Tonight we are staying at the Border Inn Casino. None of us are gambling of course but it seems that every hotel and even most of the motels in Nevada are also casinos or gambling halls. As the name implies, tonight’s casino is directly on the border with Utah. The motel rooms where we are staying are just barely on the Utah side and the casino is just barely on the Nevada side. Our phones keep switching between Pacific and Mountain time zones which has caused some chaos. Entering a new state was a big deal for all of us when we entered Nevada, but I think entering a new time zone is another even more indicative sign of milestone in our journey across the country.
The night sky at Great Basin. Photo taken on my iPhone.
When it got dark we drove 10 miles or so into Great Basin National Park to do some star gazing. It was quite spectactular since we are so far away from any town larger than a few hundred people.
The forecast for our destination for tomorrow
Our team got very lucky the last few days with relatively cool weather as we biked through the Nevada desert. Most days the high was in the 60s or 70s which felt warm while biking uphill but was otherwise fairly pleasant. Unfortunately, this great weather is ending and today and the next few weeks will be very hot. This has meant that our whole team has had to shift our schedules so that we can start biking very early in the morning to try to beat the heat.
We have two more very intense days ahead of us to get to Salt Lake City. Both days are around 100 miles through the Utah desert in hot weather. I feel pretty optimistic that we can do it, though the timing may be difficult because it may simply become too hot to bike for large parts of the day.
-Leo