Emily's Bike and Build Adventure!: Arizona and more of Utah

I'm slacking on the posts a bit I'm sorry- but I'll get everyone caught up in a matter of minutes. We rode through Jacob Lake and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon last week and spent 3 nights in a row camping. There was a 15 mile climb up a mountain towards Jacod Lake that took close to 2.5 hours as we made our way up most of it at 5 or 6 mph. Luckily there were delicious Oreo milkshakes at the top that made the climb pretty worth our while.

We had a day off in the Grand Canyon which a majority of us used to either hike or rest. I did a combination of the two, with a short morning hike to Bright Angel Point and then worked on my bike in the afternoon. There was no phone signal and zero wifi so for about 4 days we felt pretty out of touch with society. I did manage to score my official Junior Park Ranger badge (available at all National Parks) and see two beautiful sunsets over the canyon.

Afterwards we made our way towards Zion National Park and spent the night in Kanab, Utah. We camped the night after that in Zion after a really short ride into the park. Since we all got there around 11, we had time to get our Junior Park Ranger badges from Zion and hike Angel's Landing- a 'strenuous' level hike that went up 1,500 feet in elevation and used chains to help hikers through very narrow and difficult rock structures. It took about 3 hours round trip but the view from the top was a game changer. So many of us wished that our day off had been in Zion because after that, there was so much more we wanted to see. One of our riders took a pretty bad fall off of a 25 foot rock while hiking the Narrows and had to be taken by EMS to the hospital. Luckily she only has a fractured tailbone but that also means she'll be off of the bike for a bit. Rowan is super strong and resilient so knowing her I'm sure she'll be back in a few days.