd like to think that wild horses refusing to be captured would jump to their death than be enslaved by humans is what gave this finger of land its name, but no, its much crueler than that. The ranchers would often run a group out there, take the best of the bunch and leave the rest to die trapped by a fence across the narrow part of the jetty. Wonderfully retarded.

Onward to the north we ground into a maddening head wind across long barren stretches until reaching Price, UT. We camped there along side some railroad tracks and I filled Hubert's ear about riding through on the freight atop these very tracks years before.

We had breaky that morning in the little old train town of Helper and then climbed up over a 9114 ft pass and were rewarded with a long fantastic descent into Duchesne. Off to the north again was serious cattle country, we just kept on past pasture after pasture being passed by big muddy, "dude" trucks. A local good time was down shifting real quick right along side us to blow a big black cloud of exhaust in our faces.

A man begrudgingly let us pitch our tents on a corner of his land on the out skirts of Roosevelt, where we were later met with a lot of hard stares. By that night we're both happy to be climbing up into some national forrest lands on our way to Flaming Gorge. Storms and blue skies swirled around us for a few days taking turns dumping rain and sunshine. The red rocks stayed with us mixed with clumps of Juniper trees that we watched elk and deer dash between. The wyoming border came and went in its high pretty country and we rolled into the boom town of Rock Springs.

Hubert had been had been playing racquet ball with the idea of giving the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone a miss and basicly heading east from Rock Springs. He was worried about not being able make it Chicago in time to stash his bike and get to his sisters wedding, Which has been his been his priority since cooking up this little summer ride months ago.

So he made the decision to pedal off east, bound for Laramie, Wyoming. Tho first... His mother had given him the gift of a hotel room for his birthday two months ago that he could redeem at any time. He threw it down so we could commemorate our last night together in the laps of rented luxury. We cheersed beers, took advantage of every complimentary thing possible and slept below a roof and above the ground.

40 miles later and hung over the next day we stood at our last crossroad together. We hugged and went or separate directions. Hubert is a good guy and a good friend. I enjoyed traveling with him and will miss him.