A later more leisurely start as even though we have 33 miles to do today they are considered “easy” (more about that later!). A breakfast with real milk, milk is one of the things we miss most.

The route goes past Carl and Carol’s house so we paid them a visit to say farewell, we had written a thank you card and gave them our address (they don’t do this new fangled email stuff) it was nice to see them again.

The Lima Peaks

It started well, good track with slight ups and the odd down (as opposed to a normal down) with Lima and it’s peaks being left behind quite quickly. As we progressed it became a proper roller coaster of a track and a lot tougher to ride on.

After 14 miles we reached a Red Rock and the dam forming Lima Reservoir.

The Red Rock

And.

Guess the name of the river they dammed? (Plays a short piece of elevator music giving you thinking time), yes it is in fact Red Rock River.

The track continued in the same way but the countryside really opened up and I am going to say it again, big sky and big open spaces.

The cycling was a bit of a struggle now, a strong headwind not helping (although it was cooling) and not a single piece of shade.

One section was particularly difficult with long sandy sections with some deeper drifts where your front wheel just gets taken away from you (this sand just steals everything) it happened to Janet and she ended up with a grazed elbow. We were very down about this “easy” day.

Now 33 miles was here at last, so we found a nice campspot by the track. We made one slight error though, here is an excerpt from the lastest how to camp and influence people, “make sure you pitch you tent upwind of any incredibly dusty track you happen to camp next to”. We suffered a little from dustyness every time a vehicle passed by, but in reality there are hardly any vehicles using the track.

The camp spot is very nice though, about half a mile to a good water source though, we carry a 6 and 4 litre bag though which gives us more than enough water for the evening morning and the next day. All our water is always filtered.

Today was a very hard day.