Day 13: Salt Lake City to Provo

Today’s Highlights:
Today’s 64-mile ride was fun and easy, especially the bike path along the Jordan River. We all wore our red America By Bicycle jerseys today in honor of Flag Day. It was also requested that we ride the first segment of the route together, because many junctions of the trail were very confusing. That turned out to be true, and at least once we all got lost together. For me, it was really nice to parade with the others for a couple hours, because I have so often ridden in solitude on this trip. It also gave me a chance to get pictures of several of the riders.

We started our day on an unusual bike path that was in or along the SLC airport. There were a few security gates we had to enter or exit along the way. After a few miles, we left that path and rode streets through a commercial area. Then at ten miles, we hopped on the Jordan River path. That was a lot of fun with many curves as it followed the river, twisted through trees, and crossed meadows. It included elevated boardwalks over wetlands and several bridge crossings over the river. There were ducks, swans, sandpipers and other birds along the way.

Once off the Jordon River path, we had a short ride on busy streets again, taking us to our one rest stop for the day. From there, people continued in smaller groups and I left with Ken, Bud and Emma. We soon came to our last bike path for the day, a short 2-mile path in Jordan Meadows (the Draper City Trail). Although it was short, this trail was high above the valley and had very nice views north to Salt Lake City, east to the Wasatch Range and west to the Oquirrh Mountains where there is a huge open pit mining operation (mostly copper).

The final thirty miles of the ride was on a small stretch of highway and a very long stretch of four-lane strip mall thoroughfare passing every store and service imaginable. The traffic was very heavy too. There was one peaceful section through the campus of Brigham Young University. Five miles before the end of our route, we stopped for ice cream at the Creamery. It was awesome!

With a late 7:30 am start and a slow pace today (and a nice ice cream break), we completed the ride around 2:00 pm. We had a nice blue sky, comfortable temps, and sometimes a helpful tailwind. I’ve reached the point where I can say a 64-miles was simply pleasant. I guess that also means we are well conditioned now.

Pictures Of The Day:

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Statistics:
Zoom and pan the map to explore the route. Click the name or ‘View Detail’ to view more information at Garmin Connect.