Just Keep Pedaling: Red Rock Canyon -- Nevada

EZRideLV Electric bike tour

While in Vegas to see Def Leppard, we also took the opportunity to knock Nevada off of our list of riding in all 50 states.

We signed up for the EZRideLV Electric Bike Tour (go to their website here) through the Red Rock Canyon. What an awesome experience! Very glad we chose to do this!

Owner Laurent was very responsive to our initial phone call, and communication with him from that point on was timely and efficient. He texted us a link to waivers for us to sign the night before our ride.

We paid the extra money to have him pick us up from the front door of our hotel and that also went very smoothly with excellent communication. We were very appreciative of that option. From there it was about a 20 minute ride to the suburb of Summerlin, where we would begin our ride. The price of the tour includes helmet and glove rental, as well as granola bars and 3 bottles of water per rider, provided in the bag attached to the handlebars.

Tip: Because these are electric bikes and the battery is mounted on the downtube, there is no water bottle holder on the bike. Therefore, if you like cold water with ice (as we do) and bring your own water containers, you will need to wear a backpack with bottle holders on it. I'm glad I came prepared with my backpack -- just in case.

After donning our gloves and helmets and adjusting our seats, Laurent gave us a 10-minute safety briefing as well as directions of where we would be riding along the highway to get to the Red Rock Canyon park. There is also a clear map of where we would be riding printed and placed in the plastic pocket on the top of the handlebar bag. He provided us with cash for the $5 per person entry fee per bicycle to enter the park, and instructions of when to text him to keep in communication with him (when we reached High Point Lookout and again when we were exiting the park).

He explained that it is 5 miles uphill to the point of the High Point Lookout, and then it's 13 miles downhill from there. He cautioned that we would get up some pretty good speed going downhill -- up to 30 mph or more -- and to not follow behind a vehicle too closely, in case they would brake unexpectedly. He told us where to meet up with him back in Summerlin and that he anticipated our ride should take about 2 to 2-1/2 hours. He let us know if we had any troubles regarding the bikes, we could contact him and he would come take care of it.

He then gave us a quick lesson on how to run the electric bikes and had us take a couple of test laps around the parking lot to ensure we were comfortable with riding them. And then, we were off on our adventure!

It was about 4 miles riding on the 50 mph Highway 159. Laurent called it riding in a bike lane, I called it riding on the shoulder! :) As we are not normally road cyclists, I wasn't terribly fond of being out on a busy highway, but we survived it!

Once we entered Red Rock Canyon, it was one way traffic along a 35 mph loop through the park.

We reached High Point Overlook and texted Laurent to let him know we had arrived to this point.

After the photo ops at the top of the peak, it was back on the bike for some prolonged coasting!

Although there was a bit of an uphill here.......

Once we crested that, you can see it was quite a downhill on the other side. We did hit some exhilarating speed at this point.

At this point we had exited the park, which was our second place to text Laurent from, and were ready to embark back on the highway portion of the ride back into Summerlin.