Day 63: Romanticizing the Mundane

Milford, UT to Baker, NV — 84.9 mi, 4,539 ft

Video script:

Today was the day we would cross into our second to last state of the whole summer, Nevada! We were biking from Milford, Utah to Baker, Nevada over 84.9 miles and 4,539 ft of elevation. I was not particularly looking forward to today’s ride since it predicted a lot of climbing and possible strong headwinds but when was I ever? To be honest, this summer has given me a love-hate relationship with biking. Because when the alarm blares at 6am I seriously feel like I want to do anything other than get out of my cozy sleeping bag and bike all day in the hot sun for what feels like forever. Then again, I just know that when the summer ends I will seriously miss this crazy lifestyle we’re living.

With no choice but to bike, we all geared up, said our goodbye’s to our driver of the day, Bacon, and then were off. I like the feeling of the momentum from those first few pedal strokes of each day with my whole team around me—it’s like we are seriously seizing the day and it’s the start of a new adventure as we usually have no idea what the day ahead holds.

Unfortunately, the day ahead was holding a few big climbs and absolutely nothing to stimulate the mind as we biked in a straight line through this desert-like landscape. At the same time, it was kind of beautiful. I’ve never been on such an expansive road before that I could see literally multiple miles ahead and behind. Things that seemed close because I could see it in the distance, actually took much longer to pass by than I thought. This also included our support car, Mr. K, that is easy to spot from her bright orange camper top which always seemed so much closer than it felt to bike to.

As I approached the first rest stop behind Nate and Drew, I was confused because I only saw their bikes at first sitting on the side of the road. Eventually, I found them tucked away behind a bush taking shade from the sun. Nate complained that he was feeling an incoming bonk so I dug through my bike bag and pulled out a week old bag of gummy worms that had melted into a gummy worm chunk! It actually wasn’t good but sometimes you just gotta eat even if you don’t feel like it. I also forced myself to take some bites while we waited for Bacon to come from the grocery store. Eventually, Caroline found us sitting sadly under this bush and joined us. Suddenly, Mr. K sped by! Nate yelled after her, “nooo come back.” Caroline called Carmen to turn around and all was well. Plus, she brought a delicious snack haul with her complete with all our favorites: crunchy green grapes, cheez-itz, nilla wafers, wheat thins, nature valley bars, pop tarts, soda, and a new one… peach rings! Now these peach rings were a serious trend setter for the rest of the trip (and I know this because I am making this after the trip has ended) because, as Nate and Drew love to talk about, the macros were great. You just needed to eat 6 peach rings to have enough carbs in one rest stop. After we devoured two bags, they sent Carmen back to get more peach rings for the next rest stop.

Then there was more of the same biking, biking, biking. Now, here’s some clips of something interesting and novel, more biking! Okay now another rest stop… and now some more biking! To spice it up a little, we decided to pull out our tubs of macaroni salad and potato salad gifted to us by Nate’s family. Maybe not the wisest dairy heavy snack to have mid bike ride (especially as a lactose intolerant person) but they were yummy and we were bored and hungry.

After some more biking and rest stopping, we finally reached the Nevada sign! Since we needed to wait for the whole group to arrive so we could all take a picture together (which would take maybe half an hour), we decided to all squeeze into the car to take refuge in the AC. This meant two people in the driver’s seat, two in the passenger, and one squeezed in the second row next to all our snacks. And our awesome driver, Carmen, sacrificed herself and stood outside next to the car and under a blanket for some shade. We all doomscrolled for a bit on our phones which was an insane dopamine hit after rarely scrolling all summer and after an extremely understimulating day of biking. When the whole team was finally gathered, we did our usual circular debate about helmets or no helmets and how to pose and blah blah blah. Then we all watched Carmen struggle to figure out how to take a selfie. For some reason her instinct was to take it with her left hand while standing to the right of the group? It was very funny.

For the last 8ish mile stretch to our destination for the night, I drafted Drew who was drafting Nate in a sideways formation to try and minimize some insane crosswinds. When we pulled up to this adorable cafe-inn situation called Stargazer Inn & Bristlecone General Store, they had a sign outside welcoming us! We were so excited and were greeted by a very sweet cat and sweet staff who gave us a delicious dinner with yummy sandwiches, blueberries, chips, juice, and cookies. Looking around the store at all the brochures, I realized we were right next to Great Basin National Park! Caroline, who has of course been here before, told the group that she recommended we go take a look and it was only a ten ish minute drive. I was really really excited to hear this and one of the ladies at the cafe corroborated Caroline’s words and told us about this very short and beautiful hike we could do to a lake to go swimming. These are actually my buzz words and I was so determined to go. I tried to convince everyone else to join but this of course sparked another one of our favorite past times, discussing things in circles. Some people were very tired from the bike ride and wanted to rest while some people were interested in visiting the national park but only at night to go to a stargazing lecture and some people realllyyyyyyyy wanted to go swimming in a magical and secluded lake in the mountains like wow doesn’t that just sound awesome like who wouldn’t want to do that? Anyway, we decided to stop discussing and just take action since we were wasting precious time and so the plan was in motion. It was almost 5PM and we would go to the church to unpack everything, gather all our laundry, and then everyone would go to the local gas station to take showers and do the laundry. Then by 5:30PM the hiking and lake swimming people would leave, do the 30 minute drive to the trailhead, hike and swim for an hour, and head back to the church at 7PM to pick up the stargazing crew and drive back to the visitor center to join the stargazing lecture at 8PM. Haters will say that this was an extremely optimistic schedule but I will say that I was determined to make it work.

The hiking swimming group ended up being myself, Nate, and Tatiana. The drive up was so beautiful as we went up some steep switchbacks into and above the clouds before eventually reaching the peak and seeing some very grand cliffs. Then the hike itself was one of my favorite hikes of the whole summer. Not only were we basically the only ones there but it weaved through a beautiful forest of tall birch trees and in the clearings were picture perfect views of the cliffs that surrounded us. It was also late afternoon and the sun was shining through the trees at a magical angle and wow it seriously looked like a fairytale. The three of us might’ve however come slightly unprepared as it was quite a rocky and uneven hiking trail and we were all either wearing slides or flip flops so here’s a clip of Nate struggling to keep his flip flops on.

When we finally reached the lake, we saw some deer grazing and I just thought like wow, if I was a deer this would be my dream home. We did some lazing around on our picnic blanket we brought with us and then also did some swimming in this extremely cold lake. But this swimming was more like squatting in and violently shivering because it was very very cold. The bottom of the lake was also extremely muddy and rocky and there were thousands of tiny small bugs on the surface of the water? To be honest we’ve had much better swimming experiences this summer but at least we’ve done it all. Unfortunately, in the chaos of trying to quickly get out of the lake and wrap ourselves in our warm towels, Nate cut the bottom of his foot on a sharp rock. This was a little more dramatic than perhaps it needed to be because as the sun was setting and our friends were waiting for us to come pick them up, we were racing back down this trail as Nate hobbled and limped down using me as a crutch. When we eventually got to the car, I pulled out our handy dandy first aid kit and our gallon of sterile water. I told Nate to lie down horizontally and stick his foot upside down out of the car and proceeded to drench his foot in a waterfall of water in an attempt to rinse out all of the dirt. Tatiana has a big phobia of blood so she sat in the back of the car and cheered us on from afar. We then sanitized it with an alcohol pad and I did some makeshift bandage situation with some nonstick gauze and medical tape—call me surgeon Nunu.

We made it back to the church exactly on time, as I knew we would, and loaded everyone in along with some more mac and cheese salad and potato salad for the road. Drew decided to stay back since he wasn’t feeling well. During the drive back, we noticed that the sky was bright pink and very hazy which was some subtle foreshadowing into the kind of ride we were about to have tomorrow. Luckily or unluckily for me, tomorrow was my driver day. We then arrived back at the national park and walked the red lit path toward the stargazing lecture. I was initially worried because the haziness in the sky made it difficult to see very many stars but the smoke shifted just enough for us to peer through.

During the lecture we learned about the history and the technology behind the telescopes that have been able to let us see stars and then took turns looking through them at various stars in the sky. We started by looking at the middle of the handle of the big dipper which we learned was actually visually made up of two stars and supposedly only those with really really good vision could make out that there are actually two stars. Indeed, when I peered into the telescope I saw that there were not only two stars in that spot but many many many stars surrounding them. It just reminded me how vast the universe is and how small we truly are. Yet we are still able to have these insanely fulfilling experiences and days full of adventure and even despite everything else going on in the universe we are so lucky to have had the chance to be here together in this specific moment.

We decided to head home a bit early and when we got back Drew sounded very sick indeed so I gave him a Nyquil. He foreshadowed to us that he might be taking a rest day tomorrow and be my passenger princess. With that, we all got ready and went to bed among the pews of this small church in Baker, Nevada. Who knows what tomorrow has in store for us because every day I wake up and we end up doing something unexpected and it’s so so fun to look forward to and I just hope the summer never ends.