Thanksgiving Ride

We took a road trip to St. George for Thanksgiving. We had a nice dinner and football after we got there. We left Thursday morning thinking we'd miss the traffic. We missed most of it, just not all of it. It still took 7 hours to get there.

After searching for a route to ride and posting on bikeforums.com, I found the Tour of St. George route. It mentions a climb up Snow Canyon. After talking to Gary, Christine's brother, he said it would be a good route to ride. It was a great ride. The scenery was beautiful and the weather crisp. It was 27 miles of hills, about 1500 feet of climbing, all of it in the first 8 miles. There is a difference between sea level and 4,000 feet in altitude. My lungs felt it. After the climb, I got to bomb Snow Canyon Park at 40+ MPH. The road was fairly smooth without any switchbacks. Here are some pictures of the canyon. I went back with the family to show them the area and this is where the pictures are from.

After my ride, Christine and I took the kids and rode the bike trails around St. George. All told, another 16 miles of fun. We only rode on a small portion of them. Next time, we will know where to go and what more we can see by bike. In fact, we even talked about camping in Snow Canyon. There is a ride in St. George in early Spring. Maybe then we will campout a bit and do some more riding.

Final Words: Yes, the Steelers lost today, 27-0 to the Ravens. They are having a bad year. We still are the defending Super Bowl Champions. We are just trying not to be greedy. Another team needs to win it this year. Next year, well, that will be a different story - #6 on the way.

But on another note, BYU came back with no time on the clock and exercised a few demons by beating Utah 33-31 to finish the season 8-0 in conference and 10-2 overall. Nice! Check out this link to a slide show put on by photographers from BYU about the game. It has the call of the game as well. Here is the link - http://photo.byu.edu/markImages/Multimedia/BYUvsUT/.