We took off the next morning, on June 2nd. It was a pretty nice day as we took U.S. 50 west, then route 6 north to Provo, Utah and stayed with my friend from high school. After dinner we cruised up to nearby Squaw Peak to check out the view.
Dirty Hippies.
We'd planned to ride west across the salt flats of northern Utah the next day, but decided to go farther south to escape their intense heat. We left in the morning on US 50, the "Loneliest road in America". It was far from congested, but I think I've seen lonelier roads. The sky was dark gray, threatening us with an impending thunderstorm. As we continued west, we watched the approaching clouds strike the earth with repetitive bolts of lightning. Just before entering the storm, we pulled over to put on every remaining layer of clothing, preparing for the rain.
A few minutes down the road the sky suddenly became filled with thousands of small, white things. It looked like a bunch of dandelion seeds, flying through the air, but as one struck my helmet I realized it was hail. At first I started laughing hysterically inside my helmet, thinking that we'd been worried Utah would be too hot, and now we're being hailed on.
The laughing turned to cursing when the hail grew past dime-size. Neither Cyrus nor I have windshields, so there wasn't anything to hide behind as the hail bombarded us. It hurt most when it hit my knuckles and knees. The inside of my visor fogged up as I cursed mother nature, the weather channel, Utah and anything else that came to mind. We kept moving, but at 35 mph, until the hail stopped. Luckily, I had a full-face helmet, so I was better protected than Cyrus, who only had a 3/4 helmet. He said the worst was when a bit of hail hit him directly on the tip of his nose.
Figuring the worst was past us, we continued west through the desert and things got better for a while; then it started raining. We crossed into Nevada and started gaining elevation, up to about 6 or 7 thousand feet where it got much colder and suddenly began to snow. Not just a few flakes, but a blizzard.
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