We left Bluff this morning at about 9:15AM. That’s our earliest start after camping out so far. It was tough getting started too — we woke up to frost on the inside of the rainfly of the tent.

The road we were taking (highway 163) started out heading mostly east along the San Juan River valley. I imagined a nice leisurely ride along the river, but what I didn’t count on was 1) the 15-20mph headwind, and 2) having to cross the many drainages of tributaries feeding into the San Juan. So, it was up and down for about 30 miles while I crossed these drainages. Did I mention that there was a pretty strong headwind too?

Finally, around the Colorado border (yeah! State number 3), we left the San Juan River valley. At about 44 miles into the ride, I reached highway 160 where I was supposed to head back north towards Cortez, Colorado. At tthis point, I was within 6 miles of the Four Corners National Monument. So many people have suggested that I knock off four states in a matter of minutes by going to the Four Corners National Monument, that we just had to go. So I did.. Below is a short video clip that I put together documenting this side-trip:

When I tell people about The Dream Tour and its route through all 48 contiguous states, more often than not, people suggest that I go to the Four Corners National Monument and ride around in a circle. Well, today, we were bicycling from Bluff, Utah to Cortez, Colorado. The Four Corners National Monument was only 6 miles off the planned route for the day, so we decided to go there and do just that: ride in a circle and bicycle through four states! 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 11:03 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.