A Ride that did suck

Well it was raining this morning so we pushed off the ride till a little later, leaving the campground around noon. It still did not look promising, but by the time we got through the pass and down I-15 towards the ride, I was pleasantly surprised to see things clearing. We exited I-15 about 15 miles south of Provo and headed up the mountain. We parked at about 7500 feet and proceed to start the Blackhawk loop. It is only 18 miles but all the write ups say its tough. I began to get worried when we started up the first little climb about .25 miles in and the mud started to pack into the tires and get slippery to the point of being unridable. We walked the bikes a bit and were able to ride a bit more. Things improved to the point of being able to ride for a while but it took us about an hour to cover the first 2.5 miles. The potential for a great ride was there, just the trail conditions were really bad. Then it got worse. Some cowboy must have run a herd of cattle, we ran into some of them, the cattle that is, down the trail during the rain in the morning because it was chewed up big time and the mud was awful. We alternated riding and walking the bikes for another couple miles as we watched the afternoon storms start to form. At about 5 miles we were approaching a paved road bailout point that we had decided to take, this was already about 2 hours into the ride, when howie got a flat on his front tire. He walked it the last couple tenths of a mile to the campground and we decided he would hang out there while I went and got the truck rather than spend time changing the flat and let the storms get worse. I mistakenly assumed that it would be all down hill back to the truck, but turns out the 2 miles getting outta the campground gained about 800 feet before hitting the main road. Luckily it never did rain too hard. The plan, since we were down that way, was to stop at Camping World, just south of Salt Lake on the way back. Still not sure what the issue was, either howie's mapping software was wrong or he put the store in the wrong place, but we never did find it, but had a nice tour of south Salt Lake. It was still raining a bit as we got back towards the campground so we decided to head into Heber City to get some dinner rather than grill out in the rain. We both felt that we didn't "deserve" the mexican food since we barely rode, but we both got over our guilt quickly. By the time we got back to camp it was starting to get dark and I still needed to get the bikes cleaned up and it was gonna be a much bigger project than just cleaning the chains like normal. As we found out the other night, once the sun goes down, the mosquitoes come out with a vengeance. I normally dont like to use bug spray, but in this case, since i was gonna shower after cleaning the bikes and these things would have taken a good pint outta me I went for it and it worked pretty well. The camper has a little hand shower on the back of the trailer, by the hook ups, so ive been setting up the bike stand back there and using that to clean the bikes. Luckily, there is also a light on the outside of the camper back there that came in real handy this evening.
Although today, it wouldn't have really mattered what tires you had, the previous two rides ive actually been OK with my rear tire, a IRC Mibro, which I was not happy with back in state college. I think its just too narrow for the rocks etc in State College, but seems to work well out here. I do have a back up for both the front and rear, but so far so good. Speaking of tires, I still need to fix howie's flat, but that will have to wait till the morning as Im gonna have to use the compressor and its a little late for that amount of noise in the campground.
The camper is working out well, the refrig is keeping up and the freezer is churning out ice cubes like a champ. Another nice feature is the hot water tank is right next to the sink so there is virtually no delay for VERY hot water. The AC keeps it comfortable during the heat of the day and it cools off nicely in the evenings and there is plenty of ventilation so no need to sleep with the AC on.