Hittle Bottom Campground, UT to Moab, UT — 32.14 mi, 1703 ft
We didn’t finish our ride yesterday so we have to spend today biking to finish the ride. Strictly speaking, we don’t “have to” since we could’ve just SAG’d the last 30 miles of yesterdays’ ride after we got caught in a pretty bad thunderstorm. But we also don’t “have to” bike across the country.
We had left our bikes locked up at a campground along our route last night with the plan of coming back to pick them up and finish the ride in the morning. It didn’t take any convincing to get the bikers to agree to finish the ride on our rest day, 30 miles is a super short ride anyways and is an easy moral victory over an otherwise unnecessary SAG. The one who we did have to convince though, was our driver Tatiana who wanted to sleep in. It took a non-trivial amount of convincing, some laundry day trades, and coffee + pastry offers, but eventually we convinced her.
We woke up at 7am in our super nice Airbnb kindly donated to us by the owners. We spent a quick 30 minutes getting ready, deliberating on whether we should wear our white jerseys again or cycle forward to black jerseys (we ended up with black), ransacking the fridge’s ice machine for all its ice, and dragging Tatiana out of bed at the last possible moment. Much faster than our usual 2hrs when we have to pack all our stuff + the car.
We arrived at the campsite at 8:30am where we were super happy to see our bikes had neither been stolen nor blown away.
We then got to work on topping off water, packing snacks, and applying sunscreen. Since it was a short ride, the plan was to do the 30 mile ride unsupported (e.g. pack all of our own water and food with no car to give us supplies along the route). By the time we were ready to head out at 9am though, it was already feeling a bit toasty and we were probably a bit worried about having enough water in the heat. We headed off though, knowing that our fearless driver would come help us if we needed water and surely would not still be asleep when we finished the ride (Hint: she was asleep, but its ok we didn’t need water).
The ride itself was super pretty, and getting biking meant the wind helped cool us off and alleviate any heat/water concerns. The ride started in this huge “bowl” of open space within a canyon for 5 miles. These 5 miles of open space were also the primary concern we had yesterday when deciding not to bike in the middle of a thunderstorm.
We then went into the canyons along a river running through them for the next 15-20 miles. Super pretty stuff.
The canyon + river we biked along for 15-20 miles.
It’s interesting that we had seen the entire route on the drive from the Airbnb to our bikes, yet everything felt so much prettier when we saw it from our bikes. Tatiana pointed this out in her recent Day 45 blog, saying that every view feels prettier when you feel like you’ve worked for it, and I 100% agree.
We barrelled through the mile 15 rest stop since we didn’t see any reason for a break on such a short ride, and since we wanted to finish as soon as possible to get back to our previously scheduled rest day.
After biking through the canyon a bit longer, we exited out into the city of Moab and biked 8 miles uphill to the exact opposite end of the city where our Airbnb was. Having this house was certainly worth it, but boy did they make us work for it.
We arrived at the house one by one between 11am and 11:30am just as the heat was picking up and then headed off to do some combination of showering and napping until 12:30 when we decided to go get lunch at a burger place called Milt’s that Drew had seen along the route.
Now, there’s been a lot of deliberation this summer over the best burger restaurant, mainly between the In-N-Out camp and the Freddy’s camp. Both camps came together on this one though, Milt’s was some phenomenal burgers. Best of the summer for me.
After chowing down, we headed over to a cafe to do some work rather than be outside in the 100° heat. The work included: writing blogs (10 days behind as of now), calling friends/family, reading, and, in my case, completing background checks for the job I’ll be starting after Spokes.
Carlos, Nunu’s boyfriend, was visiting the team for the two Moab rest days, and he arrived at the cafe around 2:30pm. After a fun mix of greetings, introductions, handshakes, and hugs, Nunu and Carlos went off to explore the town. Seems like everyone else slowly got the same idea because by 3pm I looked around and I was the only one left in the cafe. Everyone’s stuff was all over the cafe, so I called them back (and inadvertently put them back to work) since I needed to go back to the house to grab my portable charger.
I drove back, didn’t find my portable charger after looking in the bed for 20-30 minutes, found it on the bedside table, and then headed back to the cafe.
After getting back around 4:15pm, all 8 of us (7 + carlos) went for a quick stroll to check out Moab’s main street and immediately got sucked into a t-shirt store where you can print designs onto different t-shirt blanks. Aarushi and the girls really wanted to buy shirts with a matching “Moab, Utah” design with cartoon-ish bikers on it.
The girls spent ~30 minutes figuring out what type of shirt, color of shirt, and color of design they wanted. They didn’t even finish deciding since we had to run to dinner at 5pm, but we made plans to go back tomorrow. Drew and I were skeptical of getting shirts. Drew decided he didn’t want one. I said I’d get one if I could get it as a pink tank top, but I was told I was not allowed to get the pink tank top.
We had been very generously donated a dinner at Arches Thai, a Thai restaurant in downtown Moab, at 5pm, and walked 2 blocks down to the restaurant. The food was truly really good, I really wasn’t expecting Moab, Utah to come out with full swing with such great food, but it really hasn’t disappointed at all.
The food from Arches Thai, which all had these crazy carrot flowers on them.
Around 6pm, we left to go check out Canyonlands National Park. At the exact same time, it became super windy and started raining + thundering lightly. We trudged our way to the cars (our minivan + the Jeep Carlos had rented) with our eyes covered to stop the sand from flying into our eyes, and then started driving ~1 hour towards the park.
Proof of the storm. The sand stopped blowing right when I started taking a video but it was crazy I swear.
Throughout the ride, we were receiving various “Flash Flood Warning” notifications to our phones. Resident National Parks Expert Caroline Huang said we’d be fine though, so we stayed on plan to visit the park.
Good thing we did too, because when we got there we pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. Even the park rangers had gone home: the front gate said “pay at the visitor center”, but the visitor center was closed. Luckily, we already support the National Park system via our annual National Parks pass, but it still seems crazy to me that we only saw like 3 cars the entire time there.
The park itself was stunning, and the storm gave the whole park a sort of other-worldly feeling to all the already other-worldly canyon views throughout the park. There was one instance where Caroline, Drew, and Carmen felt their hair starting to rise, which prompted them to start running to the car (without telling the rest of us!?), but otherwise the storm only meant we got slightly wet while taking in the views.
For the record, if I was running from something I would at least tell everyone else they should run too…
We checked out the iconic Mesa Arch, saw a double rainbow at Green River Overlook (+ also saw where the rainbow ended, no pot of gold unfortunately), and took in some other crazy views throughout the park.
The iconic Mesa Arch
Double rainbow and the end of a rainbow 🌈🌈
Some other crazy views throughout the park (and everyone taking pictures of them)
When things got dark enough that we couldn’t really see anything anymore around 9pm, we drove back to the house. We put on the movie “Cars” for a bit until we all started falling asleep an hour in, and then decided to hit the hay at 11:30pm.
– Nate
MIT Spokes 2026 
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