Today was easily the longest and most demanding day of the trip so far. I awoke from the sun pouring in through my tent and knew that it was time to ride. I didn't want to spend very much of my morning waiting for the heat to kick in and I knew that if I started riding at sun up, it was going to be a ride to get to Las Vegas by sundown. So it was 5:30 in the morning and it was amazing to see everything now in the light. I didn't realize what I was passing by last night because I could only see the shadows of the mountains. Now I was slowly creeping my way up and out of the park. I only went another 1,000 feet uphill in the morning before I exited the park and I could tell that if I hadn't have made the climb last night that I would have been sucked in by the heat in the morning. I had beat the heat! For now anyway. I was out of the park in only a few miles and then it was an open desert. The sun was out starting to heat up around 10. It didn't take me long to ride in to Nevada and when I did, I saw a casino. I was in the middle of nowhere and there wasn't even a town that was supposed to be there when I looked at the map. I guess, where there is a border there is a casino. I didn't expect to have a stop at this point in the morning, but it was a nice place to fill up my water bottles. I had a few more miles to go for the day so I didn't stay long. I made it about 20 more miles down the road and it was almost noon. I felt like my rear tire was a little low so I pulled over and sure enough it was. I had run over a couple of staples in the road and my tire had been punctured twice. It was not the best place to change a tube, but what is. It was over 95 degrees and there wasn't shade for miles. It was too hot, but it was taken care of in about 30 minutes. I was back on the bike and it felt good to have some wind movement. It was mostly a flat ride, but every now and again there were some gradual climbs. It was incredible how I was only 70 miles into the ride at around 2 and still managed to keep going. Riding in the heat of the desert from 12 to 4 is not the best time to be riding. It was so hot that it made each 40 miles that I had to go between towns seem so much further. I had enough water and food to make each on of the pushes to each town, but it wasn't easily. Mentally to keep going when all you can see is desert was probably the hardest task that was put in front of me. I had been through Death Valley and I had seen the worst, but this seemed just as bad. My elevation was between 2,500 feet to 3,500 feet at all times and it seemed fairly rolling at times. I realized early on that Las Vegas was going to be a little longer than the 130 miles that I had projected, but once I arrived I had a friend to stay with. i had contacted him before and was ready to be able to see him. His name is Seth and I met him at the job that I had worked at over the past year. He had just moved out to Las Vegas to live with a friend of his only a couple of months earlier. So to have been able to stay with him along my trip was nice to have along the way. His roommate, James, had lived in Vegas for about a year and was going to be around if Seth was at work. As I neared Las Vegas, it was slowly getting darker outside. It became so much easier to ride after 4 pm in the desert that I was able to push into Vegas and make it to the outskirts of the city by 7. It was great to be able to see so much light off in the distance. I rode in to the "city that never sleeps," and it was fairly obvious why. I was making my way in towards the Las Vegas Strip, because my friend didn't live much further away. As I approached his house I could see everything. The lights, the sounds from the street, and thousands of people walking in every which direction. It was a crazy sight to see after I had been riding in the desert for so long. From the cold of Yosemite, to the heat of Death Valley, and now in the city of Las Vegas. Everything just didn't seem right. How could all of this be possible. I didn't want to give it to much thought at the time because I was so exhausted from riding. I followed the directions that I had been laid out. I tried to find one turn to get me to the house, but I must have missed it somewhere. So I called Seth and James picked up the phone. Seth was using Jame's phone for a little while in Vegas and so it didn't surprise me that Jame's answered. What happened next though was very surprising. Seth had apparently left town to go back to Nebraska and so here I was. James had never met me before, but he didn't seem to mind. He knew that I was going to be coming into town so as soon as he heard how lost I was, he gave me directions to meet him somewhere that I did know where to go. It wasn't far from where I was at, but it was funny to see Jame's reaction when he first met me. He thought that I was travelling around the country on my motorcycle and so when he jokingly asked me if I was Kyle when I first pulled up, he was very surprised to hear me say yes. It was a classic moment and it was nice to have some humour after such a long afternoon. It was about 10 pm at this point and I had started the morning at about 5:30 am. I had been on the seat of my bike for so long that it was an incredible feeling to get off. We went down to Jame's place from where we were at and it was very nice. There was Seth's bed that I was able to sleep in and James had told me that he would give me a tour of the city. I was ready to rest for a couple of days after being driven so hard for the past few days. I sunk into the mattress and was asleep before I even closed my eyes.Daily mileage: 148.1 miles
Average speed: 11.7 mph
Total mileage: 3,875.6 miles
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