June 12, 2026 was our second full rest day.
We’ve ridden 1493 km and climbed 19,336m from the border at Antelope Wells. That’s just over a third of the distance to Banff and about 42% of the climbing. We’re averaging slightly over our goal of 80 km/day not counting zero (rest) days.
It was a great feeling to have the bike shop maintenance done yesterday and laundry too. We planned tomorrow’s ride north then roughly sketched out the next few days after that. Amazingly, the Wyoming border is in our sights.
Wytze and Daniel went shopping in the morning and I got to talk to Katie, my mom, son and sister. Breakfast was yogurt with fruit and toast and eggs that Daniel cooked. The raspberries were so perfect looking that I wondered if they were 3d printed!
Today is also a really special day since it is the “Grand Depart” day for the annual Tour Divide race. You can do it any time, either direction, as an individual time trial, but if you’re racing, the real deal is to start in Banff on the second Friday in June, today. This morning, over 200 racers from over 20 countries started at 7am. You can watch their trackers at bikepacking.com. They are all headed for our starting point, Antelope Wells, NM. It will be exciting to see them come by although we’ll miss many by avoiding riding at night.
While we are aiming to have as much fun as possible and will take about eight weeks, to win the Tour Divide you have to go about four times that speed. It means averaging over 300 km per day, sleeping very little and being tough as nails!
Our host, Liz, who we first met at the Bunkhouse in Pie Town, arrived home in the afternoon and took me to the local pizza place to pick up an order of Take n Bake Pizzas. She invited her cyclist neighbor to join and we had a nice little dinner party. Between the six of us there were lots of interesting biking and other stories. Making connections like this on trips like this is just magic. Thank you Liz for your tremendous hospitality!
Nathan's Blog 