What a day. It started out great. Perfect weather, a nice relaxing morning lazing around my hotel room followed by an all you can eat thai. To be perfectly honest the thai was disappointing. It was basically a Chinese buffet with a curry dish added to the mix.
While I was getting ready I looked up a route to the town of Saratoga. Beads had told me that it had a free public hot springs and was just down the road from encampment, where I was going to turn in the bike and hike again. There were two routes according to Google maps, both about 40 miles from rawlins. The default route took me along I80 frontage road then down to Saratoga. The other route followed the cdt bike path for 15 miles then cut across another road straight to Saratoga. I'm like great I'll take the second path.
What Google failed to say was that the second road was private. I talked to the rancher and he said it was private the whole way. So I've got a decision to make ride the 15 miles back to rawlins then take the other route or try to find my way. The rancher had said I could keep going to Jacks creek road then take that over to Saratoga. I'm like great Google has a route that mentions Jacks creek road I'll follow that route. Guess what, after 10 more miles I find out that route is also private. So I keep biking I can see Jacks creek road on the map so I decide to just bike there. That was a no go either, what the rancher didn't mention is that there was road construction going on and the two roads didn't connect due to that. So out comes the maps again I can see a forest service road, hydrology road was the name I think, that connects me to Jacks creek. It's a two track but is public so I took it.
It was a fantastic ride. I got on it at the top of a mountain so it was a 10 mile cruise down the mountain's ridge. There was even a creek that I desperately needed to refill my water since I was only carrying enough for a 40 mile ride not 70+. There was one point where Google said I had to go left when the road obviously went right, but I decided to trust Google. I should have known better. The road to the left obviously hadn't been used and was quickly over ridden by sagebrush and deep sand. I ended up walking the bike for 2 miles before it reconnected back to the right road. I finally made it to Jacks creek road but it was now 715, the sun was setting at 820 and I had 17 miles to go. I crushed those 17 miles. Granted to was all downhill, very gentle down but down. I made it into town by 830.
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