We woke up around 6:30 this morning and felt very refreshed after sleeping in a bed last night. Thanks to our hosts, we got to enjoy some cereal with milk and dried fruit for breakfast. Afterwards, William shared a few photos from their little tour while they were in Japan. It was interesting to get a little glimpse of what it is like over there. When we finally got all packed up and said our goodbyes, we rode down the dirt road from their house and back out to the main road. Both of us were very happy to find that the wind wasn't too bad today. It was still against us, but was no where near as strong as yesterday. About 2-3 miles into the ride we rode through the little town of Anza. A few miles outside of town we started to climb. The climb was much like the other ones we have done in the last couple days, long and pretty steep. We watched the elevation signs again today as we went up. Yesterday we started at an elevation somewhere near 1,390 feet and ended up at an elevation of about 4,200 at their house. For the first few miles of today's ride we started by going down for a little bit. With the climbing we weren't positive what elevation we would get to, but according to William, would get up to an elevation of somewhere near 5,200 ft. Unfortunately the elevation signs stopped when we went into the San Bernadino National Forest, so we weren't sure if we actually got that high or not. We had a pretty short little downhill before we made a turn onto a new road. From there we had a little more uphill and then finally had a pretty good downhill through an area that was full of these weird little bushes. Eventually we were doing what else but climbing again. It wasn't quite as steep, so it wasn't so bad, but it was still slow going. The views were so pretty, we could see so many mountains in the distance. They were very deserty looking mountains. I guess this is more exciting for me because I've never seen any of this before, so the desert is definitely a really neat thing. The road hugged the mountains pretty close at one point and when you looked up there were huge rocks and boulders as far up the hill as you could see. The highlight of the day came when we were on our way down-on a 10 mile downhill that is. As we looked down from the side of the mountain we were on, we saw the most amazing road ever laying ahead of us. It zig-zagged all over the place; it looked like the road was a piece of string curving down the side of the mountain. There were so many switchbacks, that wound really close to each other. It was pretty amazing. The descent was really fun, too. It was not too fast, not too slow, and had nice wide turns. We came down from around 5,000 feet all the way down to 224 feet. After that long descent, we were in the city of Palm Desert. On the way in we got pretty excited because we saw a few big cactus. Because there were trees and a little bit of greenery I felt like the air wasn't so dry and my nose started to feel a little better. We rode through the cute little shopping area that had a whole bunch of fancy expensive stores, and actually kind of reminded me of Rodeo Ave. in Beverly Hills. We made a quick stop at the visitor center and found out there was a nice park not too far away. The park was awesome. There was green grass- thanks to the insane amount of sprinklers, and even a pond with little waterfall and a ton of ducks and geese to watch. Joey and I made some pasta and spaghetti sauce for lunch and enjoyed the shade for a while. The rest of today's ride was flat or only had a slight grade. As we were going between Palm Dessert and Palm City we could see some really nice houses on the hill. William told us that some of those houses were homes of some of the stars. There were also street names like Frank Sinatra and Gene Autry. Although we had a place lined up to stay for tonight, it ended up being way too far away, not to mention there would be a significant amount of climbing too. Craig, the person's house we were going to stay at was ok with the fact we wouldn't make it, but provided a possible way to help us anyways. If it worked out distance wise for tomorrow night, he told us to stop by the fire hall in the town of Twentynine Palms and mention his name. He told us that there was a good chance they would let us set our tent up in the back yard! On the way out of town, we stopped at Vons to restock a bit on food. Once we got out of the busy area we were riding on roads that were really straight and flat, so much so that we could see for miles down the road. When we left the store, we made it a goal to try to make it to Morango Valley tonight. Somehow we missed the turn for the road we were on, but it ended up being ok since we were on a less busy road in the end. It probably took us less than a mile out of the way going the way we went. The roads are so straight that it didn't really matter. In doing so, we came withing 3-4 miles of the city known as Desert Hot Springs and also passed through the tiny area of North Palm City. As we kept riding and riding, but not feeling like we were getting anywhere, we realized we might not make it to where we wanted to. Then, as the sun was going down and we could see the mountains we knew that where the road would cut through was still pretty far away, we really knew we wouldn't make it there. There was a whole fleet of windmills in one section that we could see off in the distance for quite a while. Eventually we ended up riding right next to them. The last few miles were a very gradual climb, but we could still tell we were climbing. Although we turned our lights on, and there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, we found a spot to camp on the side of the road once it was too dark. The road had no shoulder and a lot of the cars showed that they saw us but still didn't give us much room. It wasn't worth fighting with them when we could just call it a day. We made a frozen veggie, chicken and three cheese pasta dinner that I picked up at the store when we were there since they were on sale. I love these dinners- they don't use a whole lot of water and they are pretty quick to cook and clean up. After that, we hit the sack pretty early again. It was pretty nice camping in the deserty area. The sand wasn't like we had pictured- we pictured beach like sand, but it was kind of neat even still. We were surrounded by the little desert bushes and could see the lights from the windmills blinking and all of the lights from the little cities in the valley off in the distance. Our miles totaled 60.42 today.
|
|