Day 57 - 3,200 Miles To Date - Ely, NV

It feels pretty awesome to finally see civilization again! Don't get me wrong, Baker, Nevada was great and all but I missed my shower and laundry and roof over my head. 4k Christmas was a huge success, including a meal from Jeff's grandma, secret Santa exchange, milk and cookies, a performance by some of Santa's elves and Kevin G from mean girls (aka Harshini.) It was a lot of fun and I love how much our team is spirited and loves doing all these crazy things together. We also received our invitation to the Harry Potter Yule Ball because of the upcoming Harry Potter day, and though I know nothing about the books or movies I was told I am Remilda Vane (we were all assigned characters.) Yesterday was another state line and also our first night legit camping. It was really exciting getting to our last state line before California! Also super crazy that we're this far and only have 13 days left. Now I'd be lying if I said I love camping, so I was not super excited to get off the bike all sweaty and have to sleep outside. It definitely was better than expected, though, and I ended up getting 9.5 hours of sleep! We heard there was a creek to rinse off in so we trekked through the woods and even met a cute little kid that showed us the path to the creek. I think we were definitely expecting a little bit bigger of a creek, because this one was about two feet wide and ten feet long of space we could actually use. Believe it or not, I felt a lot cleaner after rinsing off and finally using my 18 in 1 Dr. Bronner's soap. After that, we ate some pizza around the campfire and I eventually went to my tent at 8:30 pacific time. Wake up was at 6 since it wouldn't be light enough for us to do anything before then, and we headed out for our 50 mile ride into Ely. For this city, Landis' parents are hooking us up with some meals and they provided an awesome lunch at the top of our second climb. I'm currently sitting at the laundromat excited to have more clean clothes and discussing seeing a movie or going to a casino tonight, because we are in Nevada after all. Tomorrow we head to Eureka I believe and it'll be about 80 miles again. Even though we are kind of biking through the desert, I do really love the mountains in Nevada. They're like a mix between the Rockies and Appalachians and have a lot of cool textures. I notice a lot on these long, straight highways. I also really love the climbing every now and then, it changes things up and now having 3,000 miles under my belt it's a lot of fun.