Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Sneak Peak

August 27th
Hot. Saw 1 cloud all day - Sun burned in Alaska!!
Rode 56.9 miles today in 4.5 hours
Hit produce stand at junction of Glenn and Parks Highways. It saved us. We ate well for dinner; artichoke pasta with sauteed carrots & cabbage. Sweet. I eat better out in the woods than I do at home. Very tired. Going to bed. Just glad we are out of the city.
Highlight - We saw our first glimpse of Mt. McKinley from Eagle River! Clear as day from over 200 miles away. I couldn't get pictures of it though. Too much sun and not enough contrast. Amazing.
Camping at Rocky Lake State Park. Beautiful. Met two mom's doing a bike tour with their kids. Mom's were pulling trailers and the kids were on BMX bikes. Said they were doing a week long trip. Cool!

To this day, I still remember most details from this day very clearly. It gave me great peace to know we were now out of the city and moving into the wilderness. We also got a sneak peak at one of the greatest mountains in the world. Great food didn't hurt either. After talking to some true Alaskans, we were told that our sighting of Denali from Anchorage was rare. They said that only 2 to 3 times per year you can see Denali from Anchorage.

Looking back now, I see that we had a steady and easy build up of miles. This was our longest day yet. I didn't write it down, but the fact that day three was our longest day with only 56 or so miles was concerning me as I knew from our planning that we'd have much longer days than this.

I leave you with a few snaps from Rocky Lake. I'll also share a sneak peak at Denali. It wasn't taken on this day, but since I got a sneak peak on this day, I figured so should you. Enjoy.


2 comments:

MG said...

oooooooohhhhhh... Denali. I love Denali. That's a mountain that's always captured my imagination, yet I've never actually laid eyes on it. Definitely on my to-do list.

Hmmm... I've got an idea. Sending you an email.

Cheers,
MG

Guitar Ted said...

Jason, your lack of mileage was concerning me too! Ha ha! But that is only because during my two super long self supported jaunts we did 100 plus miles on the first days of each tour. Our goal was to hit a hundred mile a day average, so we were gettin' down and movin' most of the time. Of course, we were not in Alaska either!

The really funny thing was that on the first day of my first tour I did 120 miles with my previous long ride PR being 35 miles!

I'm sure the big days are coming for this ride.......right? :>)