Day Sixty-Six - Winds.

I had quite a disturbed night last night, I found out that I'd put my tent up in a place that fighting animals frequented, with bouts every couple of hours. I woke up at about 5:30 though, feeling fairly refreshed. I packed everything up, and wanted to go to the place accross the street to eat, but it wasn't open, so I had to go to the place I camped at. This was no big deal really, but I kind of resented paying $10 for an omlette. The guy that owned it was nice, but miserable, and had a note in the menu telling 'foreigners' what is the US custom for tipping, which was again the upper bound of what I've been doing.

So I set off at about 8 o'clock, and I was straight onto my first hill. It was 15 miles long from bottom to top, and because of the time difference I'd lost an hour, so it was hotter an hour earlier. I also was down to my navy blue top, something that I hadn't worn for a while because it would make me too hot, and it did just that. It didn't take too long to get to the top though, and I was onto the downhill the far side. The downhill is where I usually make up time that I lost on the uphill, but this wasn't to be re case here. The downhill was straight into the wind, that both made progress about as slow as I was going uphill, but also sapped my energy. This went on for about 12 miles before turning west and out of the headwind. It was still affecting me from the side though, and luckily there was an unmarked pub that I could stop at at around halfway. I stopped here for about an hour, before heading the 5 miles to the summit of the next pass. It was steeper this time, and the fact that it was hot didn't help. It took close to an hour to get to the top, after which I had a 20 mile steady downhill to Ely, the end point for today. The wind picked up again here, and held me up further.

I eventually made it to Ely, and went straight to the Motel I was staying at. It was a Motel 6, which are I think the cheapest of the big chains. I was completely sapped of energy by this point, and the nearest campsite was a few miles out of town. I booked in, went for something to eat, and then came back to do some much needed handwashing of clothes.

Tomorrow I head to Eureka (another one), which is 78 miles and 4 passes away. It sounds tough, but the uphill gradients aren't too steep so it should be easier than the past couple of days.